Lazy Femme

[sofiaviolet]

As mentioned in this earlier post of mine:

I want to write about "lazy femme," which is what I call my gender presentation. In short: I like things like skirts and makeup, but I don't generally bother with these more effortful bits of gendered plumage.

I like femininity. I like pink and glitter and high heels and lace and whatever. That kind of stuff is fun to play with; I'm also attracted to femininity in other people.

I am not, however, very good at doing femininity. I lack makeup skills. My hair is long? And dyed? As for body hair, I remain uncommitted to the "fuck shaving!" stance, and shaving is the least of the evils and even that results in nasty razor burn half the time. Dresses are at least easier than skirts: less matching and coordinating required. I suck at walking in heels unless I'm really thinking about it. I could go on...

So, I'm not good at femininity past a certain level. And presenting as femme isn't that important to me, so I spend my efforts elsewhere. But I will still do that presentation, when I feel like it.

Sometimes the amount of effort I can expend on my presentation is curtailed by depression. I pushed myself to dress a lot more femme this summer; Doing Things can be good for managing my depression, and Doing Femme encouraged me to leave the house and Do Other Things (and Doing Other Things helped with the push to Do Femme). Ultimately, I would like to shift from this semi-binary method of managing my presentation, to a more general Thinking About Style every day.

My reaction to a New Het Relationship seems to be a desire to Be A Giant Girl. So when I visited C., I planned on doing femme full-time for a week. I packed one pair of jeans (the +8 Confidence pair, of course) - the rest was skirts and dresses. And absolutely zero practical shoes. I packed makeup! And then I arrived and it didn't matter. I never unpacked the makeup. I wore the dresses because that's what I had, but the need to be All Femme All The Time evaporated. It's not like we had some kind of serious discussion about my gender presentation, but he just seemed to have been expecting me-as-I-usually-am, and was a bit confused, though not displeased, about getting me-being-very-femme. My "how do I present today?" decisions were firmly back in my own hands. It was awesome.

Not that I'm done with my happy fun femme-y times! I am going to experiment with tights this year, to extend my skirt-wearing season into colder months. I am reading some femme blogs! I have not stopped buying skirts, nor have I disposed of my shoe collection; they continue to be very much loved even if they don't get as much wear as they perhaps should. I will continue to tweak my presentation as needed for my own happiness and comfort.

To sum up: I guess I'm kinda sorta femme? Why am I not more femme? Because it's haaaaaaard. Therefore: lazy femme. The end.*

* This is a really sketchy and disjointed post; there may be more later. For now, it is done, but please feel welcome to ask for any clarifications and expansions in the comments.

Comments

[melannen]

I am always boggled by the people who do things like shave (it's not even mostly a principle thing at this point, just I'm way too lazy), do stuff to their hair, and own make-up, but think skirts are hard.

Ya'll actually vaguely femmey women must have a very different concept of what skirts are, because skirts are what I wear when I'm *not* putting in any effort. I have a collection of mid-calf to ankle length skirts that are wide enough to sit cross-legged in, and mostly have pockets. They are the best thing in the world. They're comfortable, they're easy to adapt to the weather with layers - I agree with the above about running shorts, tights, and knee socks, and if the skirt's long enough you can even get away with sweatpants - they're femme-y and don't read as baggy/slouchy, and yet concealing enough that I don't really have to worry at all about how I look under them (+1 much less likely to stain if I'm spotting), and the same skirt can be either super casual or semiformal business wear, depending on whether I wear it with a t-shirt and work boots or Mary Janes and a nice jacket.

[moizissimo]

I'm starting to make my skirts with pockets! Why don't more womens clothes have pockets?! (This is a general complaint of mine..)

I prefer just-below-the-knee skirts, as I do things like hiking, trail running, cycling, and climbing fences and/or trees in them. This is why running shorts underneath are a must in the summer! I used to wear longer skirts, but they mostly got in the way. It's why I'm loving a fuller a-line skirt right now instead of my usual pencil skirts, too!

A nice thing is those just-below-the-knee exercise pants. Either gathered or loose at the cuff. They work really well under skirts, with or without knee socks.

[azurelunatic]

Oh god yes, shorts. I have located these lovely soft cotton shorts with POCKETS (sadly, from Walmart, in the men's department) and wear them under everything, by which I mean skirts.

[sofiaviolet]

See, my taste in skirts runs to knee-length and fancy. And miserably lacking in pockets, ugh. Even if I do usually dress them down with my enormous collection of Hello Kitty t-shirts, there's a certain sense that they are Nice Clothes. But I'm willing to wear nice pants even when the situation doesn't require it; I can probably train myself to do that with skirts too.