Proving It.
As a femme who loves a little makeup and my long hair, I have often been called out for conforming to a patriarchal/Madison Avenue ideal of "beauty". How I present is occasionally not seen as me expressing my sense of self, and I have been dismissed as someone just going through a phase, a "pretendbian" (a great freaking term) or worse, looking for a third to join me and my husband.
I try and make jokes about me knowing the secret handshake or having left my membership card at home in my flannel shirt, but the truth is it does hurt having to prove myself to others. They don't know the battles with my family over my identity or my own struggle to live my truth and love myself. I tried to conform to what I thought a "lesbian" should look like and that didn't feel right for me, either.
So...I just try and be me. I still get men who don't believe I'm a lesbian (although I bet they go home and think about it later...) and others who feel I femme it up too much, but I can't spend my life worrying about what anyone else thinks, can I? t took me a long time to arrive at this point and I will own every bit of it with pride.
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