So true. My ex gf was unusually feminine and soft spoken for a black woman especially one from up north. I would always compliment her on it but she absolutely hated it. She felt it made her look weak and that no one took her serious.
I remember an older woman once called me “meek”, and I really didn’t know how to take it.
Most women start off soft if they come from healthy, protective environments — suburbs, countryside, protective parents and extended family, healthy community, etc.
How many of our Black neighborhoods in the US are really like this? That’s where it starts.
Most black women aren’t growing up in environments that have women being taken care of. When you grow up watching dad, uncle, big bro, etc taking a wife and taking care of the family you go find a man who is going to take care of you.
The girls who have that example go find those men, and the men who had that example are ready to provide by 30/mid-30s because they were raised to be industrious from grade school/high school (the guys who were getting great grades and serious about school from like 3rd grade because their parents were on top of them since birth).
This is a CULTURAL problem.
Soft women come from environments and cultures that protect women and girls. When every Black boy in grade school knows he needs to be ready to provide for a wife when he is a man one day, you will see families rushing to marry their daughters off as soon as they finish HS or college.
There are Black folks who have traditional values and continue to get this thing right each generation, but MOST black men and women have fallen way off that track.
Soft women are not encouraged or protected by this community, that’s why there are so few. Those are the girls who get called shy or stuck up or “boughie”. Most of y’all don’t like those girls until you run through everyone else and decide you want a nice girl.