GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

JUNE 9, 1994

Evenings Out

The many ways to enjoy being a femme

Even in the gay nineties, with the sudden mainstream fascination with "lipstick lesbians," some women still find it an insult to be called a femme. Not Lesléa Newman, the author of nineteen books to date, including the much-contested children's book Heather Has Two Mommies.

Newman's new book, The Femme Mystique, is a fascinating and insightful look at the world of femme identity withing the lesbian community. As editor, Newman has collected poetry, essays, short fiction, and photography that reflects what it is to be a femme-identified lesbian.

The following excerpt, written by Newman, is the book's introduction:

I Enjoy Being A Girl

When Sasha Alyson first invited me to edit a book about femmes, I was both flattered and insulted. Flattered because Mr. Alyson had confidence that I could take on such a project, and insulted because he prefaced his invitation with the question “You do consider yourself a femme, don't you?" I was indignant. How could he have even the slightest doubt? I racked my brain: had Sasha ever seen me without lipstick and heels? Finally I decided he asked me in order to be 100 percent sure, since—let's face it—you just never know, and heaven help anyone who makes a femme faux pas. Even in the gay nineties, with lipstick lesbians reigning supreme, some women find it an insult to be called a femme.

Not me, though. I am a femme and proud of it. It took me years to embrace the term, though when I think about it, I've always been a femme. My nickname as a little girl was "Diamond Lil" because I loved to play dress-up with my grandmother's costume jewelry. I would clomp around her apartment in a pair of her high heels, a matching evening bag hooked on my elbow, my little body adorned with all the rhinestones it could hold. Who cared if my grandmother's clip-ons pinched my tender earlobes? I knew even then that there is a price to beauty. My grandmother would dab some perfume onto my wrists and some powder onto my cheeks, and there I was, a five-year-old femme fatale.

Everything changed for me during adolescence, when my body began to blossom. Boys started to notice me and I didn't like that one bit. For in addition to noticing my body, boys and men made it clear that my body was something they wanted. Somehow I had to make it just as clear that my body was not something I intended to give away. I did that by making myself as unfeminine as possible. I wore baggy jeans and shapeless sweaters or T-shirts. I did not use makeup or wear jewelry. My hair had no style at all and was in my face so much that, when I wore my tortoise-shell glasses, I looked like Cousin Itt of the Addams Family. This fashion-free phase lasted through the early days of my lesbianism (I came out when I was 27). I looked like your basic dyke-jeans, T-shirts, sneakersthe only difference being that I had long hair, which I cut immediately. Then I cried for an entire year while I waited for it to grow back.

About this time I went to a lesbian party and saw her, my first butch. I kept staring at this woman across the room from me, who was wearing white jeans, a black shirt, a man's white jacket, and a white tie. Needless to say, her hair was quite short (and perfectly combed). I kept thinking, What is a man doing at this lesbian party? And even though I was at that party to find a girlfriend, I couldn't take my eyes off this person who I thought was of the male persuasion. Finally the butch took her jacket off and I saw that she had breasts. Then I really couldn't look away.

But I still didn't realize that I was a femme feeling an intense sexual

attraction for a butch. I thought she was the ultimate lesbian and that I should try to look like her as much as possible. Of course this didn't work; I looked ridiculous in a man's jacket and tie. A femme trying to look like a butch is just that: a femme trying to look like a butch. When I finally realized that I didn't want to be a butch, I wanted to sleep with a butch, a whole new world opened up before my eyes.

Still, it took years to cultivate the fine art of being a femme and grow into the ultrafemme that I am today. I had to go through a series of girlfriends who thought that wearing makeup, dresses, high heels, and lacy lingerie was buying into the patriarchy and oppressive to all women. Never mind that they were dictating the way I should look, act, and think-very oppressive, indeed. I finally found my butch six years ago, or rather, she found me. She had recently broken up with her lover, and after about a year of solitude remarked to a butch buddy, "I'll never find a girlfriend. The only femme left in this town is Lesléa Newman." "So ask her out," my butch's friend said, and luckily for me, she did.

My butch is a would-never-be-caught-dead-in-a-dress type of butch. She wears no makeup, doesn't own a pair of heels, and has worn the same pair of small gold loops in her ears since the seventies. She'd rather die than carry a pocketbook; she keeps her change in her

The I

front pocket and

emme

Mystique

Edited by

Lesléa Newman

her wallet in the back. She opens doors for me. Leads when we

dance. Leads when we . . . Just the way I like it. And my butch enjoys the femme that I am just as much as I enjoy being a girl. Finding a butch to appreciate me was all that I needed to go wild. I began reading fashion magazines again and haunting the malls. My skirts got shorter, my heels higher, my nails longer, and my lipstick darker. Once I felt safe enough to be who I wanted to be, there was no holding me back.

One is never completely safe, however. One night I was out at a lesbian dance. My butch is a deejay and often I take tickets at the door while she plays. I was wearing a black minidress, mesh stockings, and a pair of heels. A dyke came to the door, looked me up and down, and said loudly, "Hey, is it Halloween? I didn't know this was a costume party." Since my butch was busy, someone else came to my rescue; a leather butch appeared and asked me to dance. When the song ended, she asked, “Are you married?"

"Very," I replied, pointing to my butch, who was glaring down at us from the deejay platform. The leather butch went up to my girlfriend and shook her hand. “You are one lucky woman," she said.

When I sent out a call for manuscripts for The Femme Mystique, I got hundreds of replies. Some women shared my story of being a femme until adolescence, only to give it up and then take it back again. Other women wrote about being tomboys and not discovering their femme side until later in life. I heard from femme tops, femme bottoms, high femmes, ultrafemmes, femmes who sleep with other femmes, femme-on-the-street-butch-in-the-sheets femmes, furious femmes, former femmes, future femmes, and forever femmes.

Many femmes wrote about the frustration of being perceived as heterosexual, both in the straight world and in the lesbian community. Many femmes wrote about the rage they felt when they are assumed by straight and gay peopic alike to be "just another pretty face." And many femmes wrote about the joys of being a femme, the sheer pleasures of our sensuality and sexuality that make it all worthwhile.

Here are our stories. It is my hope that this book will offer an understanding of the many ways there are to be femme. I thank Sasha Alyson for entrusting me with this project and all the women who sent their poems, essays, photographs, and stories. I would also like to thank all the femmes who came before me, gracing the world with their beauty and their bravery. And to all the femmes who come after me, I say this: each femme has her own mystique. Find yours, and never let the world take it away from you.

From The Femme Mystique, edited by Lesléa Newman. Alyson Publications, Boston 1995.