The word "femininity" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe characteristics that are typically associated with being female, such as grace, gentleness, and sensitivity. For example, "She embodied femininity with her graceful style of movement and gentle manner."
Instead, males dressing up and acting in ways that are associated with femininity "show that [as Butler suggests] 'being' feminine is just a matter of doing certain activities" (Stone 2007, 64).
With respect to empowerment, the challenge is for feminists to rethink this concept in ways that are not reliant on arguably essentialist conceptions of femininity, that is, conceptions that presuppose a universal essence of the feminine.
Probably the most feminised of the new quirky stars is Stephen Mangan or Noel Fielding, but they are acres away from classic femininity (again, you can contrast us with America, here – they love their button-cute girl-boys, from Justin Bieber to Justin Timberlake, a dynasty of Effeminate Child Stars called Justin, as far back as the internet stretches).
His widow, the exuberant Latin-American Consuelo Suncin, who died in 1979, is attracting almost as much attention with the posthumous publication of her vitriolic memoirs and the first biography tracing the transformation of an amoral woman into Saint-Exupéry's idealised representation of femininity, the Rose, in the classic children's book, The Little Prince (1943).
Lori, an executive from Mattel, told me that Barbie was an "unapologetic" celebration of femininity, and when I said: "Yes yes, but at the end of the visit all the girls get to do is model," she nodded thoughtfully.
He felt especially drawn to photographs of Boy George – "pure femininity radiating from his face" – and, later, the performance artist Leigh Bowery.
There's a delicacy, indeed femininity, about the way his dark hair hangs around his pale, intense face; in repose there are times when he resembles Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa".
Thatcher's femininity was her secret weapon.
"In my political life I always found men vulnerable to a little femininity," she said.
Prunes have been marketed using images of their younger selves ever since.Baking is an expression of femininity, he explained, so when a woman pulls a cake or loaf out of the oven, "in a sense it is like giving birth".
Viscerally, Americans resist letting femininity and power go hand-in-hand; a female leader still strikes us as unnatural on an emotional level.
