I think I had two awkward adolescent periods: my actual pre-teen/early teen years as pictured here, and my femme adolescence. I found some pictures recently of me from my late teens, when I was starting to grow into femme-hood, but not yet fully comfortable with my body, my sexuality, or being femme in public. Oh, and I was still recovering from some good old fashioned 70’s feminism.

This is me in a vaudeville show, the first dance gig I ever got paid for. I did some swing dancing with a gay hairdresser, did some turns and the splits. I had no illusions about it being art, but it was an easy way to make a little money. I had two numbers and spent the rest of the show backstage, wrapped in leg warmers, doing homework and knitting. I had no problem with the costume, either. It was cheesy, fun, just like the show.

Until we had a photo shoot. And they asked me to get up on the piano for a group shot. You know, propped up on one elbow, lounge singer style. I was horrified. I didn’t want to be objectified like that! It felt wrong, too sexual. At first I thought they were joking and I used that assumption to awkwardly get out of it.

Small-town girl that I was, when the guy who put on the show said he was sending pictures to the Globe, I thought for sure we’d be in the paper the next day. I was horrified that people at school would see pictures of me in my sparkly purple outfit and think that I was not a Serious Dancer or, worse, not a feminist. Dancing dressed like that was ok, I was using a skill set that I’d worked hard to acquire. But posing was saying that I was nothing but a body. And of course, if I did that I was saying that all women, everywhere, were nothing but bodies, nothing but legs in “suntan” tights and short dresses with matching briefs. (self-important much? maybe)

A year or so later, I was working for a queer youth tobacco education program (I had some strange jobs in college). We had a lot of bizarre half-baked outreach strategies, and one of them involved dressing up as either Cigarette Girls or Marlborough men and handing out lollipops with sayings on them at open mics and other places where the queer youth congregated.

Somehow it was decided that the gay boys who liked to cross dress and I would be cigarette girls and our boss and another co-worker would be Marlborough men.

The gay boys were really excited about their short skirts and heels and so forth. The Marlborough men were packing, with big belt buckles and artfully drawn facial hair. Everyone was getting to cross dress, or express their gender in a performative way that was fun for them, and I was completely awkward and embarrassed about the whole thing. I didn’t really have the confidence or the language or the understanding that it would be ok for me not to do this, so I didn’t say anything. I don’t know why I didn’t ask to dress up like a cowboy instead, except that at the time, it seemed like drag was for genderqueers and butches and androdykes, not for girls like me. Maybe it seems obvious that drag is for everyone, for all genders. But we were young and everyone had ever-shifting identities and complicated pronouns and I was just a girl, an ordinary girl, coming from modern dance class with tights and legwarmers under my long skirts.

I was in a relationship that was starting to nurture my femme self, especially my sexuality. My then-girlfriend loved seeing me in skirts, heels, makeup, and seeing her attraction towards me helped me slowly feel comfortable in my own skin. I had some clingy tops, hand-me-downs from my much more sophisticated roommate, red high heels from a thrift store and a black mini skirt. But I also had severe anxiety and a lot of shame about my body. Doing outreach in crowds of strangers was really difficult, and I was not ready to parade around the queer youth open mic in clothes that I had previously only worn to parties with my straight friends and their boyfriends or out on fancy dates with my girlfriend in the north end.

In the end I put on one of those clingy tops and a knee-length jean skirt. The queens had mini skirts, halter tops and fishnets. I had a crush on both of the Marlborough men. I don’t remember doing much outreach that night. Probably I had a panic attack and hid in the bathroom. I spent a lot of that year in bathrooms.

It makes me sad to think about how alienated I felt, how lonely. I wish I’d been able to articulate my boundaries. I wish I’d believed that agency was for me, too, that I didn’t have to put my body on display just to teach queers not to smoke. I wish I’d had words for my gender.

Nowadays, if you asked me to lounge on a piano or put on a sexy costume for “outreach” I’d jump in the shower, shave my legs, and run to my room and start digging around in piles of clothes for the perfect outfit. Obviously it took a while to get from there to here, and I’m not sure “here” is the final destination.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.