I'm a sick puppy right now and started rambling about my personal thoughts on femininity on someone else's post before I decided, well heck, might as well make my own. I'm so congested and bored. Feel free to scroll down to the bolded part.

Here's my street cred: No practical life experience, deliriously happy in a 7 month long relationship with the sweetest, handsomest, smartest, most masculine man I've known, too many bumpy situationships in the past to comfortably count, no penetrative sex yet (that will change soon!), 21 years old, making 6 figures in California, engineer, went to a school everyone knows for being super liberal but also the home of many, many discoveries and inventions, Chinese, 5/10 lookswise, making the scale swing wildly back and forth every day personality wise!

I've never read The Secret Garden and I've never watched/read (is it even a book?) El Dorado, but I came up with some theories on femininity from the fever dreams (no joke, I'm also running a fever) that I conceive those two stories to be. Enjoy this shitpost with some grains of truth, fellow lovely women! I hope it can make you laugh or agree with me or think I'm insane, but this is how I view femininity and this is what keeps my boyfriend interested and constantly curious about me.

My boyfriend could get sex / commitment from almost any hot girl. He wants marriage and kids, has a cool temper, is very hot, along with other high value traits that will manifest into what Red Pill Men call HVM later in life. He's 21 years old.

Enter me: I'm like a solid 5 on the day to day, every girl he's been with before has been much prettier/hotter. I dress like a regular 21 year old woman – jeans and t shirt that fit me, throw on a down puffer when it's cold. I shave when I shave, and let it grow when I can't be bothered (which still isn't often, but there are some porcupine days). I never wear makeup except to formal events.

For obvious reasons, I'm head over heels for my boyfriend. Wildly. So why is he, cool guy in leather jacket who is both hot and wants a serious relationship, enamored with me, short weird nerd girl in Patagonia Better Sweaters and mom jeans? (I realize I'm sounding very Not Like Other Girls but please, it's not intentional and I do want to dress better yikes)

This is the interesting stuff after I finish my self-denigration:

Femininity is not in the clothes. The secret sauce is in what you say and how you act. It's being compassionate when compassion is needed, and kicking someone in the ass when they need a kick in the ass, and wisdom to know which a person needs. It's being understanding and present when someone has a bad day, giving him a kiss on the cheek if he's your significant other, and holding him when he's insisting "no I'm not crying" but he is. It's saying "hi!!!" to every "oh my god, puppy!" you see on the street and running up to the owner to ask if you can pet them.

It's soundly beating your boyfriend at something you're clearly better at, and cocking an eyebrow at him like a femme fatale. It's praising him for being so intelligent/capable/strong/whatever that you see in him, often, unashamedly, happily. It's crying when you feel sad, laughing and singing when you feel joy, letting your hair down when it's away from the dangerous machinery that could rip your scalp off. It's saying "I like your nails/shoes/hair/jacket/skirt!" to anyone, male or female, who clearly put a lot of effort into their appearance.

It's having your shit together and untangling whatever Gordian knot your boyfriend asks you to help him with, because he helps you with your own Gordian knots. It's being free with your affection, once earned, however you express it. It is being both youthful as a day old butterfly and as old as the Earth, wise and innocent. It's embracing who you are in all your simplicity and all your complexity.

So develop your femininity, whether your brand is more floral and fruity, or beautiful and terrible as the sea, or anywhere in between. Be honest with yourself – have a river there, bubbling and laughing, but your garden is large. There is also room for elegance like a tulip, danger hidden beneath a rose, lust in the form of apples and pomegranates. Whatever seeds of femininity you have, water them.

But femininity isn't a right for everyone to consume, like water or the air. Femininity is also guarded, a secret greater than El Dorado that only those you deem worthy may experience the full splendor of. Your vulnerability, joy, sadness, support aren't for just any Joe you went on two dates with. Joe gets a whisper. Joe gets the sense that perhaps, paradise is within your gates, but he needs to actually backpack there and ford the rivers and navigate through the jungle.

How valuable is paradise if everyone experiences your love, your emotional support, your cute little mannerisms, your kisses on cheeks, your time, energy, and power? So, once you've created your own oasis, you must guard it wisely.

So. Back to little old me, average girl #5832044.

My boyfriend told me why none of the hundreds of women he went on first dates with ever got to the "serious girlfriend" stage: they gave up sex too early, were not as intelligent as him, or let him get away with bullshit because he's very good at talking his way out of situations.
So he sees paradise in me, but my paradise has rules. Well good! Thinks any sane adventurer. Paradise always has rules, and paradise enforces the rules. Paradise without rules quickly turns into ruin. My adventurer (ahem, boyfriend) is sane, so he enjoys paradise and takes care of paradise and is careful not to break the rules. He enters because it is paradise, he stays because it is paradise, and paradise remains as such because paradise always has its rules.

Four things: for the woman, paradise and rules. For the man, adventure and sanity. There is no happy ending without any one of these ingredients.

To the women: What's your paradise like? What is your brand of femininity? What rules do you keep in place for your hopeful adventurers to keep it paradise?

To the men: A reckless adventurer will either destroy an anarchic paradise, or be destroyed by a garden ready to protect itself. But a sane man would never even travel the oceans and the jungles for a legend.