I don’t know if this what you are looking for…but here is my take…
I don’t know if there is one thing that makes me feel feminine…but it can all be summed up by something as silly as a sharp number 2 lead pencil, my reading glasses, or my book collection… I loved my real school desk that my parents bought for me when I was little…the extra worksheets that my teacher would let me bring home to practice my work during the summer….and the book shelves that helped my sister card catalog our books as we played library….stay with me here….
I love school, I love learning, it is the accomplishment for which I am most proud…Maybe its because I have never been married or had kids…but some many of those traditional feminine things…though I love them…THEY do not make me feel like a woman…

I think that it goes back to this…You know growing up…all of the influential men in my life, my dad, my grandfathers, my uncles, they didn’t dote about how pretty I was or how cute I looked in a dress (which is pretty cute by the way). The way that I got positive male attention was by showing off how smart I was, reading a book to them, making a good grade on a test, beating them at a strategic game, or coming back the smartest, wittiest remark. Now…I’m most girly and most powerful when I am using my wits…Being a good girl, for me at least, was showing that I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for just anything. Sassy yes, Stupid no!!! That was how I was taught to be a “girl”!

I flirt with my brain….not with a tube of lipstick….and if any guy wants to know how to get me to fall in love with him, it is to appeal to that… I flirt by winning a trivia contest…Wow men by my knowledge of fantasy football stats (because that’s just research …right?)…and do a flirtatious intellectual dance with informed political debates…these things make me feel like a fun girly girl…I know weird right????
I’ve chosen a typically feminine career, teaching… Unlike many of my coworkers, I’m not here because the job allows me the spend time with my kids, or summers off. Definitely not here for the pay…I’m here because school, learning, education makes me sit up straighter, walk a little taller, sway more…. and act a little sassier! I love the smell of school! I dig the feeling of a sharp pencil in my hand oh and that smell!!!! and the oooooh how I love bubbling in a scan tron!!! Maybe this is really why teaching is female dominated profession…School/academics/learning yes these are girlie traits…While the neighbor boys were outside…sweaty and dirty and smelling bad!!! Yuck! So yes a number 2 lead pencil (though phallic in design) can be way girlie!!!
-Julie