1. Narrative of Thought: In your notebook, tell the story of how your thinking has evolved. When you first chose your subject, what did you think about that culture? What assumptions did you make and what did you expect to find? So......I'm not really something you'd expect. I'm a queer girl, but I've been able to live virtually undetected in straight society. I've always known I'm attrated to women just as much as I am to men; I knew as soon as I had a crush on kd lang just from her publicity photos on the cover of her cd "ingenue," which my parents had (next to the Fleetwood Mac albums and the Joan Beaz), and I knew it wasn't something I was afraid of. Oddly, I never really got a chance to explore that side of myself until last year, when I finally liked a girl, and she liked me at the same time. Before, it had always been the two-ships-passing-in-the-night problem--one or the other of us had a crush, but it was never at the same time. So. It always turned out that I was in a relationship with a guy, and it was always something my family and friends supported, so I never really got a chance to consider the fact that I could have a real relationship with a woman.
I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that I'm very girly. I wear makeup (I have--literally--hundreds of pieces of makeup and makeup equipment, and I use all of it in some way or another), I love to wear pretty dresses and curl my hair and look at youtube.com for tutorials on how to wear scarves and how to choose shoes for outfits, and all of that. Also I love perfume. Especially in old-fashioned bottles with the little squeeze-y atomizer dealie on them. I'm a hopeless fashion zombie, too. If I could afford it, I would never wear the same thing twice. And all of the "it" would be priceless couture. Love it. I especially love Michael Kors and anything vintage. Ooh, and jewelry. Rings, necklaces, earrings, bracelets--my inner magpie is WELL developed. Short version: I'm super-duper-pooper-scooper into girly stuff and being generally adorable and sweet.
PROBLEM: None of this reads as queer, and none of the girls I liked seemed to want anything to do with me romantically, and I SWEAR TO GOD, I'm not the only gay/bi/queer girl who is ultra-girly.
Other problem: how do I prove that? Is there some kind of secret femme-girl society like the skull and crossbones for dykes? Is there a password I have to say at girl bars? Do I need to "butch it up" to be accepted? And then, what would that make me? Am I that ready to eschew all my pink-and-fluffy-ness for men's jeans and a swagger just to get some chick action?
Answer: NO! Nononononononononononono. I'm just fine as I am, thankyouverymuch, and I'm perfectly capable of charming the living daylights out of anything....well...living.
But how to do it? What ways could I get my message across without tattooing "FAGETTE" across my forehead? So I started looking. I looked in gay bars for women who looked like me, but who weren't just fruit flies (straight girls there with their gay guy friends)--you know, actually there to get some numbers and dance all up on some hot butch girls.
This looked like a job for Super Social Butterfly and her companion, Homebody. (Aka, I dragged Her out to the bars several nights within a two-week span, and made Her dance and buy me drinks and make sure I didn't get hit on while I was trying to do research)
So we went. And we danced. And I saw what I was looking for: femmes! Fabulous femmes! And then I thought--but how would I have known if they were out in the real world?
So I looked to bloggers who live in the real world, and are femmes. I love Effing Dykes, by the way. Krista Burton, the author of the blog, is a hilarious, witty, sarcastic and irreverent femme who has experienced just the same difficulties I have, and so has SBJ, author of Fit For A Femme, who blogs about her fashion choices, and has an adorable, super-butch girlfriend named M (called "Tomboy" in the posts).
Success. The only part left to me was to create a connection between the world of the undercover femmes and the people who might read it. Like a field guide to us. Proper care and feeding. Etc.
With the help of the ever-supportive Mrs., I also began a tireless search for the things I could weave into my persona that would mark me as queer, but still maintain my feminine appearance. Yesterday, actually, She said She had a gift for me (I love presents!!!!! :D); it was a pendant of the HRC "equal sign" imprinted onto a small metal square. I now wear it on the same chain as my little heart-shaped rainbow pendant. Also, I have the HRC logo sticker on my car--it's a way to be visible but not obnoxious. Mostly, the things that She says make Her visible are the fact that She dresses in men's clothes, or wears women's clothes that are not feminine-looking, and She wear's men's shoes. She walks with a masculine sort of posture, no sway, and She wears Her hair short--very short--and uses men's product in it. None of the above would work for me--it just goes against my nature. I needed to find a way to be girly and get my own key into the queer world, without having to be on Her arm to prove to everyone in the place that I'm not a breeder. Strictly a breeder, anyway. I feel like the straight community accepts me as one of them--and pretty readily--but that the queer community always has this sort of arms-crossed "prove it" sneer when considering women who are really feminine. Like you need to genderbend at least a certain amount to really be "in."
I think a title that I had in my head for this project, and for all of the drafts and the sketch and the general feel (I even listened to the song with the same name as I got ready to go out with Her each night we went on field trips) of the endeavor was "Pretty Girl Rock." It's a song by Keri Hilson, and you can listen to it here.
Another title might be "Visibility Limited Due To Overcast Conditions." I often feel like I'm walking behind a veil of a straight appearance, and it isn't through any attempt to look hetero, but it just sort of ends up that way. It's kind of unfortunate, too, that a community made up of people who feel like outsiders feel the need to "otherize" people--you'd think they'd know how that feels.
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