Performative Femininity vs Divine Feminine: How to Tell the Difference.
She’s soft. She’s radiant. She lights candles, wears flowing dresses, and speaks in a gentle voice. But is she truly embodied or just performing?
We live in a culture where femininity has been reduced to just an aesthetic that is being used to chase external validation from men, popularity, etc. It’s easy to get lost in the bows and frills of it all and forget what the divine feminine truly represents. It’s easy to confuse divine feminine embodiment with performative femininity. One is rooted in authenticity. The other, in appearance.
This article is for the woman who’s ready to go deeper, beyond the look, into the essence. Let’s explore how to tell the difference between performative femininity and true divine feminine embodiment.
What Is Performative Femininity?
Performative femininity is just an outer shell without the embodiment. It’s a behaviour meant to look feminine without being truly connected to the feminine essence. Yes, wearing dresses and makeup that make you glow like a goddess is a beautiful pleasure to be cherished, but doing all that doesn’t make someone a divine feminine.
What is performative femininity?
♡ Over-curated ‘Soft Girl’ Energy
When it’s performative softness, the energy is different. Sometimes it looks like appearing soft in the external world, but moving differently in personal relationships. It’s putting up a facade of sweetness when there are unprocessed, heavier emotions such as anger. It’s looking like the ‘soft girl’ archetype with silky robes, a whispery voice and pastel coloured outfits, but with an energy of needing to control external perception.
When it looks like an overly curated personality with inconsistencies in behaviour, niceness that’s covering up the reluctance to handle discomfort, emotional messiness, or real conversations, or using a curated softness to gain external validation without truly connecting to inner softness, or using ‘soft girl’ or ‘submissive wife’ trends as a strategy to attract love or to fit in with no authenticity, that’s when the softness is nothing deeper than appearances.
However, it’s important to mention again that every woman who is drawn to the soft girl aesthetic is being performative. Not every soft-spoken woman is faking it. Some women are just as soft outside as they are inside. Some women have journeyed to the deepest parts of their souls and back to achieve a certain kind of softness that becomes everything they are.
♡ Being Passive To Be Liked
When someone is trying to appear feminine, they might turn into a passive version of themselves. This is because women often confuse being passive with being feminine. Some believe that being able to go with the flow, even at the expense of safety, respect, or inner peace, is a trait of true femininity.
Yes, being easy-going is a beautiful trait. But if that energy isn’t coming from within, it can be performative. A truly easy-going woman usually doesn’t find herself in situations where she has to abandon her peace. That energy is something that one can come to enjoy after setting boundaries and practising the art of saying ‘no’ for a while.
When it’s performative, it becomes people pleasing where you say ‘yes’ to things that don’t feel good, water yourself down to seem more agreeable and abandon yourself by allowing others to walk all over you. This is not Divine Feminine embodiment. This is a woman who is in need of more inner fire and confidence to stand her ground so she can experience true peace on the other side.
♡ Always High Vibrational
There is a difference between a woman who has unlocked light within her after transcending the darker parts of her and a woman who struggles to resonate with anything that doesn’t feel like love and light. The latter uses ‘love and light’ as a mask to appear more acceptable and liked. The discomfort from accepting and processing emotions such as anger, disgust and jealousy comes from a fear of being perceived as a darker version of the feminine.
But the Divine Feminine knows that her divinity is a mixture of the light and the dark. When a woman rejects the darker aspect in herself and others, instead of seeing them as something to be embraced and transcended, she rejects the entire feminine collective. She rejects the pain that women have been through and the inner and outer wars women have won to access more heaven on Earth.
To embody the Divine Feminine is to have gone into the underworld and back. To embody the Divine Feminine is to be comfortable with the chaos that is inevitable in life. When someone is uncomfortable with deeper conversations, judgmental of heavier emotions, that’s a sign of disconnection from the Divine Feminine.
♡ Rigid ‘Feminine Rules’ Taken From Social Media
Social media is flooded with content telling women how to be more feminine. Women are told to walk like this, talk like that, never initiate, never show anger. These rules often reinforce patriarchal standards more than they empower. This isn’t true femininity. It’s being made digestible. Palatable. Acceptable. Divine femininity is about expressing your most authentic self. It’s not about following a certain set of rules to emanate magnetism. You can only be the most attractive when you allow yourself to be exactly who you are. If your most authentic self loves to wear cargo pants and sneakers, then that’s when you will have the most magnetic energy. If your most authentic self is outspoken and full of fire, then that’s when you will be the most attractive.
The magnetism you want to emanate doesn’t come from keeping up with someone else’s preferences. It happens when you are your rawest self. And when you abandon who you truly are, that’s when you become the most disconnected from your feminine energy.
Why Does Performative Femininity Happen?
Most women aren’t performative because they are superficial. Performative femininity is mostly a survival mechanism. It’s people pleasing. It’s chasing validation to be socially acceptable. It’s rooted in fear of rejection. When you live in a world that rewards appearance over authenticity, it’s only natural to adopt survival patterns.
Humans thrive in communities that love and accept them. Even during ancient times, belonging to a tribe meant more resources and support to survive. Humans are wired to seek others and their acceptance. This is the same programming that keeps fueling performative femininity. When a woman keeps up with patriarchal expectations of how a woman should be, she usually does this from a place of survival.
What Is Divine Femininity?
Divine Femininity is an energy. It’s a frequency. It’s not one-size-fits-all. It doesn’t demand that every woman live, dress, or express herself in the same way. Divine femininity moves differently in every woman because it honours her unique rhythm, truth, and emotional depth. The only constant in divine femininity is authenticity. It asks a woman to live from her soul.
Differences between performative femininity and divine femininity.
♡ Emotionally Expressive
She allows herself to feel deeply. She doesn’t fear her emotions. She understands that emotions come up for a deeper reason. She is loyal to her inner world. Just like how Goddess Persephone had to descend into the underworld to transform from the naive maiden to the Queen of the Underworld, the divine feminine honours and transcends her darkness. Divine Femininity is embracing all kinds of emotions and pain that women go through. It’s being able to cherish and draw wisdom from every phase of life, including the darkest nights of the soul.
Goddess Kali is the most beautiful example of this side of the Divine Feminine. She is a manifestation of the Divine Mother. She is the Goddess of Creation, Destruction and Death. She is also known as the Dark Mother. She represents the side of the Divine Feminine that isn’t afraid of the darkness or of being perceived as someone with the power to create chaos and destruction. She is the goddess to pray to when you are troubled with heavy emotions. If you feel ashamed of feeling anger, disgust, or jealousy, Goddess Kali is ready to take those burdens off you and help you transmute them. She is loving, fierce, and holds space for the darkest parts of you.
♡ Intuitive and Intentional
The Divine Feminine is intentional about what she invites into her life. She doesn’t say ‘yes’ to everything. She knows that her energy is too sacred, and she is good at maintaining boundaries. While the performative feminine is fueled by the need for external validation, the Divine Feminine is rooted in her inner alignment. If something doesn’t feel good in her body, she trusts that signal. Even at the cost of disappointing others, she chooses her sense of safety, respect and inner peace.
It is easier for the Divine Feminine to say ‘no’ because she knows that the validation that comes at the cost of her authenticity is not real. The acceptance she receives by being agreeable and abandoning herself is hollow. She knows that it’s not true affection, but a temporary reward for a performance.
She recognizes that what is forced, faked, or contorted to please others will always come with a cost, and she is no longer willing to pay it with her precious energy.
The Divine Feminine intentionally chooses who has access to her energy and leaves spaces where she doesn’t feel safe or respected in.
♡ Secure
She is sure of who she is, and when she is not, she allows herself the grace to blossom at her own pace. She doesn’t force herself into trends, roles, or performances that don’t feel true in her body. Even when she is uncertain about who she is, she tries her best to choose her alignment over approval. This makes her free from craving constant external validation.
A woman who is free from the conditioning that taught her to chase validation from others is a powerful woman. A woman who is okay with not being liked by everyone is free. This freedom allows her to express herself in ways that feel true to her heart. She follows her highest excitement every day and allows herself to be led by her highest self.
When a woman is secure, her standards also go higher. This keeps her protected from wanting to please everyone she comes across. This keeps her shielded from giving her energy away to anyone who doesn’t know how to treat her properly.
The Difference Between Divine Femininity and Performative Femininity.
Performative femininity vs Divine feminine.
♡ Intention
One of the differences between divine femininity and performative femininity is the intention behind it all. While it’s human to crave external validation, the Divine Feminine doesn’t revolve herself around it. If she wears dresses, speaks softly and is easy-going, that’s because it fulfils her internally. Everything she does is a prayer to herself. The way she expresses herself is almost always about how good it makes her feel. It doesn’t matter what a woman does if her intention is to please others and gain external validation. That’s a disconnection within herself to her most feminine nature. The intention must always be to fulfil her inner self. It must always be to feel good in her soul.
♡ Embodiment
Another difference between divine femininity and performative femininity is embodiment. No matter how gently a woman moves or speaks, if she is not gentle in her heart, it’s a performance. No matter how soft and adaptable she is with others, if she is rigid and hard on her heart, it’s a facade. The Divine Feminine cares about softening her heart more than appearing soft. She cares about facing and transmuting anything that has hardened her, so she can feel lighter and more beautiful inside.
It should also be mentioned that not everyone who cares about their outer image is being superficial. It’s actually a sign of good health to care about how you present yourself to the world. When a woman is in her divine femininity, she has the capacity to care about her inner world and her outer appearance. But to her, nothing she does outside matters much if she doesn’t feel fulfilled inside. She cares about embodying the energy she wants to emanate more than she cares about convincing others that she is divine.
Final Thoughts
The first thing to do to step away from performative femininity and embody divine femininity is realizing that you are already who you want to become. The desire you have to express yourself in your most feminine ways is so beautiful. You are safe to honour it.
‘Soft Woman Era’ ebook
The woman you want to be perceived as is your highest self. You are already this higher version in the higher realms. However, you have to do the inner work to bring those higher frequencies into your human experience. You don’t need to go against the innate wisdom in your body or please others to be seen as a divine woman. All you have to do is turn towards what makes you feel safer, softer and peaceful within. If you start to express yourself authentically, honouring how you feel, the world will meet you halfway, and the tribe or men you attract will be just as authentic and connected to their souls.
If you would like to learn more about how to soften energetically to attract a softer life, ‘Soft Woman Era’ might be just the thing for you.