“The history of my discomfort with fashion is bifold (sic) and it’s the oldest queer girl story in the book (or one of them, at least); it’s about gender presentation and body dysmorphia” (Benson, qtd. in Nguyen).
The previous statement is why I chose to discuss the blog post “GENDER/QUEER: The oldest queer girl story in the book.” As a self-identified queer bio-female, currently dating two rather femme looking women, I struggle daily with the idea of “fitting in” the world of fashion. I’m not talking about fashion in the sense that I’d like to vogue my way down the catwalk—I’ll leave that to my diva guy friends. I’m talking about fashion in the sense that I can’t even walk into my local Target without wondering if I’d be better off shopping the women’s section or the men’s. This problem is further exacerbated by the norms of class and social position. As I am from a middle-class, pseudo traditional (but growing more progressive every moment) family and I attend the University of Pittsburgh rather than, say, CCAC or Kaplan, I feel the weight of social, gender, class, racial, age, professional, size (and the list goes on) norms with every move and purchase I make.
In fact, all other norms aside, the melding of size and orientation norms tell me one thing: I am big, so I should be butch. This is completely supported in one of my relationships, where my girlfriend is very slim and slight, soft-spoken with long hair and soft facial features. She doesn’t need makeup or a dress to look feminine. Yet, we go places, and I am the one who looks awkward wearing a skirt and shiny boots.
What I find particularly interesting here, though, is that I look exactly like many of the women in my family. The large frame, facial features, and obesity that I face when I look in the mirror are seen in about 75% of the Italian women I am related to. Those women have never had to wonder about their femininity, or if they should be wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead of the polka dot dress and pantyhose. I’d also be willing to bet that they don’t get sniggered at, walking down the street with a couple of their female friends, all dressed differently, and asked offensive questions about what they’re “packing.” Queerness puts a serious spin on the way a person is seen in the public eye. As Cavallero puts it, “Often, the ‘ideal’ is only the ideal for certain people, it only fuels limited interests” (Cavallero, 101).
I was searching Youtube for videos linked to “butch lesbian,” and this video struck me like a Mack truck (mostly because I fall into the “stereotypes” that the poster is trying to fight against). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um1jWWoF9h4 (Tuna Talk: What not to wear—Butch Edition). One of the commenters called her condescending, and I would completely agree. So what if I wear plaid shirts on occasion, and clip my keys to my belt loop? I don’t quite understand how one would be “fighting” stereotypes if they purposely dress against those stereotypes. To me, that is more like giving into the normative society that created those stereotypes, and not at all empowering.
I feel the same as Nguyen, in that “there are so many times I hate this thing Fashion for its complicities, both mundane and avant-garde, with colonial racial classifications, predatory capital, class stratification and class slumming, able-bodiedness and rehabilitation imperatives, gender and sexual norms , biopolitical measures of health and beauty (my italics), militarism and imperial statecraft” (Nguyen). I could wear my most feminine attire, makeup and jewelry, but I am still an “out” queer, and (especially to other queers) femininity does not bode well with the image of a fat lesbian. So, I end up walking out of the house on a daily basis, mixing feminine and masculine like some kind of genderqueer Picasso. I queer it up a little more by cutting my hair off, but I femme it up by getting highlights. I’ll wear women’s jeans with a men’s belt. My shoes are from the women’s section, but they’re actually really masculine. My clothes are fitting, often times without being baggy, but that means that they show my masculine frame. My clothing and makeup are usually dark or BRIGHT! (never pastel—yuck) This brings me to a new point, though. Queer, gender, and size norms are obviously not all I come in contact with on a day-to-day basis.
Let’s add in the other most obvious norms that we face—race, age, SES, education (including major, year, location), and professional path. As a 21 year old white, upper-middle class senior year psychology student, planning on going to grad school and currently working at a non-profit organization with AIDS patients, I am expected to dress differently than my mother; a white, 52 year old accountant working in the business for 25 years. This is made abundantly clear by the fact that my mother and I buy our plus-sized women’s clothing (we are the same size, in fact) at different stores, owned by the same parent company. Lane Bryant markets themselves as a clothing store for the young plus-sized professional. Catherine’s does not market themselves as a store for the middle-aged plus-sized professional (as being above 30 is some kind of taboo), but the difference in the clientele, sales people, and merchandise is obvious. It is, though, all important to perception and performance.
As Butler put it, “...a performative is that discursive practivce that enacts or produces that which it names” (Butler, 241). The performance of queerness, gender, class, etc. is one that we participate in daily. It is so important to our identities as such, that we even attempt to educate ourselves on the “how to” of that performance This video is from the perspective of gay men, where the poster has been asked by a 16 year old gay male the pinnacle question, “Is being fat and gay a fate worse than death?” (; relative material is from 48 seconds-2:05 or so:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YVnO2IzWXE (Fat and Gay: a fate worse than death).
Obviously, I can’t speak as a gay man, but I can say that all of my gay male friends look like the poster, and all worry a ridiculous amount about their weight. This is because they, as 19-25 year old gay men, need to fit into the stereotype of the fit, built, skinny, twinkboy who is ready for love and eager to please. This is a stark contrast with the over-25 bitter queen. Those are the guys at the bar who wear button-down black shirts and blue jeans. They have shaved heads, to hide the fact that they’re balding and call everyone “honey.” They still fit into a clean-cut gay category, though. There are so many queer categories, you’d think it would be easy to find your niche, but for many, it really is not.
I feel that in popular media, whether it be primetime TV, Cosmopolitan magazine, the blogosphere, Youtube and the like, “Especially because of the increasingly pervasive cultural authority of fashion and style bloggers –on both individual and industrial registers– it’s critical that ideological categories as well as corporeal configurations of race, gender, sexuality, et cetera, are subject to ongoing contestation at these sites” (Nguyen). It is the constant contestation, molding, re-vamping, stereotyping, and attempted brainwashing that make it so difficult to find your “place” in queer/gender/class/education/SES/etc. norms. How is anyone supposed to figure out where they fit, though, if the puzzle is being cut differently every day?
Phunkybrats. "Fat and Gay: a fate worse than death." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YVnO2IzWXE
I think it's very interesting to note the femininity (or lack thereof) of plus size clothing. Linking back to Katie's post on the show "What Not to Wear", we often see Stacy and Clinton giving plus sized women advice on how to dress. While they tell the more slender women to wear tighter clothing to show off their female curves, plus sized women are directed toward more boxy frames and fabric that won't show the shape underneath the body. Plus size clothes are manufactured to a more boxy and less curvy shape because they assume that plus sized women want to hide their assets. In reality, a proper fitting wardrobe that shows that the woman has a shape other than a box will be much more flattering. It's hard to understand why many of these plus sized clothing lines think it's o.k. to assume that plus sized women don't want to wear tight, sexy, feminine clothes.
ReplyDeleteIt's impossible to fit into the norms when they are constantly shifting, true, but for the most part people don't fit into the norms perfectly. There is always at least a few things that are off and make someone feel outside of the group. i think the difference is in perfomativity. Many people will perform a norm because they have some larger aspect of that gender role or whatever it is and can fake the little stuff. When I was introduced to the concept of queer I was misled into believing that this was a community in which the perfomativity ceases to exist. I don't know whether we were all just too used to performing and couldn't function without it or whether it was just a lie--that the norms still very much existed, but they were created form within the community.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that most of they gay men you know are overweight--the gay men who I know are frequently tall and stick thin (due to a freaky-high metabolism or an eating disorder). They are not twinks by any means but fit the body stereotype associated with them. Body stereotypes are quite strange. I frequently wonder how society thinks I ought to dress since I would not label myself as fat, but I do not have the flat stomach that so many girls see have. I am certainly not complaining about my weight, but as far as body stereotypes go, where am I? I don't have clothing that is specially made to show (or aggressively hide) my body? I think I just get lumped into being that wanna be who is thrown into "thin" clothes, but doesn't look good in them.