Being Woman – Lele Muthali

The Recovering Feminist

Her Style

“Elegance is elimination.” – Cristóbal Balenciaga

My style journey has spanned through the full range of creative expressions. I have donned the vintage, the artsy, the casual, the grunge, the chic, the bohemian, the sexy, and the exotic fashion style. My current style borrows artfully from each of these.

My coming to faith has informed the philosophy from which I derive my style. I invoke the word here in its active form – as a verb. Styling; to give a particular style to something, to confer a flair or finesse to the way you dress. Personally, I have always liked plain solid colours in cool or neutral tones. I enforce a maximum of three different colours in an outfit. Of course, single-colour and monochrome outfits are first prize.

I never imagined that I’d fall in love with (and feel at home in) the girly and feminine too. I never imagined that my maturing in style would mean playfulness, appreciating tiny floral prints, bows, warm colours, ruffles, and stilettos. When I purchase scents I’m looking for something that smells like food – something sweet and edible.

Watch more about my style journey here:

– Lele M

Let’s Talk Femininity

“I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal.” – Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman

Over the past two years I have been consuming a significant amount of content surrounding femininity, homemaking, and womanhood. I hadn’t been taught how or what it meant to be woman, much less feminine and woman. And as I grew older and became a staunch feminist, I was not interested in learning. Now I am.

Allow me to share my five favourite women creators of content under the themes of femininity, motherhood, homemaking, and womanhood.

Elisabeth Elliot

https://www.youtube.com/c/TheElisabethElliotFoundation

Jasmyne Theodora

https://www.youtube.com/c/JasmyneTheodora

Bindi Marc

https://www.youtube.com/c/BindiJMarc

Allie-Beth Stuckey

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=allie+beth+stuckey

The Feminine Fancy

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcttgBAjjDx_llbo31UZ19Q

On this journey, I have learned to take lessons where I can find (learn) them. I draw inspiration from various sources; Scripture, my experiences with women around me, and the insights of courageous women I find online who are audaciously feminine.

Behind my fervor is my hope that what I glean will be the canon of knowledge from which I will someday teach my own daughter.

– Lele M

The Recovering Feminist

Her Head

“For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.” – Ephesians 5:23

His eyes widened. He was visibly stupefied.

“I don’t believe women should be pastors,” she repeated. Although her eyebrows rose to emphasise her words, her voice retained its candor and clarity. She let the words rest in the air unassumingly.

He gave her a perplexed look and both of them fell silent for a moment. He seemed to be allowing her the pause she needed to deliver her punchline. The punchline was a few seconds overdue when he realised it would not be coming. She wasn’t going to renege on what she’d said. At this, his shock turned to curiosity.

“Why not?”

Thinking of Ephesians 5:23, she said “I don’t believe the Bible teaches it. I believe in the headship of the husband over the family and congregation.”

Her matter-of-fact demeanor was disarming and his eyes narrowed in a slight reflex.

These days, I find myself wanting to qualify my position. I appreciate that I don’t have to. I simply feel I should.

I do it because I want to assure my interlocutors that they are not speaking with someone who doesn’t give thought to these issues. I want to offer them relief. I want to assure them that there would be no need for platitudinous sloganeering. I want to dare them to be honest. I want them to know that I am eager for critical reflections.

I want to play open cards. I want to ensure they aren’t seduced into conversation by the appearance that I may be an ideological damsel in distress so lost in oppressive thought and confused by the patriarchy that she couldn’t even see she needed help.

I want to offer them peace and ease about making arguments which they may think are so foreign as to offend my sensibilities, so revolutionary as to shake the foundations on which my convictions stand, and so unlike my own as to assault my very existence.

I want to dispel any presumption that I have only ever believed what I now know to be true. I want to reassure them that I have considered the contention. I care about the subject matter, I will be careful with it.

Her eyes softened and she smiled warmly. “You know, I actually used to be a feminist.” He thought he heard a note of sincerity resonate somewhere in the back of her voice.

Her attempt to put him at ease was having the opposite effect. He couldn’t understand why a dynamic and opinionated young woman living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the contemporary world would abide by archaic doctrines.

Something caught the corner of his eye as he studied her face. It hung around her neck on a delicate silver chain. It rose and fell gently as she breathed. The sleek symbol reflected the afternoon sunlight in a soft rhythm which gave it the appearance of swaying girlishly. It was the instrument by which early Roman soldiers tortured and killed Jewish insurgents. The cross.

He shook his head incredulously and smiled before he looked squarely into her eyes, reclined in his seat, and asked the question she had been expecting to hear.

“What changed?”

– Lele M

I am Woman

He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.’ – Genesis 5:2

In recent times I have reflected at length about womanhood – what it is, and entails. This is because of the ever increasing prevalence of gender ideology and transgenderism. Primarily it has been influenced by my coming to faith and accepting my identity in Christ as the views which shape my perspective on gender ideology are taken from Scripture.

Who and what is Woman? If you consult the internet, you may find answers to the effect of;

Urban dictionary –

‘A real woman is a woman of virtue. She allows the man to have his authoritarian role, but also doesn’t allow anyone to walk over her and diminish her value and what she brings to the table. A real woman understands that there is a two player part in what a man and woman can build together, as a unit.’

OluTimehin Kukoyi –

‘I would define a ‘woman’ as a person who is a legitimate foil for (white) men’s sexual, social and political dominance, and who is thus worthy of protection from (general, random) patriarchal violence. ‘Women’ exchange their subjection to general, random patriarchal violence for subjection to their husbands’ patriarchal domination when they become ‘wives’. ‘Wife’ is understood as the pinnacle of the social status known as ‘woman’.’

Oxford Languages –

‘an adult female human being.’

Scripture provides that woman was created in the likeness of God, and from man’s rib. Woman has relational capacity, a nurturing nature, vulnerability, beauty, and responsiveness. Throughout this series, I will lay my personal journey bare and present my exploration of womanhood. This is your invitation to join me on this pilgrimage, if you dare.

– Lele M

https://www.livehope.org/article/a-real-woman-defining-biblical-femininity/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277539514001575#:~:text=A%20%E2%80%9Creal%20woman%E2%80%9D%20is%20%E2%80%9C,for%20everything%20that%20she%20needs%E2%80%9D.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=real%20woman

https://medium.com/@OluKukoyi/who-is-a-real-woman-f5726b01d141

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