MULIEBRITY

myoo-LEE-uh-bri-TEE -- (n.) A power and aura unique to feminine women.

In a world where "power" embodies a certain hardness -- heavy and often dark -- muliebrity provides beautiful relief to our usual understandings of power. It is the counterpart of "virility" - masculine power.

This Latin-based word describes the particular power emanating from the feminine - that force that makes itself felt through an overwhelming gentleness, a radiating grace, a transfixing beauty, and an irresistible warmth - muliebrity is an energy precious and rare in a world otherwise harsh and merciless. And rarer today as the world rushes to erase the differences between man and woman, this word reminds us that differences are beautiful - and they possess incredible power.

Wordeby's by Chanel Rion

🦋 ART: "The Seasons: Spring" 1900, by Alphonse Mucha

🦋 STYLE: Art Nouveau (modern)

🦋 NATIONALITY: Czech

🦋 LEARN MORE: A hallmark fixture of the Art Nouveau movement (1890-1910) Mucha is perhaps the most recognized painter and illustrator from this remarkable art period. As the world barreled toward electricity, industrial manufacturing, flying machines, and steel stretching for the heavens, Art Nouveau was a movement that sought to counteract the Academic Art movement just before it; a movement that was highly polished, classical in nature, mythologically and historically based. Art Nouveau sought instead inspiration in the graceful lines of fauna; it sought movement -- often through asymmetry and fearlessly ventured beyond art and into architecture and design. By the start of World War I, Art Nouveau faded into the background as relic of an idyllic period. It was replaced by the more industrial and streamlined styles of Art Deco and Modernism. But in the period it lived, it dared to defy traditions of old, while at the same time defying the harsh industrialization of its present.