Vanessa Acosta

Photo courtesy of @fromabolivian

Female empowerment is being who you truly are meant to be. As simplistic as that answer may seem, it’s more difficult to achieve for some people. This has been a way of life for me since childhood. I never cared what men or women thought about my way of life, my fashion choices or even the way I carried myself. Gender fluidity was nonexistent in my vocabulary but I experimented in wearing androgynous looks at a young age and broke the barrier on what gender role was defined for me. I’m a cis gender woman but having a pixie cut back in the day and wearing bow ties all the time didn’t define my sexual orientation or chosen gender role. The rise on the feminist movement has exploded in recent years, and I’m happy that more women are realizing how empowering it is to take a stance, see value in themselves, and do everything to support each other. This is nothing new to me though, the patriarchal society never stopped me from pushing to be on the top, never intimidated me from breaking the rules. I’ve been empowered my entire life but only because that’s my personality and even as a little girl I managed to build my own opinions on the world and took the guidance from adults with a grain of salt. We live in an evolving world and today many Americans will be voting for the first women president. We only get to this point because we’ve chosen to rise and be ourselves. It’s a lot of dedication and hard work but the end results are worthy of the fight. So as simple as my pursuit of female empowerment might be, the journey to finding yourself and finding your strength to just being yourself is uphill battle but it’s a rewarding thing. Being an empowered female means a lot of things to different women and that’s the beauty of empowerment, we all build a stronger sense of self from our own experiences.

To view more from Vanessa, you can visit her website and Instagram.