Moving between dictionary definitions and conversations – real and imagined – with friends and writers, I search for what it means to be a woman. I know there can never be a single, definitive answer, yet the curiosity persists. I linger on the notion of femininity, the term most commonly used to define a woman: a cultural construct, a language made of signs, stereotypes, and rules that shape how we perceive reality (a reality from which, fortunately, many of us are slowly breaking away).