Tomorrow I turn 38. Usually in this space I write about flattering colors and the styles that suit your body — all the fun stuff. Today I want to write about something different. Something more personal, maybe even a little intimate. Something I’ve been wanting to say for a while, and a birthday feels like the right occasion.
My mom once told me about a headline she’d seen — A joy to be a woman — and laughed. You know, that kind of laugh you give when you read an oxymoron, or a sentence that just doesn’t add up. I was younger, and I didn’t understand what she found so funny. Since then, though, I’ve met many women who couldn’t say “I’m a woman” without laughing, or without feeling like they were lying. They had no problem saying “I’m a wife” or “I’m a mother.” But there was an invisible barrier inside them that wouldn’t let them say woman and mean it.
Here’s what I’ve come to see, as a woman myself working with other women: there are women, and then there are WOMEN. Many women were born in female bodies, answer to “she,” and build their lives — being reliable, and kind, and loving. They know how to take care of their family, how to do their work, how to be a good friend, colleague, neighbour. But the moment anything touches a woman’s sensuality, her body, her sexuality — she gets shy, and shrinks, and goes quiet. This territory is unknown to her, and she feels like a stranger in it.
Put her in a room with a handsome man at a party — and instead of enjoying the conversation, she’ll be thinking: I wish this would end sooner. Tell her she looks beautiful — and watch her have no idea where to put the compliment. She deflects. She laughs. She bounces it back. Anywhere but let it land. She’s at a restaurant with live music, and people start to dance? She might want to join them, but she’ll hold back, afraid of looking inappropriate, certain she doesn’t know how to dance — even though her body actually moves beautifully when no one is watching. And around other women — the magnetic ones, the ones who are in their bodies — something else shows up: a complicated current, half admiration, half quiet grief. That’s how a woman is supposed to look. That’s not me. I don’t know how to do that.
Some old cultures spoke of three faces of a woman: Maiden, Mother, Crone. The girl, the woman in her full creative and sensual prime, and the elder. Three phases of one long life, each one with its own beauty and its own gifts. The pattern I see most often — especially in women a generation or two ahead of me — is the one who jumps straight from Maiden to Crone, skipping the middle entirely. She was busy. She was needed. She was waiting for permission no one was ever going to think to give her. And one morning she’s sixty, and the woman she was supposed to become has not arrived.
But other phases get skipped, too. You’ve met women who get older without ever gaining the wisdom of the Crone — the years passed, but nobody really moved in. And you’ve met the woman stuck in Maiden — the one dressing like a teenager well into her forties, refusing to let the girl quiet so the woman can speak. I’m not a psychologist. But I’m an image consultant who has worked with a lot of women, and the inner work is half of what styling actually is. I can see when a phase is happening — and when one is missing.
Here’s what nobody quite tells us. Usually, a woman comes into the peak of her sensuality somewhere around thirty. Some confidence arrives. Some insecurities slip away. She becomes aware of her presence, her power, the way her body actually moves through a room. The timing is different for everyone — for some it comes earlier, for others much later, and for many of us it arrives in waves instead of one clean moment.
I’ll be honest with you: I always felt comfortable in my skin. But around 28 or 30, I felt stuck. Like I knew something was supposed to happen — I couldn’t have told you what — and for some reason it just wasn’t. Getting dressed became harder, even though my body hadn’t changed. I used to love romantic blouses, flowy dresses, floral earrings — and suddenly they all looked slightly off on me. Not bad. Just no longer mine.
Now I know that almost every woman has transitional periods like this. You grow out of one image but haven’t grown into the next one yet. You’ve lost your direction, but you don’t want to pretend to be someone you’re not just to fill the gap. For me, the shift came after I had my baby, finished breastfeeding, and started to get my body back — somewhere around 33. Since then, the feeling has kept evolving. It comes in waves. It probably always will.
I’m writing this as someone who has crossed over — and once you’ve made the crossing, you can hold the door open for someone else.
If you recognize yourself in any of this, what I most want you to know is this: you don’t need to earn the right to feel like a woman. You were born one. That alone is the whole qualification. Femininity isn’t a test you pass when you’re beautiful enough, bold enough, admired enough. It’s a depth that has been waiting in you — sometimes for decades — for you to walk back into.
Here’s the thing, though: being a woman isn’t a costume. You don’t put it on the way you’d put on a witch outfit for Halloween — a wig, a black dress, a pointed hat, and there you are, someone else for the night. To feel like a woman, you don’t need a dress. You don’t need heels. What you need is contact with yourself. Everything else builds from there.
Start with your body. Stand in front of a mirror without a list of things to fix — just look. Notice the line of your shoulders, the curve of your waist, the shape of your hands. Touch your own face the way you’d touch someone you love. Most of us have spent more time judging our bodies than living in them. Femininity doesn’t start with what other people see. It starts here — in the private moments, when nobody is watching.
And once the inside settles, the outside follows. That’s when you get to play.
That red lipstick you’ve always wanted to try but thought was for someone else, someone braver, more seductive? Try it. It’s not “too much.” You don’t need to be Angelina Jolie to give yourself permission to wear red lipstick. The dress with the slit? The “naked” dress? If something in the design intrigues you — if it whispers to you — that’s your sign. Maybe you’ll love it. Maybe you won’t. But you are allowed to find out. At any age. At any size.
And let me tell you what I’ve learned working with women, year after year: most women aren’t unattractive — they’re undiscovered. They don’t need to fix anything; they need to enhance. Every face has colors that wake it up. (If you have skin, you have your colors — trust me on this.) Every body has silhouettes that move with it instead of against it. Every woman has a haircut, or two, that makes her face come alive. You just need to find yours. However, no color, no silhouette, no haircut will ever flatter a woman more than her own confidence.
One more thing. If I could press a single book into your hands above almost any other, it would be Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. It’s a long read, and not every story will speak to you — but the ones that do will reach the part of you that has been quiet the longest. Read it slowly. Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen is a beautiful companion. Start with the first.
Almost 38 years in — Maiden, Wife, Mother, and finally Woman — I can tell you that headline is no oxymoron. It’s the simplest truth I know. It really is a joy to be a woman. It’s also a power. A sensuality. A depth. A whole country you already have the keys to.
Better late than never. And honestly — there is no such thing as too late. The door has been open the whole time. Walk in.
