Justice Kuehl, who holds the title as longest-reigning Miss Tennessee at one year and five months, is the author of Feminist to Feminine: Reclaiming the Value of Womanhood in God’s Story (Fedd Books, January 2024). She told The Stream about her conservative upbringing, how she became a passionate feminist, and then began to realize that the modern feminist movement wasn’t helping women or her own marriage. 

Along the way, she came across Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, which explains gender roles based on biological design and now informs her views of femininity. She encourages readers to find peace in biblical femininity and avoid either a fundamentalist or feminist ideology that reduces women to less than they actually are. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

 

The Stream: How did  you adopt and then later reject feminism?

Justice Kuehl: I grew up in a very female household. I’m one of four girls. I’ve got a ton of female cousins. So I just have always loved women.

Growing up in the South in Christian culture, I did encounter some misogynistic individuals. It was very clear that women didn’t just serve a different role; they served a lesser role. I was not down for that message.

Then my mom was ordained to be a pastor with my dad. Many of the men at church staged a coup, backstabbing my parents instead of having a conversation. And those were my best friends’ parents. So I just didn’t understand as a 10-, 11-year-old little girl: Why? Because my mom is a girl, our church is splitting?

The message I got is some people don’t think women are capable. They think they’re really lesser in value. So I wanted to be whatever is the opposite of that. 

Unfortunately, you could go from one extreme to the other, and that’s basically what I did. In college I started seeking out a feminist perspective and calling myself a feminist. I liked feeling like I was edgy.

When I was in my early twenties, I started competing in pageants, and that’s a very feminist-dominated space. And so now, my friends are also feminist and we’re all fighting together for women’s voices to be heard. That carried on for a couple of years until I was diagnosed with endometriosis.

I had suffered for 10 years with this mystery illness, not knowing it was endometriosis. At least 10% of women suffer from it; my specialist said it could be more like 40 or 50% of women. I was thinking, If that’s true, why isn’t this one of the primary messages of the feminist movement? Are they actually talking about real issues women are facing? Or do they have some other political agenda that they’re masquerading as women’s rights?

I started paying more attention to what the feminist movement was saying. I started watching the women’s marches and seeing that the messaging was nothing that affected my life. It was a lot of vulgarity, a lot of pushing for abortion on demand for all nine months, and “smash the patriarchy.” That was the beginning of my unraveling: Wow, we’re not even talking about real issues that women face. And in fact, we’re talking about abortions so much that we’re not actually supporting women in their motherhood. Most women end up being mothers. So, we’re not even supporting women in the function that most of them will be in.

The Lord used those issues to open my eyes and slowly start convicting me that I did not need feminism in order to be an empowered woman. I needed to understand my identity as His daughter, and that was where I was going to find the most empowerment.

 

TS: How did you come across Theology of the Body?

JK: It was probably something on Instagram that first brought up this series of books called Theology of the Home. I was getting married and starting to look for resources about finding contentment and joy in the home. The idea of spending more time in our home cooking meals for my husband was offending my pride. So I found this series of books. They’re phenomenal. They’re cowritten by a Catholic philosopher named Carrie Gress. I’ve read all of her books now.

I also followed a young Catholic wife on Instagram who was posting about natural family planning. Because I had gotten involved in the pro-life movement, I knew that when I got married I wanted to handle that part of our lives in a way that honored the dignity of any children we might have, our bodies, and God’s design for us. She was teaching people about cycle charting and body literacy.

I thought, Why do Catholics talk about this so much? This is so cool that they do that. I wish we did something like this in our stream of Christianity. So I messaged this girl about it, and she said, “There’s this teaching called Theology of the Body and you should look into it.” I started searching and I learned that it’s an umbrella term given to the teachings of Pope John Paul II, sort of his life message.

I started for the first time to understand why God would create the physical world, why He would give us bodies. One of my favorite teachings in Theology of the Body is that our bodies tell us something about God’s design for our spirits. 

As women, we’ve been given the ability to carry children and to nurse them. So that tells us something about our ability to spiritually nurture and nourish. Same with men. They’re physically stronger and bigger than us most of the time. So that tells us something about their spiritual role as the protector and the provider.

So many bells were going off in my head. There are a lot of fundamentalist arguments I had grown up hearing about gender roles or why men are the providers and it was, “Because they’re more connected to truth. They’re more connected to God.” That was really troubling. I kept thinking, But the Bible says “He created them male and female in his image.” So how can that be an argument? It would always be, “Well, because woman caused man to fall.”

Pope John Paul II says that’s not the case. Man and woman both sinned, they both fell together, and they are both created in the image and likeness of God. So they have different roles because they are spiritually created differently, but they’re also equal in value and significance. That was like, “Ding, ding, ding!” for me.

 

TS: You wrote that feminism wasn’t helping your marriage and you had to rewire some thinking. Tell us about that.

JK: Even though I had shifted out of my feminist worldview as much as I could consciously, subconsciously much of my thinking had been formed around these ideas. If I was spending more time cooking and cleaning than my husband was, I would get frustrated with him, thinking, This isn’t fair. That thought process is really not helpful, but it’s so ingrained in us through feminism: things have to be fair. 

Gender roles aren’t fair. There’s a burden on my husband that I don’t understand, and there’s a burden on me that he doesn’t understand. I just have to give him the benefit of the doubt and vice versa.

So, in the beginning of our marriage, there was a lot of me trying to find fairness. And also interacting with my husband the way I interacted with girls in my life, thinking he would want to watch chick flicks, and if I hinted at things that he would read between the lines. I hadn’t spent a lot of time around men, and the men in my life had a lot of women in theirs. So I was projecting those things onto my husband — He should know how to do this — even though he grew up in a family with just boys. So a huge thing that I would tell myself is, Your husband is not a woman, and that’s okay. Both of us were learning, but for me, a lot of that was influenced by feminist media I had consumed.

 

TS: Does feminism undermine our femininity?

JK: The definition of feminism is just wanting equal opportunity for men and women. If that’s our definition of feminism, no, it doesn’t have to undermine femininity. But unfortunately, I don’t think that represents what feminism is today at all. What we have today is exactly what the first feminists had in mind. There’s a phenomenal book from Carrie Gress called The End of Woman where she goes into this history.

Anytime we feel the need to strive, we’re not in our femininity because part of femininity is dependence on another person and resting and allowing ourselves to be protected and provided for. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t leaders in our home or serving an equally significant role, but it’s the same way the president needs to understand his role and that the Secret Service is in the role of protecting him. He doesn’t need to be thinking about those things, or else he can’t be a good president.

Our femininity thrives when we are in a soft place in our hearts. If you think about a mother nursing her baby, that is how we should interact with the world. It’s taking the thing that God has put in front of us, pulling it close to us, nurturing it and holding it. We can’t do that if we aren’t resting in our protection and provision. So anything that requires us to strive and go into a more aggressive mindset can be at war with our femininity.

Obviously there’s times where that’s not the case, because we’re also mama bears. There’s a time for those thoughts to come out. But feminism has put women in a position of saying, “I’m gonna fight for my rights. I’m gonna fight to prove — ” That just inevitably is gonna get you more to masculine energy. 

 

TS: Tell us more about your understanding of femininity.

JK: I want to remain soft. That’s not to suggest that women aren’t also tough. I gave birth at home completely unmedicated, and I think that was one of the toughest things a human can go through, physically speaking, and it was very feminine. But even in that space, my husband was right there with me. He was fielding conversations with the midwife and with my family members. 

As women, we’re going to do hard things and need a resolve to face difficult things. But in the process, remaining soft, having a tender heart, a heart of compassion that is seeking to nurture those around me.

Hospitality is a great way to do that. So when people come into your home, allowing them to have an experience that tells them something about the love of Jesus. You come in and it’s a beautiful space, but you also feel like you can let your walls down. Maybe I’ll bring somebody a hot drink and find out what food they prefer to eat — just trying to create an atmosphere that shows them that they’re cared for, protected, and nurtured.

I think about seeking to have eyes that see the person in front of you and a heart that says, “How can I serve this person? How can I make them feel known, seen, and safe?”

 

TS: Do you feel feminism encouraged that in you? Or did it do the opposite?

JK: I think it did the opposite. Feminism made me feel like I had to prove myself. I felt like when I proved myself I was representing all women. That was a lot of pressure.

On a practical level, feminism has unfortunately invalidated so many of the feminine roles by saying, “All you want is for women to just be teachers, be nurses, and be at home, cooking and cleaning.” When you say it like that, it sounds like, “Yeah, those stupid things.”

And when we say that abortion is necessary for women to be successful, we’re saying that motherhood and success can’t go together. And we’re telling women who give birth to children, “If things are hard, well, you made the choice to have them.”

We’re taking away their support instead of saying, “Oh, this is a normal human function that we’ve been doing for thousands of years that we should keep doing to keep having people. How can I support you in this role?” Feminism invalidates our natural, biological inclinations completely.

 

Aliya Kuykendall is a staff writer and proofreader for The Stream. You can follow her on X @AliyaKuykendall and follow The Stream @Streamdotorg.