queer femme, lesbian femme, lipstick lesbian which word do you choose?
March 7th, 2008 Sassafras
Yesterday, as I was getting ready to leave work I pulled on my jacket, navy blue with baby storybook femmes printed onto buttons. As I was picking up my messenger bag, checking my email one last time an argument broke out. My co-workers suddenly began debating what it meant to be a femme, began trying to decide what “femme†as a label, an identity, a category looked like, felt like, meant. Is a lesbian femme the same as a queer femme they wondered? What about a lipstick lesbian, is that the same as a femme? Is being feminine enough to be femme, or does the queer part have to be attached, how about the self-identification? Two days ago I read a post in an online community, positing that there are more femmes than butches, when asked if they were talking about feminine dykes or folks who self identified as femme, they said it was one in the same. Is someone femme if they don’t wear their femininity ironically? What about straight femmes, are they possible, or is queerness a requirement? I despise the term lipstick lesbian, two months ago a good friend (who also happens to be a femme) was over for dinner, and we joked that we didn’t know anyone who identified as a lipstick lesbian, that we found the term weird, strange, not connected to the ways we view our queer femininity, even if it is a rare day for either of us to leave our homes without lipstick. Last week I became friends with a femme who came to the city from half way around the world, she identifies as a lipstick lesbian. I find myself asking a lot of questions here, because I don’t have answers to give. I can talk about what is true for my own femininity, that for me queerness is intimately tied to being femme. I feel most comfortable living and presenting femininely but I also consider that femininity a social construct. I don’t consider every feminine lesbian to be a femme, I see that as a label, which must be claimed, and understood, that it’s, more than dresses, heels, lipstick. When I hear the word femme it conjures images of queerness, and dyke histories, but I know that’s only my construction, and nothing more.
