Femininity, Carriage And Poise

 

Picture Credit: Google

Olarinre Gloria Oluwasemiloore

In an interview with Pulse Nigeria, Bamike-Olawunmi Asenibuyan, popular known as 'Bambam,' a rising media personality and Nollywood actress, opened up about her life and career. She shared insights on breaking into the acting scene, securing brand deals, and her experiences as a TV star. What struck me during the interview was her soft-spoken demeanor, adorable laughter, and effortless charm: a perfect embodiment of femininity. I learnt about Bambam through her role as 'Achalugo' in the movie 'Love in Every Word. Her consistent display of poise, style, and elegance in all her performances is nothing short of beauty. For me, I think there's an undeniable aura of womanliness about her that shines through in every aspect of her work. This brings us to a discussion on Femininity, Carriage and Poise. This three specific words are used majorly for the female gender and they also communicate the peculiarities of this gender.

The word femininity is derived from the adjective word feminine and this signifies the characteristics, qualities, attributes and behaviors that are generally portrayed in women, either girls or ladies. Some of the traits of femininity is being caring, soft, emotional, nurturing, communicative and largely being the delicate citizen in the society.

The word Carriage describes a person’s dignified, upright, confident posture and manner of holding and moving their body. It also implies Grace and Elegance which is mainly and peculiarly related to the feminine gender while Poise implies a graceful and composed way of behaving, it also describes self-assurance, balance and dignity in manner and inner calmness.

All of these specific and beautiful words are the beauty that describes the feminine gender. It is never related to weakness but is a major weapon in the hands of women. Portraying all of the characteristics, qualities and behaviors that is related to femininity does not make any woman less or clearly different from the masculine figure in the society, instead it identifies the uniqueness attached to the word femininity. Essentially, a woman in her element should be soft, caring, peacefully calm and loud enough to be heard in the society.

A number of things have caused women nowadays to be casual about their looks, emotions, carriage or poise and this does not make them less of a woman but shows how that the society does not really encourage the feminine gender to be themselves, instead the society now directly or indirectly teaches us to bottle up our emotions, be guarded in our hearts and overlook things that should normally catch our attention.

Women must know that being a female doesn’t equal to signing up to be overly pampered, irrationally emotional and insensitive to their strength. A woman should make sure she knows herself, understands her body because we come in shapes and sizes, takes note of her peculiar attributes and use it for the obvious and moral benefit for herself and the society.

Womanhood starts from the age of puberty, when a lady has the first occurrence of her menstruation, she’s already known to be a woman because she can bear a life within her. This is one of the major strength of a woman, the ability to grow a child within and also bring it to life. Specifically, the identity of a woman differs in various places of the earth, which means femininity differs in various places. Likewise, women can choose to be anything: wives, mothers, sisters, workers, rich, single and free. The strength is the same, the compassion at heart, the emotional components that distinguishes us as a woman, the voice, the elements that makes up femininity, but the level to which it is respected is different.

Femininity is not weakness, and it is not a role that should be sidelined in the society. Femininity is in no way a rival to Masculinity, instead they should compliment each other, and maybe the phrase: ‘what a man can do, a woman can do better, and what a woman can do, a man can do better’ will be seen in another light.