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Feministing points out this awful NY Times story about how much this author enjoys seeing women in dresses out and about. He’s concerned that the fashion powers that be are announcing that pants are back in for fall.
I’m so glad that I can make random straight men happy when I go out in a skirt or dress. I’m really happy to be brightening up the landscape for them. As a woman, after all, my first priority is to make men happy.
Since the author of the article has probably never worn a dress, he doesn’t realize that dresses can be the most comfortable option in hot weather. He probably thinks that pants are most practical and comfortable for everyone, so if we choose dresses we’re doing it for the male attention.
What does spring or summer dressing mean for how you’re seen in public? How do you handle being femme or visibly queer or both in the streets?
Last week we were fortunate enough to see the performance group Split Britches perform at Dixion Place. Split britches (for those of you who don’t know) have been around since 1980 and together Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver literally took my breath away. They challenge gender, explore butch/femme culture and completely blew my mind.
Having a partner who is not only a performer, but also a theatre reviewer, and performance studies academic means that I see quite a lot of theatre, but without a doubt I can say this was the most incredible show that I have ever seen. I’m sure by now you are wondering what this has to do with femmeness, and why I’m spending all this time talking about it, when normally by this point I’ve launched into a discussion of femme gender presentation, or queering femininity etc.
In this edition: The love child of James Dean and Bettie Page, describing and defining (or not). Â
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
I loved your comment, “femininity feels at some deep subconscious level dangerous, weak, and wrong.” And I think that is why I cannot escape an identity that somehow involves femme-ness. There is something about presenting in a femme way, which I call “girl drag” in my every day life, sometimes I also use the drag terms “en femme” and “en drab” to describe my presentation. I’m not sure that I want to say that that “wrong” is exciting, but I like that strange feeling, which I can only liken to walking down a dark alley. For me femme is never “safe” it involves skin and secrets and forethought and it is often about things that other people don’t see, like under garments or beauty rituals. Masculinity for me is more about the outside, I think because I feel more that I have to prove my masculinity than my femme-ness, because femme-ness on me would make sense to the world at large, far more sense than some cobbled together transmasculine identity. Read the rest of this entry »
In this installment: Why sometimes I want to cry, body image, being seen, the performativity question, “queering” femme as value judgment, stories from the gay marriage office. Â
Maggie to Mr. Kate
I totally agree that there is a lot of shared experience here. Gender became emotional to me when I figured out how performative my gender was, learning that getting up and getting dressed was always going to be some kind of drag. That is such a beautiful way to put it. Maybe the emotional connection to gender comes from making those choices, being connected to what you want or don’t want each day because each day you have to figure out what drag fits at that moment.
I explain away all these “feelings†by blaming them on what my mom would say is my over-sensitivity, or on the fact that I have to talk about my gender all the time because it’s my art and my (non-paying) job. But I think the real root of all this is that femininity feels at some deep subconscious level dangerous, weak, and wrong. And to answer your question, it is hard to talk about. When I started the show it wasn’t so hard, it was just a theme for a show - one that I cared a lot about and thought was important for our community, but it was still just a show. Now, it’s everything. Read the rest of this entry »
In sixth grade I stole my mother’s cheap pink plastic razor from the oak cabinet under her bathroom sink, quickly before she could notice i locked myself in the bathroom and promptly shaved off all my body hair. this was the first time I’d shaved, prior to this date I’d never really thought much about it but that afternoon a group of girls had cornered me in the field just beyond the swings and told me that girls did n’t have hairy legs. defensively i pulled down the edges of my shorts to cover what I had just learned were my inappropriately furry legs. As a middle school high femme bordering on bio queen I kept shaving before giving it up to embrace androgyny in high school. After coming out as a dyke I would periodically pick up an old razer from the medicine cabinet, carefully stashed behind aftershave, cologne, and cold meds. fondly i would hold the little piece of pink plastic and think about despite knowing that it was a tool of the patriarchy I couldn’t help but long for it. It would be years before I would be able ot come to terms with my own queered femininity, and it would be years before I could embrace the idea that I wanted to shave my legs.
I have found that the shaving is something that nearly every femme I know has grappled with at one time or another. Read the rest of this entry »
 (part 1 is here. 3 and 4 coming Monday and Tueday-ish)
Mr. Kate to Maggie
I agree with you that our identities are really different, but not in any black and white way, in every way that we could mark our genders as different I think we could find a shared similar experience. Gender became emotional to me when I figured out how performative my gender was, learning that getting up and getting dressed was always going to be some kind of drag. How I present and what I wear affects my moods and emotions.
I don’t think that everyone is as emotionally connected to their gender. People get up everyday and they get dressed and yes, maybe they try on three outfits but I think there are different thought patterns behind it. Read the rest of this entry »
