Somewhere along the line, someone pointed out to me that I was too Femme for my own good. At the time I wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the house without full makeup… Manicure…
And Pedicure.
I mean even in winter, the boots and socks have to come off at some point. Right?
At the time, I snickered and didn’t give it much thought.
Years later, I was told in a group setting by a well meaning lesbian friend that I needed to “Give up the charade” that I was just a “cunt-tease and nothing more unless I made a committed effort to come out of the closet and give up men forever” because in her words “bisexuality is a myth.” Everyone except me laughed…
Whatever.
But that statement made me shirk labels for years. It was no one’s business whether I was straight, or bi, or lesbian. Or so I thought…but maybe that single statement made me withdraw from a group of women who until that moment had been a source of comfort because they'd accepted me for who I was.
I like to think I know who I am…and since I am a creature who is always growing, changing, evolving…I don’t let labels play a big part of creating who I am. Sure, some labels are necessary; they help us communicate to a certain level of who we are. Today, I’m willing to own a few labels that help identify me: Woman, Female, Wife, Mother, Bisexual, Femme...
But does that mean I can’t step out of the role sometimes?
Roles.
Are we all just role-playing?
Some days, it seems that way. That we are all playing some weird form of dress-up to get across the point of who we are, without saying the words.
A few days ago I came downstairs wearing a consensual-partner-beater, jeans, and my biker boots. I didn’t think about it. I woke up. I got dressed. Came down for breakfast. My husband said, “Wow, we’re feeling a little dyke today.” Of course my first response was, “We are?” But then, after breakfast was cleared, I looked in the mirror. I’d neglected to put on makeup, my hair was in a tight pony-tail, and as in 90% of the time, my wallet and cell phone were in the right hip pocket.
I did an about face and went back upstairs. It bothered me that he saw me that way…too.
Maybe it had just been an excruciatingly long week and I was really too tired to go to the trouble to straighten my hair, put on makeup, and choose a color coordinated outfit…
Or maybe something else was going on. Maybe I’m tiring of wearing my Femme label all of the time. After all, my twenty-three year old daughter had told me only a few days earlier that I was “getting a little too dyke all of a sudden”. What in the hell does that mean anyway? Then the next day, I had a very cute, very femme young blonde in my lap, whispering in my ear all of the terribly naughty things she wanted me to do to her…and in the moment I really didn’t feel very femme at all…
Upstairs, I pulled on a tiny black cropped leather jacket over the white tank, exchanged my biker boots for sexy high heeled black boots, and threw on big hoop earrings and a long necklace. I straightened my hair and applied make-up. When I came back down, I demanded, “Are we still feeling a little dyke today?”
My husband swallowed, shook his head, and managed, “Femme fatale?”
I smiled and said, “You better fucking believe the Fatale part…if one more person says I’m trying too hard to be dyke…”
He grabbed me and kissed me. He said, “I like it when you’re dyke. The girls I catch looking at you when we are out like it too.”
Why was everyone but me noticing that I’ve been less and less femme…and why does it matter, if it matters at all that I “look” butch today or femme? I’m still the same person when I look in the mirror...
And maybe that’s the problem. I am still the same person who hates labels. I don’t want to be trapped into behaving one way or another by a word. Whether I am dressed in heels with make-up or wear my biker boots with a freshly scrubbed face, the bottom line is that my thoughts, feelings, ideas don’t change…I am still who I am. A bisexual woman, mostly femme, but also highly connected to her inner boi.
The thing is, that day, with my husband, I noticed something. When I have my makeup on and I’m wearing heels…I walk a certain way…I smile and tease a certain way…I feel sexy but in a girly way. I try harder to catch the attention of girls who can only be labeled as butch…I’m bolder. Compare that to when I am not dressed femme. I feel tougher, stronger. I swagger more. I smirk more. And I try to not be noticed and by trying to not be noticed, I inevitably am…
But does that mean that if I chose to clip my hair and wear my biker books every day, I’d start feeling less femme? Or if I only wore my stilettos and stockings, cute dresses and makeup, I might actually start to carry a purse? Trust me, the answer to both is no.
I’ve been doing some people watching ever since my own hard look in the mirror…women who dress exclusively butch…and women who dress exclusively femme…even women who are so androgynous that neither butch or femme seems to be an adequate description…and I started to wonder…if we are becoming so determined to express ourselves that we dress a certain way every single day…even when we might want to dress a different way…to fit into another’s definition of a label we’ve accepted for ourselves…are we repressing ourselves and stifling our own unique personalities in deference to what we think others (need) to see in us?
I’ve already admitted to being guilty of this…pulling out my Femme Fatale when all I really wanted to do was spend the day in my comfy biker boots sans makeup…and it wasn’t really even to make someone else happy…just to throw off a label. But all I did was exchange one label for another…so did I gain anything that day? Knowledge, a new look at myself and how whether if I like it or not the labels I've accepted ownership of do define me...
But I've also gleaned the insight that I am willing to defy convention (convention being the assumed labels we apply to ourselves and allow others to apply.)
I want to be who I am any minute of any day. I want to be able to look in the mirror and see “me” not the person someone else expects to see. And from now on...that's exactly what I'm going to do.
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Very excellent post. I totally understand where you are coming from as I'm a bi femme/tomboy who enjoys both dressing up and dressing down depending on my mood. I really don't like labels very much, but agree that they are useful... but only to the point that they don't stifle you, or do not allow you to redefine yourself. Labels like boxes can be confining. As humans we are continually growing and changing. Human sexuality and gender is so complex that it can be a hindrance to be stuck on self-defining labels and not allow for all the nuances/dichotomies of who we are. I also believe you are right that it is others who want to put labels on us and define us, pin us down, so-to-speak.
I just read & reviewed "Best Sex Writing 2008" (Cleis Press) and there is an essay by Jen Cross called “Surface Tensions.” It is "an intimate journal narrative written in stream-of-consciousness style that explores the author’s struggle to cope with her conflicting gender identity [femme & dyke] and how she is perceived by other queers in the lesbian community based on her 'surface' appearance." It is a very thoughtful and provocative piece that resonated with me and I think describes a similar emotional struggle that many people feel when they live within the shades of gray.
Thanks for stopping by Dominadoll...and thanks for sharing the info on "Best Sex Writing 2008"!
I used to tell one of the first men I ever let top me...I feel like a doll in a box that no one has ever been interested enough to take the time to figure out what makes me tick...thank god he did! I wouldn't have had as nearly as interesting (and entertaining) life had he left me wrapped up in my "box."
Hugs,
Roxy
Labels are so limiting. We are all too complex, too multi-faceted. Kudos for breaking out and just being you.
My exgf, who was nothing short of brilliant, said this about labels once upon a time:
Labels, for at least some of us who embrace them, aren't supposed to be all-encompassing, strictly defining, or perfectly describing. They're just labels, not definitions -- like an opaque jar labeled "coffee," which doesn't say if it's beans or grounds or already-brewed or coffee-flavoured candy, if it's dark, light, weak, strong, flavoured, sugared, fresh, or stale. It just says coffee, and if you want more details, you need to shake it, or open it, or taste it, or find the person who applied the label and ask them what they meant.
fwiw, she self-identified as a "studly femme." Sometimes she'd wear stilettos, sometimes she'd wear stompy black boots...but she was always, ALWAYS, sexy as all hell.