“Divine femininity” has become a popular phenomenon on social media, particularly TikTok, for its teaching that women need to harness a particular feminine energy to improve sex relations and everyday life, reports the magazine Teen Vogue (August 13). Sithara Ranasinghe writes that divine femininity is based on the idea that everyone holds two core energies which need to be balanced: feminine and masculine. Feminine energy is about “feeling,” “receiving,” and “flow,” while masculine energy is “stable, productive, getting things done, chasing, going after your goals.” On TikTok, “#divinefeminine” has amassed more than one million posts, many of which are tutorials on how women can use femininity to heal their inner child or attract a partner. Online, divine femininity borrows heavily from ancient spiritual traditions. One leading divine feminine influencer, Liz, offered advice on romance using these principles, but attracted controversy when she later split up with her boyfriend.
Neha Chandrachud, who writes on spirituality and religion, argues that “divine femininity” misrepresents Eastern spiritual and philosophical principles about embodying the masculine and the feminine within, by removing these ideas from their original spiritual context and commodifying them for Westerners. Meanwhile, progressive critics charge that many of the posts are repackaging rigid gender roles as spiritual self-help, creating a slippery slope toward the alt-right and authoritarian ideologies like fascism and Christian nationalism. According to one observer, the movement “tells people you are either a man or a woman, and your role is fixed.” Ranasinghe sees the trend as showing how young people are “losing interest in the life path set out by previous generations, feeling burnt out by the rise of hustle culture and disillusioned with the promises it makes.”
