Power Doesn’t Look Like You Think It Does — Femininity, Restraint, and Real Leverage

Femininity Is Not the Opposite of Power. It’s One of Its Sharpest Tools.

Power is one of those words people think they understand because they see it everywhere. Money. Titles. Height. Volume. Visibility. But real power rarely looks like what people expect, and that misunderstanding shapes far more of our world than we like to admit.

One of the earliest lessons I learned—long before I could articulate it cleanly—was that you cannot look at someone and know how much power they hold.

Bodies lie. Accents lie. Softness lies. Even poverty can lie.

Power is contextual. It is relational. It changes depending on geography, culture, and the rules of the room you’re standing in.

Americans, in particular, are bad at reading power. We’re trained to equate it with dominance, size, loudness, and proximity to whiteness. We mistake confidence for authority and visibility for control. That framework collapses the moment you leave the country.

I’ve lived in Asia long enough to have my instincts rewired. I’ve met women barely five feet tall—maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet—who could dismantle entire careers without raising their voices. Women whose authority didn’t need to announce itself because it was embedded in systems, relationships, and unspoken agreements that predated anyone else in the room. If you underestimated them, you paid for it quickly. Quietly. Permanently.

That’s when it became obvious to me that power doesn’t live in the body—it moves through it. And depending on the body it inhabits, it is either magnified or discounted by those watching.

This is where femininity gets misunderstood.

Femininity is often treated as the opposite of power, when in reality it is one of power’s most effective delivery systems. It disarms. It invites projection. It creates access. The problem is not that femininity lacks power; it’s that people refuse to acknowledge it unless it looks masculine enough to be legible.

I’ve spent years watching this dynamic play out in corporate rooms. Women taught to soften themselves so they don’t threaten fragile hierarchies. Women rewarded for agreeableness until the moment competence becomes inconvenient. Women whose authority is tolerated only when it’s framed as service. I understood the rules well enough to win inside them. I also understood them well enough to know they were suffocating me.

On paper, I was successful. I made money. I traveled. I had access. What I didn’t have was freedom. Freedom to think without performance. Freedom to speak without translation. Freedom to exist without calibrating myself to the insecurities of whoever happened to be sitting across the table.

That calibration is something most powerful women learn early. You read the room.

You assess the fragility level. If the person in front of you is insecure, you turn up the agreeableness. You soften the edges. You become palatable. If the person is confident, you let more of yourself show. This isn’t dishonesty. It’s survival.

I’ve studied this psychology. I’ve lived it. I’ve watched it break people who thought authenticity alone would save them. The truth is harsher and more useful: you can’t change people. You can only adapt your behavior. Adaptation is how you survive.

Commentary—naming what’s happening without internalizing it—is how you thrive.

This is especially true for Black women and women of color, who have always been treated as objects of scrutiny. In the United States, that scrutiny is loud and adversarial. In other parts of the world, it’s quieter, more transactional, and sometimes more dangerous. The forms change. The dynamic doesn’t.

What frustrates me most is how often power is mistaken for aggression. How often restraint is misread as weakness. How often women who understand power deeply are accused of being manipulative simply because they refuse to pretend they don’t see the board.

I see the board. I’ve always seen it. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Power isn’t about domination. It’s about leverage. It’s about timing. It’s about knowing when to speak, when to withhold, when to move, and when to let someone underestimate you long enough to make a fatal mistake.

That’s the kind of power I write about. Not the kind that needs applause. The kind that works.