Just forming the word, saying the syllable, sounds sexy, doesn’t it?  Strut!

Back in the days before ubiquitous computer screens, when people used to go outside occasionally, you could always tell a man from a woman just by the way they walked.

Walk is the wrong word.   To be a desirable woman means to strut.  A man who wants to “pass” as a woman must therefore know the strut; not to know means he will be “read.”  Being naturally tall and slender helps.

To see it: a confident and elegant woman’s tantalizing strut — the actual word in alluring action — can make the most ancient and decrepit of men cry.  The tears are tragic; for the lustfully alive legs and hips creating the strut may be seen but never again, as in their virile youth, possessed.

So it is that to feel it — to actually do the strut yourself – is indescribable.  Maybe that’s what makes it so impossibly hard to master.  If no words exist, how can an ignorant would-be woman ever be taught?

That was the primary reason I enrolled in modeling school – to learn to strut.  Once upon a time “educational” places like this used to be called a “charm school,” and I wanted to learn all the other secret feminine charms, of course.  But how to walk – to strut – was my main motivation.

Everyone was surprisingly welcoming.  No one said I didn’t belong.  Maybe they were afraid some macho boyfriend of mine would sue on my behalf for sex discrimination?  Whatever…. The tuition for the six-week course was the best investment I ever made.  Cosmetic surgery is costly, but learning to strut is priceless.

Even now, after so many years living “full-time,” I don’t always have the steps down.  The strut may be a learned movement, but once learned, it must be as natural as breathing.  If I become too self-conscious, I can look like I’m on a fashion catwalk: my arched back becomes exaggerated, my gait too slow and long, my wiggle just a bit too wiggly.

But when your hips are undulating just right, your stride feeling like a glide, and the very clicks of your heels making heads on the street swivel, you know you’re in the groove…you’ve got the strut down pat.  With eyes fixed straight ahead, mobile device hand-held to your ear (especially if you’re not really talking with anyone!), the experiences you absorb as practitioner of the strut are like no other.  Truly, you see the world differently.

But mostly the world sees you…envies you…desires you.  You’ve got the strut.