Everyone Is Obsessed With Divine Feminine Energy. Here’s Why. | Invesloan.com

Alexis Smith and Nadia Khaled were at a crossroads in their early 20s. Smith, 25, was reeling from an intense breakup, while Khaled, 26, needed a change after losing her job.

Then, they tapped into their feminine energy — and everything changed.

The concept of divine feminine energy, which believers feel is a force that exists in everyone and guides our emotional and creative sides, has been all over social media.

You might’ve seen videos of women breaking down their rituals to connect with their energy, inspirational Instagram graphics about how feminine energy can change your life, or clips of people discussing how they healed their feminine side.

Content creators like Smith and Khaled said that tapping into their feminine energy was key to creating the lives they wanted.

However, experts told Business Insider that the recent trend has some drawbacks, from reinforcing gender norms to opening the door to alt-right pipelines.

Say hello to divine feminine energy

It’s tough to find an exact definition of divine feminine energy on social media. Still, it generally refers to a manifestation of creativity and emotion, complementing the action and logic that come from masculine energy, experts said.

The concept of femininity versus masculinity isn’t new. It appears in different religions and psychological frameworks, like in controversial Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung’s musings on the anima and animus, which he saw as the feminine side of men and the masculine side of women.

Author and physician Deepak Chopra also embraces the idea of the divine feminine, writing in a 2021 essay, “The adjectives that apply to the personal feminine are love, affection, forgiveness, compassion, allowing, nurturing, and creative. They need to be present in everyone’s life, whether you are a man or woman, and every child needs to be exposed to them.”

Smith and Khaled told BI they learned about the divine feminine online and through books like “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle and podcasts such as Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose.”

“It comes down to really tuning into my body and what my body is calling me to do as opposed to what my brain is telling me to do,” Khaled said of how feminine energy functions in her life.

She said she tries to actively tap into her feminine energy by making herself feel present in her body, whether by taking herself on a date to Barnes & Noble, doing a more in-depth skincare routine, or listening to her body when she’s exhausted.

“If I am feeling really burned out, I don’t push myself to go harder,” Khaled said. “I take that as a sign to step back and relax, and when I’m feeling inspired to take action, that’s when I start doing the initiating and leaning more into that masculine energy.”

Smith, a feminine energy coach and content creator, said she thinks of feminine energy as “life force” energy and a way to get in touch with her younger, most authentic self.

Meanwhile, she said she relies on masculine energy for her work but often needs to turn that “energy off,” which “takes a lot of planning and organization.”

Both creators also said focusing on their feminine energy enabled them to adopt an “attract, don’t chase” motto in their personal and professional lives, which they say has made them more successful.

Khaled saw her social media following explode when she started approaching content creation with this mindset, and Smith said she’s been happier while dating since she embraced it.

A form of empowerment

Although Smith and Khaled use feminine energy similarly, the term holds different meanings in other settings.

Erika Evans, a sexologist and relationship therapist, discusses the idea of feminine and masculine energy with her clients from a therapeutic lens. She said tapping into those sides can help her clients grow and trust their instincts.

Evans also encourages her clients to create rituals, such as dancing, journaling, or spending time in nature, to help them tap into their feminine energy.

Jessica Maddox, an associate professor of digital media at the University of Alabama, told BI she thinks there can be “power” in divine feminine social media content that tells women to trust their instincts.

“Women are often dismissed as being too emotional or hysterical,” she said. “Anything that encourages women to listen to their own feelings and trust themselves is important.”

“This divine feminine trend can push back against some sexist ideas that women are just hysterical and over-emotional,” she added.

Still, she also sees potential risks with the trend.

A shrinking ideal of womanhood

Divine feminine energy is pretty innocuous as a mindset or spiritual concept. However, Maddox said that as it’s watered down for 20-second clips on social media, it’s easy to be oversimplified or become devoid of context, so some of the message’s intricacies are lost.

“That’s generally the problem with social media,” Maddox said. “The more and more things spread and go viral, the more divorced from their original context and meaning they become.”

For instance, Maddox said she could see how someone trusting only their instincts could lead them to disregard science or believe conspiracy theories.

Likewise, Khaled and Smith told BI that it’s important for everyone to connect with their feminine and masculine energies, but some divine feminine content on social media shifts from focusing on energies to giving advice on what women should do versus men. That can reinforce a traditional gender binary and exclude queer or trans people. It can also suggest that there is only one way to embody feminine or masculine energy.

Evans uses the concept to help people of all gender identities explore what feminity or masculinity means to them as individuals. But that self-exploratory conversation with an expert isn’t possible on social media.

Divine feminine energy content also isn’t too far removed from other popular social media trends, like manifestation content and “soft living” posts, which oppose hustle culture and prioritize self-care and overall health. In some ways, this line of thinking offers a cheat code for success in an ever-more-competitive world, telling people the problem is that they’re working too hard or that the corporate world isn’t suited to their needs.

Still, those posts sometimes transition to anti-work content targeted at women. Some creators have also jumped on the stay-at-home girlfriend trend or pivoted to the much-discussed tradwife content that preaches one way to be a wife or mother and emphasizes domesticity.

This ever-softer archetype of a woman is met with an increasingly aggressive ideal of a straight man, which can be a harmful dichotomy as these models seep into the real world. Self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate, who has been accused of human trafficking and sexual misconduct, aptly demonstrates the real-world risks of buying into the exaggerated gender binary. (Tate has repeatedly denied the allegations against him.)

So, while the concept of divine feminine energy might feel empowering for some, it can also lead to dangerous repercussions offline when it’s used to weaponize feminity.

Approaching divine feminine with nuance

Evans thinks creators could fuel a more nuanced conversation around the divine feminine by balancing feminine and masculine energy in their content.

“I would love it if creators or content producers would spend equal time on divine feminine and masculine energies and how they play together because they don’t exist in a silo,” she said. “The reality is when you’re talking about energy, they’re always going to be in contrast with one another.”

Maddox said that if you want to learn more about divine feminine energy, remember that it doesn’t have to resonate with others, even if it holds meaning for you.

“As long as people continue to understand that everybody has their own idea of what gender is and means to them and how they can adopt it into their own lives, I think that’s OK as long as they don’t expect it to apply to other people as well,” she said.

Smith’s simple hope for what divine feminine energy can bring to people sums up the positive potential of the trend well: “Does it feel good for your body to do?”

“If the answer is yes, that is your feminine energy,” she said. “Anytime something brings your soul joy, that is your feminine energy, and never let anyone tell you what it looks like because feminine energy is unique.”