Being a woman not only means to be nurturing and caring, but also being powerful. My older cousin has inspired me to be who I am as a woman.

She’s taught me to not let other people’s perceptions of me bring me down or define me. I grew up as a tomboy, I did whatever I wanted without any limitations.

Most of my cousins are male. I have a brother and I hung around my uncles a lot so I did everything with them.

My older female cousin and I grew up as tomboys, and we didn’t fit the gender stereotype of what being a ‘girl’ means. We weren’t ‘girly girls’.

I didn’t realize that until I went to middle school that there were certain things that girls were supposed to do and certain things that boys are supposed to do. When I was at school, the boys would always bother me and say that I’m supposed to play with dolls while they went to play with trucks. There were all these gender stereotypes, like I was supposed to wear pink, but I hate pink. Why would I wear pink? These stereotypes of what a girl or a woman is supposed to be or act like are restrictive.

I think it’s so important for women to support each other by creating solidarity so that we can uplift each other. Especially because in our society, men are definitely considered as dominant and women are ‘supposed’ to be subordinate. The power dynamics in our society won’t change unless women come together despite who they are or where they come from and stand together to make a change.

When I think about being a woman, I think about how that is different from being a man. And one thing that stands out is a woman’s sensuality. There’s just something about a woman’s body and the energy that exudes from her. Men just don’t have this. Not like a woman. There’s a mystery and an intrigue in women of all shapes and sizes, all nationalities and of all ages. There’s a specialness and strength in the sensuousness.

I respect and admire this sensuality in women, and many times, I behold it in wonder. This is not to say women are sex symbols or objects. I guess they can be such, and often they are, or maybe often society makes them such. But I find power and strength in a woman’s sensuality—sex appeal—that I think gives women, or should give women, a unique sense of self and an inner calm and confidence of spirit.

I fancy myself a feminist, though that word has become, to me, a little passé. And I feel in some ways I should speak about women being equal to men and that I should be on trend singing out from the mountain tops that it’s a woman’s time to stand up for her rights and that a woman’s day has come. But frankly, this conversation kinda bores me. It sounds like a broken record to me. It sounds like talk and the same talk that’s been going on for years. I prefer action. And not just pussy hats on the square and women banding together. I’m sure this feels powerful and I’m sure it’s unifying. I have a lot of female friends and when I get together with them, let me tell you…it’s powerful and energizing. I LOVE THEM! (And they are all very sensual and powerful in presence by the way.)

But I am not empowered by this ‘I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar’ stuff. I’m not naive to the issues we face in society when it comes to gender equality. But I also just sometimes feel like, let’s not whine about it. I’m kinda sick of talking in terms of gender. I was actually a little miffed by the idea of talking here, about what I like about being a woman. Feels, you know, like a chick thing to do. I’m not sure I’d see men writing about ‘Why I Love Being a Man.’

And maybe that’s the problem. Let’s stop defining ourselves by our gender. Let’s define ourselves by our abilities, our strength of character, our choices and our actions. Let’s define ourselves by what we wake up and do every day. I don’t wake up and think about being a woman. I wake up and think: what am I going to accomplish today?

I like being a woman because I possess an inner strength and attitude, an inner beauty and natural sensuality that gives me the confidence to tackle each day with the kind of passion, excellence and dare I say, superiority, that ‘that other gender,’ in my opinion, just can’t light a candle to.

I just like being a woman.

I think there are definitely still stereotypes of women portrayed in the media. The media creates values that never exist, and women are subconsciously left feeling pressure to conform and act accordingly. I think it can be dangerous because we digest so much media content, whether it be things we purposely consume like TV shows and movies, or the social cues and popular cultural trends that we passively experience. Because we see it everywhere, it inherently normalizes what we see, no matter how inaccurate or misrepresenting it may be. All of these media encounters in our everyday lives give us images of what people are supposed to be like, particularly for women because their standards are especially trivialized by the media. Overall, at the core, a lot of the media represents women as fragile and dependent on others, and not really in control of themselves and it does this with a strategy. It has implications on our society that basically creates a blueprint or guideline for what women should be; but these are not real values. Everything we see is just created by the people in power that have control over the media. I think being a woman can mean so many different things. We should never strive to come up with one image of what a woman should be. We don’t have to categorize women into what is ideal and what isn’t, like the media usually does. We should just allow women to be whoever they want to be without having to justify it. You should never have to try to dress, or act, or be any particular way at all, but especially not in the way the media tries to influence us in our expression of gender.