In this reported op-ed, Sithara Ranasinghe explores how divine feminine ideology on TikTok affirms harmful gender essentialism and further blames women for societal problems.
Landon is not welcome in Sephora. The beauty brand delivered the decree via their official TikTok and the post racked up over 30,000 likes. They’re one of a growing list of brands “banishing” the now-infamous Landon. He’s also “banned” from chicken shops, jewelry stores, private jet services, tea houses and even Times Square, if you believe the photos of this apparent billboard. But the real sting was in the caption: Liz is welcome anytime 😘
It’s the kind of marketing moment that makes no sense unless you have a minimum six-hour daily screen time. Lize Dzjabrailova, better known by her social media handle thewizardliz, is a self-empowerment influencer with over 22 million followers across platforms. Landon is her now ex-boyfriend, who Liz claimed cheated on her while she was pregnant in a series of bombshell Instagram stories. Their breakup was shocking to fans in the way that any split between a beloved couple is, but there is another layer to it all. Liz subscribes to ideals present in a belief system that’s been simmering online for years: divine femininity.
Divine femininity is a form of gender essentialism built on the idea that everyone holds two core energies: feminine and masculine. By Liz’s definition, feminine energy is about “feeling,” “receiving,” and “flow.” In contrast, masculine energy is “stable, productive, getting things done, chasing, going after your goals.” She says women need a balance of both. You lean into your masculine to get a promotion and you lean into your feminine to get a boyfriend — ideally, apparently, one who pays your bills.
Liz detailed her relationship with YouTuber Landon Nickerson in her videos, complimenting his “provider mindset.” She said she “never had to worry again about money” because he had everything covered, despite her thriving career. The general message from Liz’s content is that the feminine, receiving energy is the more “dominant energy” in a woman’s body, and therefore the one that women should favor. She has been posting level-up advice in line with divine feminine ideas for years, and her relationship was apparently proof that her guidance worked. Until, of course, the breakup. (Teen Vogue has reached out to representatives for Liz, but has not yet heard back.)
The end of this relationship was somewhat of a stress test for a belief system. Though Liz is perhaps one of the more well-known influencers that talks about the divine feminine, this concept is actually a much bigger phenomenon. On TikTok, “#divinefeminine” has amassed more than 1 million posts, many of which are tutorials on how women can use femininity to heal their inner child or attract a partner. Advice includes to stop reaching for the check, make time for beauty and “wear skirts or dresses all the time.” Some monetize this through coaching programs and other products.
Of course, the portrayal of this idea on social media isn’t the full scope — some ideas reflected in divine femininity have been around for a long time, and it’s one that some find deep independence and empowerment through. Online, divine femininity borrows heavily from ancient spiritual traditions, though not always responsibly, according to Neha Chandrachud, a writer and cultural critic who often discusses religious and conservative movements.
“Divine femininity is really a misinterpretation of a lot of … Eastern philosophical principles about embodying the masculine and the feminine within,” Chandrachud says. “When you remove these ideas of Eastern spirituality from their original containers and you commodify them under this Western principle, you end up with a very bastardized idea of what masculinity and femininity are supposed to be.”
As the conversation has migrated to social media, many of the posts encouraging this idea are little more than repackaging rigid gender roles as spiritual self-help. Content creator Jess Britvich explores common entry-points to far-right ideology. She defines divine femininity as “the belief that men and women are biologically destined for certain character traits and that by embracing these traits, individuals will find happiness, fulfillment in relationships, and ultimately, purpose in life.”
Britvich says that this content "plays a huge role" in the alt-right pipeline for women. Although engaging with this content isn’t inherently dangerous for everyone, it can lead you down a slippery slope, Britvich says. “It’s gender essentialism, plain and simple, and gender essentialism is central to authoritarian ideologies like fascism and Christian nationalism. It tells people you are either a man or a woman, and your role is fixed.”
Many Divine Femininity influencers draw on prehistory to justify gender roles, using the idea that “men were hunters.” They advocate a return to our “ancestral roles” in which men were “providers.” However, it seems history wasn’t that simple. Cara Ocobock, PhD, and Sarah Lacy, PhD, co-authored two studies showing that prehistoric women commonly hunted, and that our ancestors’ roles weren’t so rigid.
“There's no one universal way to be human,” says Ocobock. “There is no one universal pattern of femininity or masculinity, or typical gender roles.” When asked why she thought Divine Femininity creators invoke prehistory or biology, she said, “People are picking and choosing various versions of our evolutionary past in order to justify modern day behavior.”
But this rigid categorization might be part of Divine Femininity’s appeal. Britvich suggests that it plays on our love for self-categorization, appealing to millennials who grew up on BuzzFeed quizzes and Gen Zers who subscribe to certain aesthetic identities. As Ocobock puts it, “Humans like to organize things by categories and then, of course, apply a hierarchy to them.”
It seems Divine Femininity also taps into a deeper desire. Many young people are losing interest in the life path set out by previous generations, feeling burnt out by the rise of hustle culture and disillusioned with the promises it makes. For women, this can feel particularly frustrating. A large part of a generation of daughters watched their mothers work doubles — career and home — while their fathers clocked off at 5 p.m. Although pop feminism told women we could do anything, our childhoods suggested we’d have to do everything. For women of color, the message cuts deeper. Many women of color feel overworked, unprotected, and robbed of the ability to be soft.
Divine femininity claims to see women’s pain and seems to give them a tantalizing solution, promising women they can adjust the patriarchy like a thermostat, reaping its ‘benefits’ without getting hurt. It casts traditional gender roles as strategic choices rather than oppressive norms. If you “lean into” femininity successfully enough, you’ll be rewarded with inner peace and a man who picks up the check. These supposed benefits are, of course, conditional.
“[This ideology] creates this negative self-feedback loop where you feel responsible for how you exist within a broader society without considering any of the forces that are being imposed on you,” Chandrachud says.
While women are urged to master our inner worlds, the outer world grows increasingly hostile towards us. Legal rights and systemic protections are being stripped back. Although many divine feminine proponents identify as feminists, the reaction to Liz’s breakup reveals how easily the rhetoric can collapse into an individualized, and at times internalized, form of misogyny.
Armchair analysts were quick to start assigning blame in the creator’s split, and not just to Landon. They speculated that Liz was “in her masculine energy” or that she’d chosen a man too weak to lead. Even fans who don’t blame her are wondering what they could do differently to avoid Liz’s fate themselves, as if betrayal is their responsibility to prevent. The culture of self-optimization in this space often curdles into self-blame. Liz has said in her own videos, “Only what I allow will happen. This is my reality and I allow what comes in and what goes out.”
Liz’s breakup isn’t necessarily a failure of the ideals she embodied. Rather, the forensic response to it spotlights the issues of gendered energies as a worldview. Everything falls back on the woman. Divine femininity isn’t a liberation movement, it’s a workaround that personalizes a political problem. It doesn’t ask why betrayal or inequality occur, only what individual women could have done to prevent it. And like most workarounds, when things fall apart it leaves the system itself untouched.
