"I love being fancy. My favorite color is fuchsia. That's a fancy way of saying purple. I like to write my name with a pen that has a plume. That's a fancy way of saying feather...Nobody in my family is fancy at all. They never even ask for sprinkles."

Some of my favorite mediated representations of femmes involve the ones that appear on the bright pages of picture books.  My favorite little bunch (who I'm planning on memorializing as part of a tattooed sleeve on my left arm) is Eloise, Olivia, and last but certainly not least the one and only Fancy Nancy.  These little darlings are the sorts of baby femmes that I wish I had been allowed the freedom to be! They are precocious, and eccentric, and oh so very very fabulous.

One of the things that I especially love about Fancy Nancy  is the way in which her excessive and weird femininity is so very very clearly performed.  I'm a big gender geek and for me femme isn't just about being "feminine" but it's bout doing so with intention. Her construction of gender bypasses the norms of appropriate femininity, which ultimately in my mind queers her as a character. She is performing what she calls "fancy" and what I would call "femme" through her eccentric behavior, dress, and views on the world she is making the world just a little cuter for the queerly feminine of all ages.

Alas like most things she was much better before she started getting somewhat popular (now there are a ton of "easy to read" stories which aren't as good as the original) but she's still pretty darned incredible.

Latest posts by Sassafras

• Farewell - May 1st, 2011
• Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme - April 16th, 2011
• Little Red Writing Dress - March 27th, 2011
• Unexpected Butch/Femme Poetry - March 22nd, 2011
• Tell-tale Signs a Queer Femme is Queer - March 4th, 2011