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

[sofiaviolet]

My workday usually involves a lot of sitting, so my feet don't generally hurt. But I have to move boxes and climb on step-stools and I really should be wearing more stable shoes for that. I have Doc Martens loafers and have been able to get away with seriously casual shoes as well. The heels are either "well fuck, I don't have anything else that goes with this outfit" or a workaround for pants that are too long.

True story: I wore peep-toe heels that were a full size too small to prom. /o\

I have the same problem with the layers of nail. :( I wish I knew what caused it. On the other hand (heh), my mother's nails are so strong she has used them for driving screws on occasion.

[cleverthylacine]

peeptoes a size too small? omg sounds MISERABLE.

I wonder what your mom eats that we don't.