A friend posted a picture of a newborn— a baby girl so fresh that her features were still kind of unformed — but the caption read, “Already a tita!” I looked at that face. The baby wasn’t screaming or scowling or anything, but I had to agree. She was a tiny tita.

Which led me to wonder:

How can you tell a tita from just a regular local girl? What are the requirements for titahood? Are titas born or can a tita be made through coaching and practice?

First, a definition:

A tita is a woman who is empowered. She is feared and she is fearless. Some point out certain aesthetic qualities of titahood that may come up in a discussion, but if a newborn baby swaddled in the generic hospital striped blanket can be a tita, clearly, being a tita is something more innate than wearing butt-length hair wrapped in a bun on top of the head and having both pinky-toes hanging off the black Locals Only slippers … though that’s part of it.

Tita is an attitude, a way of being in the world.

Second, a disclosure:

Though I grew up on the neighbor islands, am Portuguese-Hawaiian, have a vast slipper-gap between my big toe and the next toe, don’t put up with nonsense and can kill a cockroach with my bare hands, I have always known that I am not a tita.

The only people who have ever called me tita either didn’t know me or didn’t know titas. There’s a prissiness about me that I can’t quite shake. I’m OK with this. No use trying to be something you’re not.

I queried some friends about defining a tita.

Attorney and actor Allan Okubo offered, “When titas say GO, you go! When they say STAY, you stay! When they say YOU GO STAY, and you don’t know what they mean, run like hell!”

Radio’s Kimo Villarimo opined, “Titas know what CHOUT means. Like, ‘Chout, brah, you in da way.’”

Musician Kainani Kahaunaele said, “Titas speak volumes by the utterance of just one short and powerful word. ‘Eh!’ Not in a whiny way, but with authority.”

My cousin, Ilima, who built her own house (brah, electrical, plumbing and erryting!), has her master’s degree, has sailed with Hokule‘a and knows which wine to pair with which fish, is a tita extraordinaire.

“To be a tita is to roll with the braddahs, but know you look good in one pareo,” she wrote. “To be one tita is to jump in that kai with panty and bra if you had to, but have your holoholo-anywhere bag ready to go with that perfect kini inside.

“To be one tita is to luv-luv your fellow titas and they are OK with you giving their kid one pa‘i when needed.

“To be one tita is to be able to pluck that opihi or wana from the kai, eat ‘em fresh yet sit at a dinner table and show some grace.

“To be a tita is to know you can be counted on, and know you walk without having to watch your back … ”

Wow.

And when I asked if it was OK to quote her, she wrote back,

“Of course, cuz. Rip it up. … I had more but I had to leave the house.”

Probably to go catch fish, with the net she made by hand, to pair with the wine she brought home from her latest travels.

So tita.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.