NOT FEMME, BUT FEMININE

NOT FEMME, BUT FEMININE

IDENTITY GOES BEYOND LABELS, PEOPLE CANNOT BEDEFINED BY CATCH ALL TERMS MADE BY SOCIETY

BY LEAH OLDS

In the fall of 2019,

I lived with four roommates in a modest apartmenton East Anaheim Street. My second yearat Long Beach State had begun and with it, mycoming out journey. I was so relieved to be out tomy close friends and a select few relatives, buta relentless sense of impostor syndrome keptoverhauling my joy.

I didn’t know where I fit within sucha diverse queer community of gay womenbecause my identity was in its infancy. Andthere was so much about myself that I neededto unpack after enduring 19 years of religiousshame and internalized homophobia.

Figuring out that you’re queer incollege is more or less perceived as cliché nowadays.But for many people, there still aren’t asmany shortcuts on the road to an open closet.My childhood was shared with seven brothersbetween divorced households; Mom kepta strictly Christian home and Dad leaned more

conservative the older I got. It wasn’t until I leftmy hometown in the Central Valley, where casualbigotry is more commonplace, that I felt safeenough to reflect on my identity as an individual.

“What kind of a woman do you thinkI am when you look at me?” I asked my roommate,Juls, as we were fixing dinner one night.With her mellow disposition and many years ofbeing an out lesbian, she had a comforting presencein spite of my waywardness.

“You’re just… very cute, you know?”Juls calmly replied. “I think you’re like, softbutch, in a really sweet way.”

“Soft butch.” With my limited frameof reference, I likened it to the happy mediumbetween undercut fades with Oxfords and a longupdo with Chelsea boots. Not too masculine, nottoo feminine… just alright, I guess.

That assessment would not makethings any easier. In the mirror, I still saw a broad,

squarish jawline clashing with the chubby curves of my upper body. My hands felt small and disproportionate to my otherwise solid arms. And how was I supposed to dress? It seemed that my insecurities were a steep price to pay for the Goldilocks-ian level of gender equilibrium that I had so comfortably maintained.

The more I focused on aesthetic designations, the more apparent the root of my uncertainty became. I convinced myself that the answer to disorientation was placement within a reductive binary. It was the same ‘this or that’ rhetoric people expected me to provide for my sexuality, only now it was my womanhood that was in question. Such thinking would be no more.

Almost three years have passed since my initial coming out. Despite the isolating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the loving solidarity exhibited by my queer community of friends shines brightly. I am also extremely fortunate to have found a caring partner at a point in my life defined by thoughts of ineptitude. Every day, she regards my idiosyncrasies with gentle affection, even when I do not.

I am of the belief that many of the dysmorphic feelings I dealt with were symptoms of a larger problem within queer culture. Sometimes we can be so desperate to find community that we find ways to stereotype or compartmentalize ourselves in a rather superficial way.

Those binary designations have yet to be revealed to me in a tell-all crystal ball, but I keep learning new things about myself all of the time.

For instance, I get teary-eyed when I see distressed children in movies. I would go straight to bed in my jeans if they were suited for sleeping. I struggle to let go of friends who drift apart from me. I occasionally fantasize about getting into fights on the street. I’m a total flirt with earrings, so I really just need to wear them more.

And no, I’m not butch but I’m most definitely masculine. I’m not femme either, but a fully feminine woman nonetheless. Being queer, and just being a person, means that I can be all of these things and none of the these things on any given day. There is real complexity in simplicity, and I’m so grateful to experience it.