Femininity Part 3: Poets Poem by Cat Singh

Today I listened to a podcast episode
where two female poets talked about
falling in love with strangers singing karaoke
and about ferocious untamable bikini lines.
Some days, women who write
give me permission to feel like a girl.
I don't know why I need permission,
but what I do know is that femininity
is to be part of something bigger than myself.
Femininity is something so so large.

I've never been in a room full of girls
without feeling gross or othered,
without feeling like the only non-member
of an exclusive club.
Once in middle school, I went to a sleepover
where the other girls did my makeup
and dressed me up.
They didn't have a foundation
dark enough for my skin,
so they painted me over and called me a ghost,
took pictures of me smiling and still failing
to be pretty. And we laughed.
It was so funny, you know.
And when they gave up,
decided I looked ridiculous,
they followed me to the bathroom to wash it off.
I hesitantly cupped my hands
under the water like a bowl
and brought it up to my face
like I had seen someone do in a music video.
No one ever taught me to wash my face.
My eyes stung and each breath I took
was tainted by water droplets.
I tried to grab something to dry off,
but the girls said
there was still makeup on my face
and I'd ruin the towel.
I coughed and sputtered, and they laughed.
They said, "no wonder you don't wear makeup."

I drenched my shirt and my hair.
I was sopping in a lack of femininity,
a lack of a ticket into the club.
But then female poets—
they write about cutting their own hair
in the bathroom at work
and having painful anal
with their faces dug into a bedroom wall
and growing and removing body hair
just as if that hair really did belong to them,
as if their bodies were theirs.
They write about girls kissing girls
and awkwardness and jealousy.

Who gave me permission to feel like a girl today?
Maybe it was female poets.
Maybe it was my flower print bra.
Maybe it was the enormity of femininity
like a flood breaking into my bedroom.
Maybe it was me.
Maybe it was my body
giving me express permission
to be everything
that I already am.