August 12th, 2008 maggie
On Friday morning I’m off to the Femme2008 Conference in Chicago. Between presenting a panel, performing two pieces, I have a lot to worry about and a lot of clothes to pack! Since I haven’t flown in at least two years (since before the liquid bomb thing) I spent Saturday trying to fit three kinds of concealer and Goddess knows what else into a teeny tiny one quart bag and asking everyone I saw for advice.
Now that I understand the difference between solid and gel deodorant, I think I can fit everything in. So now I need to worry about clothes. I was trying not to worry about it because I’m afraid that if I spend extra time or effort on dressing for this conference I’m complicit in turning it into a competition. But of course I want to take care with my clothes for the same reasons I always do - to feel good about myself, because it’s fun, to be seen in the world (more or less) the way I want to be seen.
My roommate suggested that I should look at it more as an opportunity to be in an environment where people will see and appreciate my gender, and opportunity that I should take advantage of by having fun with my appearance. This positive spin is helping.
I also think about this when I’m getting dressed for MadFemmePride events. I love getting a chance to bust out a costume-y outfit, bolder or fancier that usual. But every once in a while I wonder if I’m still doing it for the right reasons. Am I doing it sometimes because people have come to expect it? Am I creating a public image of myself, and, if so, is it any more authentic than if I was butching it up in cargo shorts and sneakers? How do I determine which parts of my high standards are for me and which parts are for other people? To what extent am I ok with dressing for others? How do I navigate this with out turning it into a competition?
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June 27th, 2008 maggie
I just had to share. One of my best friends gave me these. Read the rest of this entry »
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June 2nd, 2008 maggie
If you know me in real life you know that The Purse Issue is a big deal for me. I talk about it so much it’s become a joke. I even talked about it in my first blog post ever about why I started the show (sigh!) over at queertoday.
So I was amused when I saw this:
Stuff Lesbians Like: Going Out of One’s Way Not to Carry A Purse Read the rest of this entry »
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May 15th, 2008 Jenn
In the last couple of months I have come to feel much more conscious of my femme identity – not necessarily because of the clothes that I wear, but because of how much skin I show and what skin I expose.
Currently I am covered in lesions of an unknown nature to my Western doctor. Some of them are small and some of them are quite large and cannot be hidden. At first I was terribly ashamed of them, trying to cover them up by hiding the parts of my body that they’re on. But now that almost all of my body is covered with these lesions, it’s difficult to hide them. And soon it will be impossible to hide. With the warm weather about to arrive, I do not want to sacrifice ample opportunity to have fun in short skirts and skimpy tops. So what’s a femme to do but to tackle the sites of shame that make me want to hide underneath my clothing?
In turning to my disability**/queer/femme politics, I have a lot to use to take on my body shame. It’s a bit of a matrix, a puzzle of politics and ideologies mixed together. So when starting to become conscious of this riddle it’s daunting to know where to begin. I begin with asking myself, what do I actually have to be ashamed of? I haven’t quite unravelled this answer yet but I have some guesses and sources to pull from. Read the rest of this entry »
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January 22nd, 2008 maggie
H. and I go to Jaded Lounge for all-queer, all-asian cabaret. We eat biscuits, corn, and mac and cheese from Kentucky Fried Chicken, I have a beer that I’ll only drink half of and she has something pink. We look around. I whisper, is it bad that I’m wondering why the white straight-appearing couples are here? She says, I was wondering that but then I told myself that’s fucked up.
We have so many stories about being alone, we come out into these amorphous communities and all we want is to not be alone anymore. Our monkey brains say, categorize to survive, separate enemies from friends, know your tribe. We’ve been rejected so many times and we want to know who’s safe, so we draw these lines with our eyes to say who belongs and who doesn’t. We hurt each other this way, but we keep doing it.
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