ANA: Hey.
LIZ: Meow!
ANA: Sorry for the delay, I was icing a cake! I’m so domestic.
LIZ: What flavor/color?
ANA: Sour cream chocolate cake with sour cream chocolate icing. From Nigella Lawson’s Domestic Goddess cookbook.
LIZ: Hmmm.
ANA: HMMM.
LIZ: As we’ve discussed, you like sour. I’m not so sure I do.
ANA: Do you like beer? I mean, discounting your wheat allergy?
LIZ: I used to love beer.
ANA: I’m having a Guinness right now as a matter of fact.
LIZ: Soy sauce beer.
ANA: How was your DATE?
LIZ: Well, she’s really smart. Sociology prof. And goofy, in a good way. And she’s cute. Her style is GOOD. But she was instantly holding my hand and putting her arms around me and kissing me in public in the Brooklyn Museum. On the first date!
ANA: Oh wow. Hey I am enjoying my Ellenisia so much. It’s so bubbly! Thank you!
LIZ: Yeah, I really like that one. It’s my fave of them all, actually. And I enjoyed giving you a super-girlie floral perfume for your birthday.
ANA: You’re good at picking out girlie florals.
LIZ: Thank you. I should just stick with them instead of “branching out” all the time.
ANA: I think it’s better to go deep than wide anyway.
LIZ: You are a nasty girl.
ANA: I mean it in all innocence! Like, why branch out? Do more of what you like and something great will come of it, no?
LIZ: I know, I know. Lessons learned late in life… Well, you’ll be happy to know I got the Verte Violette.
ANA: I am happy about that!! It’s really pretty and, if I can say so, very you. Are you liking the way it smells all day?
LIZ: Yes! Except it doesn’t last long. That’s my only complaint.
ANA: Spray it on your clothes, it will last longer.
LIZ: But because of that I have no qualms with spraying and spraying three or four times more than I normally would. And yes, on my clothes, too.
ANA: Suddenly I don’t blame that girl for jumping you. Do you still feel big and undainty around women?
LIZ: I feel clumsy in general, yes, because I kind of am. But lately I don’t feel as big anymore. I feel stronger though, physically. Like I can lift pianos with my stomach. I’m actually butch.
ANA: You are not butch!
LIZ: Mentally butch. I want to open doors and stuff. And I know you saw how excited I was to order dessert for S. the other night.
ANA: That was impressive and sexy as hell. Your haircut is amazing, PS.
LIZ: Thank you! I looked a little cocker-spanielish from the rain, but yeah, it’s a total chick magnet all of a sudden. The archaeologist came over this morning just to bring me tea.
ANA: OK, wow. Well done.
(Image from Citysearch’s Fashion Geek blog.)
Monday, May 12, 2008
Visible Magnet
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8 comments:
Hmmm indeed! I'm intrigued by the "Verte Violette" (I love green; not sure about violet) and by the butchiness wrapped in layers of over-the-top floral scents and pink hair bows. I'm guessing you're really a tomboy-femme top.
My butch is out of town, for an interview (we went to Men's Wearhouse for a suit, which was interesting - as God is my witness someday I'll buy her something bespoke) and I'm sad, because the weather's suddenly all springy again, and I have spring fever.
Oh, and I love sour, as a flavor; don't know that I like it so much as a scent. And I'm not sure if I love it next to chocolate; but I'd be willing to take one for the team and try that cake, just to make sure.
Fan-tas-tic!
I feel big and awkward around women, too. Actually, it's why most of the ladies I've dated for any length of time have been butcher than me. So I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one. Yet, conversely, my dude is kinda girly. For a straight guy, anyway. What's up with that?
I feel like I have a lot to say about the whole femme-butch dynamic/conundrum. While I understand it could be comforting to assign to oneself a specific role, I think it's a detriment to individual growth and leads to unnecessary beliefs about the way things are in the lesbian world. The way we label people to make sense of them--"femme top," for instance--leaves no room for fluidity.
I'm extremely petite, dainty, and usually girlie as hell but I feel like a raging beast! When women say that I'm too "femme" for them, which happens a lot, all I can think is, "Wow, you're really closed-minded and you have no idea who you're talking to."
I totally agree with that. In fact, I think a lot of the assignation of roles is something that has tended to make me feel the old bull-in-china-shop syndrome quite often. Being also somewhat petite and small boned, I couldn't possibly be very tough no matter how hard I tried. Even with a shaved head and overalls (in college), it didn't work.
And man-oh-man did I feel awkward and out of place when I moved to Boston (with plenty of hair-growing time in between college and then). It led to a haircut. But, before the haircut, my bff from high school lived in Brooklyn and made me go out to a couple of clubs. She was like, "You are SO going to be the hottest thing there. Trust me. Women will flock to you. They love femmes here." (Before that point, by the way, I never thought I was femme. Especially since I don't wear the proverbial "lipstick." But my friend cross dresses, so I guess compared to her, I'm definitely more girly.) It ended up being one of the few times I've ever been hit on. Ha, come to think of it, I should have just moved to New York.
But meanwhile, I still felt out of place and too much like a dude when I dated women who were smaller than me. I could never win, always trying to figure out where I fit in on the scale. And did I ever resent the scale! It felt more confining than I imagined the '50s must have felt for women who didn't want to get married. It was just a new kind of cage to be trapped in.
Plus, it seemed to me the bigger of a city I would live in, the worse the problem got. I went to college in a small town in North Carolina and never experienced such drastic roles and definitions as I did in Atlanta or Boston.
I never felt so comfortable with myself as I did when I very first came out and it was all new to myself and all my friends and none of us bothered with labels and roles. No one cared. That was a fun time, indeed. (And left plenty of room for growth.) Well, and now I feel pretty comfortable, too. I've come to realize I'm just pretty middle-of-the-road. And I like the balance.
Liz: I didn't mean to cause any offense; I hope none was taken. After all, you were the one to call yourself both "butch" and "girlie." I'm usually very hesitant to label other people, and most of the people I know prefer not to identify along that continuum; I think I was just personally relating to your experience to some degree ("takes one to know one" phenom), and got excited. I know I hate being narrowly defined by others, and that was not at all my intention.
I'm sure that in ages/communities where there were/are no options besides butch or femme (and they are expected to couple up that way), those "roles" could be really oppressive. In my life, however, I don't experience those terms as prescriptive, and I use them purely descriptively. When I came out (a middle-class white college student) I was also taught to eschew roles as "backward," or outdated or limiting or whatever. But when I finally had the word "femme" in my vocabulary, it was very validating and liberating for me - the opposite of a cage. Go figure. I know lots of folks who live on the gnawing edge of gender-disidentification, and are active in working to eradicate the gender binary system, and I totally support that - especially as regards child-rearing. Identificiations CAN be super limiting - especially when imposed from without. But - depending on who's asking - I still probably identify as femme, more than as lesbian or perhaps even more than as female. Why, I'm not sure; it just feels descriptive of who I am internally, explains something about how I move in the world.
All this shit is so tied into class, race/ethnicity etc. as well (c.f. the difference in populations between a small college town in NC and Boston or Atlanta), so it's pretty deep. Also I think there's a lot of internalized sexism that gets turned outwards into phobic behavior towards butches and femmes. Are we not women too? By the way, Tea, I find your attraction to girly men unsurprising; lots of people find androgyny/gender-blending attractive, and it's always attractive when someone has the strength of character to be themselves in the face of messages telling them to conform (to gender norms, etc.). I find all kinds of people, femme and butch and neither, male and female and those who identify as "none of the above", attractive. But I do have a special place in my heart and loins for butch women.
Anyway, women have been arguing about this for a long ass time, and since there remain those of us throwbacks who identify along that continuum, I reckon the debate will continue to rage for awhile. I promise not to hijack your blog anymore with it though! :^) yrs in sisterhood---
Nora!
Oh my gosh, please, no offense taken. And for the future, go ahead and cause offense on here if you want to! Ana and I like to be challenged, Ana especially after she's had a couple glasses of wine.
I'm totally relieved to have a protracted discussion on the topic, especially since it's come up in my non-perfume life quite a lot lately. For instance, last night I pointed out a woman I think is attractive and an acquaintance said, "You like femmes?" I responded to that the way I always respond to the What's Your Type? question: I like balance.
I mostly told Ana I'm butch because, not looking a single ounce of it, I knew her reaction would be slight shock, denial, and laughter. (That's why I tell her a lot of things, I just want to get her goat. Ew, that's a weird phrase.) And I put in the disclaimer about my girlieness for context.
It's difficult not looking not only butch, but not even gay. I think you know what I'm talking about--those little purely visual signals that say straight or homo. I think I'm a little annoyed in general that most feminine-looking lesbians, which are the ones I'm mostly attracted to, don't look twice at me. They're looking at someone with a more masculine edge. And I wonder how much of it is actual personal taste and how much of it is role-playing or pandering to what is acceptable in lesbianland.
I understand there can be a sense of relief once you pinpoint where you stand and what feels like home. What I'm saying is that the butch-femme/boyish-girlie/top-bottom dynamic seems pretty common, from what I've noticed so far, and as an outsider to it I have heard all kinds of stupid shit about my "heteronormative" proclivities, how my girlfriend and I must be faking it. I've often felt like femme + femme is treated as some kind of joke, a really hot joke. Not having my emotions and sense of self taken seriously by people I know and don't know can make a woman bristle! It was hard enough admitting to myself that I'm not going back to men anytime soon, if ever, and now all this too?
But I'm new here and I'm not claiming to be an expert. I'm still observing things that seem to be rules, and tossing out hogwash I've invented about it all on a fairly regular basis. Maybe in a few months I'll cringe at this. Actually, I'm sure I will.
Thanks for writing, Nora (and Tea, too!)--your thoughts and opinions are always welcome. Same for everyone else.
Oh good. Thanks Liz. And let me just say, you go on and get what you want! It IS hard enough to know what that is, much less going out and getting it. I totally salute that; in fact I'm deeply heartened by it. I always think that people who refuse to let society dictate their desires (so long as those desires involve consenting adults, natch) make my life possible. This includes all kinds of folks - women who think men are yummy, too.
I totally know what you mean with "Not having my emotions and sense of self taken seriously by people I know and don't know can make a woman bristle!" (or at least I relate to that in my own way - that's partly why I was bristley above). Butch + femme is also commonly derided as "heteronormative," which is so tiresome. Why should we get that shit from feminists/other lesbians, in addition to the shit we get from straight haters? The only benefit with B/F is that people assume we're having sex (and it might be a joke, but it's not the stereotypical hot joke). And butch + butch (while relatively common in Northern California - the butch/femme dynamic isn't so much the norm here) people REALLY don't know what to do with. As I see it, you get it coming or going. I get shit on the street like any "feminine" woman does, and my gf gets shit for NOT being feminine. Gentle/femmey men get it too; and masculine straight men obviously often have anxiety about maintaining that gender presentation, too. So much wasted energy!
Maybe someday I'll get to go to NY and you ladies will let me take you out for a glass of wine and we can get Ana going. And I'll ask you more about what you mean by "balance" - not even as a challenge, just out of curiosity. Cheers to that!
I'm holding you to that, Nora.
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