[Naruto] Kunoichi Means
Title: Kunoichi Means
Fandom: Naruto
Genre: General; multiple character studies.
Rating: PG for slight sexual references.
Wordcount: 443
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.

Tenten is strong in spite of being a girl.

Every morning she binds her hair up. She treats it as an art, her slender hands passing through and around the dark tresses like a calligrapher's brush on paper. She enjoys it. But when she is done, her hair is up on her head and out of her way, and with those slender hands she picks up her weapons and tucks them into place.

She does her best at practice--she may not be as hard-working as Lee or as brilliant as Neji, and she may not have the obsessive drive that either one of them does, but she takes her training seriously all the same. And nobody will ever know that sometimes when Neji spins about, his hands outstretched and his perfect hair whipping about his face, she thinks him very handsome; that sometimes when Lee grins triumphantly after executing a particularly difficult move, she wonders if he would grin like that if she kissed him.
---
Hinata is a girl, but she is not strong, or so the opinion always was.

Kiba and Shino know better. They used to pick her up when she fell, but now she gets back up by herself.
---
Ino is strong because she is a girl.

In the special kunoichi classes at the Academy, she always paid close attention to the tales of seductive spies and cunning ladies. They reminded her of the stories her father would tell her of princesses who loved and fought and won--and in the end each princess was named Ino. She'd smile and clap when her father revealed this.

At fifteen, Ino has moved beyond the princesses but not forgotten them. She loves the shape of her breasts and hips, adores her beautiful hair. She's delighted when her smile makes men's breath quicken. It's a power at once more devious and more joyful than her jutsu, and she never intends to give it up.
---
Temari is strong, but she's barely a girl, or so say the rumor mills whenever she spends time in Leaf.

Shikamaru does not tell them that when he visits her in Sand, she greets him wearing perfume.
---
Sakura is strong, and she is a girl.

It has taken her fifteen years of life to reconcile these two statements. They told her she couldn't, shouldn't be both--that either she must deny her feelings and her loves, or succumb to weakness. For a long time, she was foolish enough to believe them and resign herself to being weak.

These days she knows better. Now she cries when her boys are in danger, and then she fights to save them.