Femininity is understanding that who you are is enough, says Dr Sizakele Marutlulle

Feminine energy manifests in many ways. This month, Wanted looks past the traditional roles and stereotypes to explore what it means to embrace femininity in today’s world.

Strategic executive and creative problem-solver across business development, brand strategy, leadership and entrepreneurship Dr Sizakele Marutlulle is a published columnist, public speaker and mentor. In 2018, she was recognised on the Mail & Guardian’s Women Changing SA list. 

She chats to Wanted’s managing editor Suzy Josephson about how she navigates her femininity in today’s world. 

SJ: What does femininity mean to you?

SM: I’m going to have to start with a story, because I think for me it comes from the woman who gave me life. Her birth name is Grace; I call her Dala Okuhle, which in isiZulu means “the one who makes beautiful things”. She was a single parent, but I watched her navigate that space when divorced women were supposed to be the untouchables, and here she was nurse by day and night, and then rocking a very short mini skirt on Saturdays and Sundays to play tennis.

That balancing act for me, even though I didn’t have the words for it then, when I reflect I understand that that was her way of managing that intersection, being a female provider, but also a female being in the world. So, the idea that you can spritz up and be pretty and fierce for the tennis court, and you can be hardworking and tender in your own environment.

Femininity for me is that confluence of the soft and the hard and the obvious and the surprising and the integration of wherever you choose to go and experience this thing we call life. Do it your way. Let’s not try gender things too much, but let’s allow the essence of being female to infuse who you are and how you show up in the world — that’s what it means to me. Unfortunately for you, you asked an academic to define femininity, so you were not going to get the short answer to that.

For me, it’s the intersection of many very beautiful things that make us predictable and surprising, that make us strong and tender, things that make us obvious and non-obvious and also the things that make us complex yet beautiful.

Suzy Jospehson: And what makes you feel beautiful and feminine?

Sizakele Marutlulle: Femininity for me would be every time I’m OK with working with who I am and working with what surfaces. Each time I get off my yoga mat, in softening my heart, an opening posture that says I will receive from what the universe offers but I will also give what the universe needs. Beautiful is just rocking the thing that you are.

On a much more nuanced level, it’s understanding that who you are is enough, and I can only augment as I can’t perfect it. That’s what beauty means to me — working with who I am and just vibing with it and going, “I am enough.” I can put a spit and a shine on some edges but there’s nothing lacking. So, it’s that understanding. I lack nothing and I am perfectly imperfect and that is awesome.

SJ: You’ve mentioned the role of your mother in creating who you are. How do you think other relationships growing up defined your femininity?

SM: I had an aunt who was probably in her fifties dating my mathematics teacher who was probably in his thirties. When you’re 12, everyone over 20 is aged, right? And I remember the one night when he came over to stay and it was quite odd because at breakfast I was like, “Teacher Gandhi, what are you doing here?” Teacher Gandhi was auntie’s boo.

I remember that story so beautifully, because when she was happy she’d play Donny Hathaway, she’d play Roberta Flack and when she was over you there was always a track by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes when Teddy Pendergrass was in the group, and it went [sings], “Wake up everybody, no more sleeping in bed,” and she was like, “Up and out my house!” And I loved that in the little town she had first dibs on the SAB truck that was delivering alcohol to the local hotel, so literally she would arrive, pick the things she wanted, and the rest would go into the hotel. She owned a record bar in the front [with] a clinic in the back because she was a qualified nurse.

I remember her with fondness and I wish she had lived long enough to see me evolve from a young girl into a woman, because I think we would’ve had a mighty good time. So, she’s the other example that I remember with fondness, and another would be my gran, who died at 103. She had no teeth by the time she died, but she was very funky and very, very tricky. For example, I remember visiting her over school holidays and her waking up and saying to me, “How do you expect me to translate your dreams when you speak in English?” And that gave us an opportunity to connect, to just say my mother’s hard work that sends me to these schools cannot be a reason that I think I’m more sophisticated than where we come from.

So, use the gift to uplift the people who actually know a lot more than you do. Mastery of the English language is not intelligence, it’s just that you’re good with language, but it doesn’t make you smart. I really enjoyed her because she forced me to keep it simple, keep it honest and keep it sincere. Those two examples come to mind of feminine examples that I want to emulate. Just stay funky.

SJ: And the roles you play now and the work that you do?

SM: Here’s the work. Getting into advertising for me was a conscious choice, it was, “How do we change the world’s understanding of consumers who are black?” I’ve never wanted to be a woman who was pretty, I’ve never wanted that at all. I always wanted to be smart, smart because Jackie, who was one of the grown-up girls at school, said, “Your looks will fade, your brain will grow, so what would you rather invest in?”, and I figured I’d invest in my brain.

So, learning, growing, acquiring knowledge and contributing knowledge was an important part of that. I’m telling you this because when we then were doing our thesis work on childfree black females, a subject that hasn’t been looked at before because the assumption is that black women just breed, which is problematic. Or that all women must breed, which is also problematic, so being childfree was not a choice I made because I wanted to expand my career or advance my career (which was another thing we needed to attend to), it was just looking at the subject matter that hadn’t been looked at before and allowing that community to surface from the margins of society. Being childfree is not a lack.

The contribution therefore is to help young African children, girl children, know that being childfree is a valid reproductive choice that you don’t have to explain. The other piece is being other people’s aunts and surrogate aunt, the cool aunt, and the ridiculous aunt. And the other piece is creating a mentorship circle where you can share what you know. We call it the exchange. It’s a programme I’ve been running for four years now, self-funded, because each time I speak on public platforms I often have young people come up to me and ask me to be their mentor.

I don’t have the bandwidth to be a mentor, but I recognise that the need is great. So, the exchange is about inviting nine other women who are equally smart and fierce and nine young people and we have a long table lunch and we talk absolute rubbish about everything, and every year you come back but you don’t pay to participate — your access to the table is showing us what you do for your local community, so that’s how you get in. It’s not how many Twitter followers you have, I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the content of your character. So, those are the areas that come to mind now.

I’m hoping that the 36 women we’ve touched [will] go and touch another 36 and we’ll make the circle bigger that way.

SJ: If you look back at the child that you were and the woman you’ve become, what message would you give the younger you about femininity and what it’s going to mean in your life?

SM: I have never been able to answer that question, largely because what I know now I couldn’t have known at 16. The only thing I can offer is, “Pay attention to where you are so that you don’t look back and wish you could undo it.”

When people who were 30 when I was 12 were trying to give you counsel about paying attention to relationships, remember people’s names, look people in the eye, you thought, “Urgh, that’s what grown-up people do, young people don’t do that.” That is an aspect of my younger self that I wish I could’ve paid more attention to, but I have no advice for the younger self.

Just being this mad thing that I am now is so far from what I could’ve imagined that I would’ve been useless, I would’ve misguided her. I would’ve told her to be a medical doctor because I’m smart at maths and science, and I would’ve hated it. I love this creative madness, this undefined thing that I am.