Abstract

Webster's Dictionary defines “femininity” as “the quality or nature of the female sex”; the Oxford English Dictionary as “the quality or assemblage of qualities pertaining to the female sex”. Both are wrong. One can be a member of the female sex and yet fail or refuse to be feminine; conversely, one may be biologically male and a drag queen. Femininity is a certain set of sensibilities, behavioral dispositions, and qualities of mind and character. It is also a compelling aesthetic of embodiment, “a mode of enacting and re‐enacting received gender norms which surface as so many styles of the flesh”. What follows will focus on the ways in which some feminist thinkers have theorized the norms that govern the production and behavior of an ideally feminine body.