Salon de Femme--aut delectare aut prodesse est

[Arwen]

First, a quick welcome to Boots13. Just so you know, butches are welcome here. I don't want to have a "femmes only" thread (yet, lol.)

To everyone else, thank you so much. I'm crying reading some of you. Others I nod my head because I know that feeling. Then others of you make me laugh (in a good way.)

Thank you for making this Salon a comfortable place to express ourselves in all of our ways that we do!

So I have a third question for us. (Feel free to answer any of the questions or just speak your piece...it's all good.)

THIRD QUESTION: (this is focusing on the art part of the salon description)

Is there a song or painting or book or poem that is your own personal femme motto/manifesto/creed?

Like maybe Gretchen Phillips "Redneck Woman" or Aine Minogue's "Lady of Shallot" for music?

Perhaps Degas Ballerina's or Rosie the Riveter for art?

Maybe Laura Ingalls Wilder or Jo from Little Women is a fiction heroine of yours?

So, do you have one? Do you need one? Do you want one?

[Julie]

Arwen... This most recent question has brought back sweet memories of my youth.

I always knew I was different, from that first kiss at age 12, hiding in the bathroom with Liz Wolf -- The girl who burned her eyelashes off, to void her beauty.

My first exposure to understanding who I was, was when I found the book by Quentin Crisp, albeit, not a female bodied femme, but a femme non-the-less. Quentin wrote his memoir "The Naked Civil Servant," I must have been 17 when I read this, and it opened my eyes, to what the world perhaps had in store for us. When I moved to New York in my early 20's, I looked him up in the phone book and telephoned, thanked him for his gifts, and was invited for tea. He will and always has remained with me in my spirit.

Finally... Who could not resist the words of the brilliant Radclyffe Hall (The Well of Loneliness). Yet another brilliant and strong force in this world of ours. I still have this quote and carry it with me always.

"You're neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad; you're as much a part of what people call nature as anyone else; only you're unexplained as yet -- you've not got your niche in creation.
~ The Well of Loneliness, 1928 "
— Radclyffe Hall

Let their memories live on within us.

Julie

[Arwen]

Originally Posted by InfiniteFemme

My first exposure to understanding who I was, was when I found the book by Quentin Crisp, albeit, not a female bodied femme, but a femme non-the-less. Quentin wrote his memoir "The Naked Civil Servant," I must have been 17 when I read this, and it opened my eyes, to what the world perhaps had in store for us. When I moved to New York in my early 20's, I looked him up in the phone book and telephoned, thanked him for his gifts, and was invited for tea. He will and always has remained with me in my spirit.

This was so lovely. Thank you very much for sharing! I have not read that book. I'm thinking that I should!

I am so impressed that you met Quentin Crisp. WOW. What was that like? That's so amazing.

And Radclyffe Hall....sigh...I need to reread that. When I was first coming out, a friend handed me two books and told me to read them at the same time. She recommended one chapter of each.

Well of Loneliness and RubyFruit Jungle.

An odd combination to say the least, but they balanced one another quite well. I think if I'd read Well by itself, I might have .... Well who knows what I might have.

[Julie]

Originally Posted by Arwen

This was so lovely. Thank you very much for sharing! I have not read that book. I'm thinking that I should!

I am so impressed that you met Quentin Crisp. WOW. What was that like? That's so amazing.

And Radclyffe Hall....sigh...I need to reread that. When I was first coming out, a friend handed me two books and told me to read them at the same time. She recommended one chapter of each.

Well of Loneliness and RubyFruit Jungle.

An odd combination to say the least, but they balanced one another quite well. I think if I'd read Well by itself, I might have .... Well who knows what I might have.

Arwen,

Quentin Crisp was truly brilliant in every aspect of his being. When I telephoned he was taken aback, here was this young woman who just wanted to say thank you, and really what he told me upon meeting him... He thought he had been forgotten. He knew his messages were important, but he did not think the youth of today (then) would understand. How wrong he was.

He did inform me, I did not know how to apply eyeshadow and suggested a vivid blue, which would go nicely with my green eyes. He had a humor, wit and sarcasm about him, which has gone untouched and a warmth which was not deliberate. He was much smaller than I had imagined he would be, and still he wore his hair perfectly coiffed and applied his makeup which sheer precision. I wish I had taken a photograph of us, but I was pretty much in shock to be sitting in his dining room. He must have been in his early 70's then.

I was given the same two books as you. I need to read Radclyffe Hall again, but think I will pass on Rubyfruit Jungle, I never really got that book, maybe now that I am older, I will. Perhaps...

Julie

[Bit]

Ahh, Arwen, you do ask difficult questions... I thought I couldn't answer this one. Seriously, the only thing I could think of was "lil bit" and that's just patently ridiculous... so I mentioned it to Gryph and Nick. And then a comment Gryph made about Gloria Gaynor's song, "I am Who I Am" made me recognize that I actually DO have something like you're asking about, but it isn't about how to be Femme, exactly.... and it isn't about Gloria Gaynor, either.

Tis Albert, in the Broadway version of La Cage Aux Folles... to that point of the musical, Albert has been nothing but a caricature, "aging queen shallowly seeking after troublesome drama-laden attention."

Then his partner asks him to leave the house while the potential in-laws visit.... and Albert is suddenly revealed as a complex, deep character, vulnerable and deeply hurt, and we realize that the caricature is merely the face he shows to the world to protect his inner being. His defiant, aching, deep understanding of this world and his place in it, of what it takes to claim a place in it, of what it costs to compromise his place in it, is revealed in this one long moment of song--and although he resumes his caricature afterward and maintains it for the rest of the show, WE are changed and can never see him so shallowly again.

THAT version of "I Am Who I Am" has informed my life as a Femme, whether I was living with partners who believed that my being Femme cast them into highly resented "roles" as Butches or whether they believed my being Femme "contaminated" them with too much femininity. That version and the vision of Albert singing it--along with "A Little More Mascara"--sustained me through the long hard years when I was caged myself, living a lie in my mother's folly, desperately aware of my place in the world and what the compromise was costing me.

You could say that the songs are about being queer, not Femme. You could say that they sustained me as a queer being, not specifically as a Femme. You might be right---but me, I cannot separate out "queer" from "Femme" in myself. For me, to be one is to be the other, inescapably so; and that, I think, is the point of the music also, that for Albert, to be queer was to be a performing queen. He could not separate out the two, either.

In some way, those two concepts are the same. The caricature of queerness he presented to everyone may have been the shield and armor that protected his inmost deep and complex being, but it was also his gift to the world, his wryly humorous presentation of a core queer femininity.... and what is lil bit, if not my own wryly humorous version of a core queer femininity?

I am who I am, a queer Femme being coping with an often hostile world, and from Albert I have learned to celebrate every part of that as often as possible and to cling, stubbornly and without apology, to what is truly authentic no matter how I might decide to present it--and no matter how anyone else, even a partner, might receive it.

[Selenay]

Originally Posted by Arwen

THIRD QUESTION: (this is focusing on the art part of the salon description)

Is there a song or painting or book or poem that is your own personal femme motto/manifesto/creed?

They say I'm a beast.
And feast on it. When all along
I thought that's what a woman was.

They say I'm a bitch.
Or witch. I've claimed
the same and never winced.

They say I'm a macha, hell on wheels,
viva-la-vulva, fire and brimstone,
man-hating, devastating,
boogey-woman lesbian.
Not necessarily,
but I like the compliment.

The mob arrives with stones and sticks
to maim and lame and do me in.
All the same, when I open my mouth,
they wobble like gin.

Diamonds and pearls
tumble from my tongue.
Or toads and serpents.
Depending on the mood I'm in.

I like the itch I provoke.
The rustle of rumor
like crinoline.

I am the woman of myth and bullshit.
(True. I authored some of it.)
I built my house of ill repute.
Brick by brick. Labored,
loved and masoned it.

I live like so.
Heart as sail, ballast, rudder, bow.
Rowdy. Indulgent to excess.
My sin and success--
I think of me to gluttony.

By all accounts I am
a danger to society.
I'm Pancha Villa.

I break laws,
upset the natural order,
anguish the Pope and make fathers cry.
I am beyond the jaw of law.
I'm la desperada, most-wanted public enemy.
My happy picture grinning from the wall.

I strike terror among the men.
I can't be bothered what they think.
¡Que se vayan a la ching chang chong!
For this, the cross, the Calvary.
In other words, I'm anarchy.

I'm an aim-well,
shoot-sharp,
sharp-tongued,
sharp-thinking,
fast-speaking,
foot-loose,
loose-tongued,
let-loose,
woman-on-the-loose
loose woman.
Beware, honey.

I'm Bitch. Beast. Macha.
¡Wáchale!
Ping! Ping! Ping!
I break things.

[Arwen]

After moving for most of the day, I have utterly no brain cells left. I just wanted to say that I really love what is happening in this thread. Bit, Albert is one of my faves. Great correlation! Semantics, uh huh! uh huh! Julie, I'm still jealous. Selly, I LOVE that poem! Wow. I need to look her up, don't I!

Anyone can post a question, by the way. I like the ongoing discussions very much.

[blush]

Originally Posted by Arwen

THIRD QUESTION: (this is focusing on the art part of the salon description)

Is there a song or painting or book or poem that is your own personal femme motto/manifesto/creed?

Like maybe Gretchen Phillips "Redneck Woman" or Aine Minogue's "Lady of Shallot" for music?

Perhaps Degas Ballerina's or Rosie the Riveter for art?

Maybe Laura Ingalls Wilder or Jo from Little Women is a fiction heroine of yours?

So, do you have one? Do you need one? Do you want one?

Stone Butch Blues...

[PinkieLee]

Originally Posted by Arwen

So I have a third question for us. (Feel free to answer any of the questions or just speak your piece...it's all good.)

THIRD QUESTION: (this is focusing on the art part of the salon description)

Is there a song or painting or book or poem that is your own personal femme motto/manifesto/creed?

Like maybe Gretchen Phillips "Redneck Woman" or Aine Minogue's "Lady of Shallot" for music?

Perhaps Degas Ballerina's or Rosie the Riveter for art?

Maybe Laura Ingalls Wilder or Jo from Little Women is a fiction heroine of yours?

So, do you have one? Do you need one? Do you want one?

Especially on those days when I'm feeling down or invisible, Maya Angelou's words speak to me, to remind me about the power I have as a woman! Sometimes, I think we all need to be reminded of that, too...

Phenomenal Woman - Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.

I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.

I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.

I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.

I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

[Arwen]

Oh Pinkie! I love Maya Angelou. What a great piece to be inspired by.

[Bit]

Phenomenal Woman is another one of those great pieces that's become part of my Femme Attitude, so to speak. I've loved it for a long time. Thanks for posting it, Pinkie!