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

[cxcvi]

There is a rather sketchy and disjointed reply that's trying to form in my head, but it's leaning towards being an "ask me anything" question, and I've already asked you one of those...

[moizissimo]

I totes understand about being lazy. I wear skirts and t-shirts 99% of the time, mostly because finding nice pants or jeans that fit sucks. But I wear them with hiking sandals in the summer, and ankle boots, or hiking boots, or converse-style sneakers in the rainy season.

When it's cold, I trade in my running shorts (worn under the skirts!) for tights and knee socks. Layers = good.

Unsolicited

[pinesandmaples]

I feel compelled to point out that heels != the only femme shoes on the planet.
My wife is a complete and total femme who cannot wear heels for medical reasons, so we've devoted the last year and a half to finding sexy, cute, comfortable, femmey flats with great success. Having really cute, femmey flats is a great way to do femme-lite (which is what you seem to be going for here) without the pain (physical or mental).

Aliyah also wants to add that getting a new hairstyle (instead of a cut) can make you into more of a femme with less work. Having hair that always looks femme because that's the way it's supposed to look instead of requiring your time to do something to it works wonders. (I can provide pictorial evidence if that's required. Aliyah went through a long-hair phase with a series of styles that made her look like she had sex hair constantly; it was AWESOME.)

[zulu]

*nods* This is really interesting. For myself, whenever I've worn dresses or even skirts, it's been "dressing up" in my mind--it's a costume. I don't know how to do make up or walk in heels, and if I could just wear jeans and sneakers for the rest of my life, I'd be happy. But I don't think I connect with either the butch or the femme side of that particular divide, and in fact I don't even know if that's necessarily a binary/continuum.

Anyway, disjointed! Like you say! But these are the thoughts I had.

[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.

[cleverthylacine]

I don't think you're so much a lazy femme as a smart one. Heels (especially high ones) are really really bad for you, and I don't think people who don't find them comfortable SHOULD wear them. I mean, my stepmother, occultebelta and lindensphinx are comfortable in them, but I can look at those three women and see how given their similar body types they're okay in them, but I have bad ankles and knees and weigh more than I look and I wobble. So I only wear low heels and flats, and you can get shoes of this nature that are totally cute and feminine.

I also don't wear makeup as often as I used to (and I never wore it often) because I find that when I wear makeup I look my age, which is horrifying as most people wear it to look younger. I look younger without it because too much of it is damaging to the skin, so I don't look as old as people who wear it constantly.

Until I can actually afford a professional makeup consultation to find out how to wear makeup in a way that will make me look 28-30 as I normally do instead of 46, I'm not going to bother much. (Cue angry feminists telling me I should be proud I'm 46. I actually am proud I've lived this long, and I understand that the way people treat me when they can tell I'm 46 by looking is a social problem, but since I can avoid having to deal with that, I'm going to. Also 99% of men my own age annoy me because they don't understand about rape culture and enthusiastic consent and are set in their ways and resistant to being trained not to tease or generally annoy me and not to touch me or encroach on my space without my enthusiastic consent. I like it that I generally attract men who are young enough not to say horrible things about their ex-wives all the time and whose heads are still somewhat retractable from their anuses.)

IDK. I am never going to like my body hair and not shave because I have really dark hair and really light skin. I think a lot of people who are uniformly fair or dark look fine if they don't shave, but black hair + white skin? Is like, obvious from 20 feet away, and I don't want an obvious mustache because I am femme, not butch.

I also like my nails short.

So. I wear really cute, often impractical, designer flats and boots and low heels, and skirts and dresses, and not much makeup, and anyone who says I am not particularly femme because I don't wear stilettos and have claws and warpaint can go fuck themselves :)