On Femininity

I was recently reading an article about a queer woman in the Sunday New York Times. It caught my eye because I have difficulty understanding the modern definition of “queer” – and maybe that is how it is supposed to be; the very essence of queerness, it seems, is that it does not fit nicely along the sex/gender spectrum. We live in a bi-lateral universe – male/female; gay/straight; man/woman; black/white. Queerness throws that universe off its axis and sends it hurdling into unknown space.

The author of the article was born female and identified as a heterosexual female, but not necessarily as a woman. She explained that she hated her womanly body, hated her breasts because they screamed to the world that she was a WOMAN and therefore you should treat her differently than you do a man. Because of this, she would bind her chest and give her hair a buzz-cut; she would wear men’s jeans to hide her hips and men’s shirts to hide what even the tightest chest binder could not fully eliminate. Eventually, she had a double mastectomy. Not because she had cancer, although she had prayed for it in order to have what society deemed an acceptable reason for one, but because she truly hated her breasts. She wanted to appear androgynous.

I’ll be blunt: I love my breasts. To quote Teri Hatcher from her guest role on Seinfeld, “they’re real and they’re spectacular”. My breasts have always been good to me, balancing out my lower body and enhancing my figure, even when it was less of an hourglass and more potato shaped. My breasts make me feel feminine, which is easy – I love all things feminine – as well as beautiful, which is not so easy because I struggle with body dysmorphia; where others see beauty, I see flaws. Except with my breasts; my breasts are perfect, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through life hating something that is so essentially a part of me.

Reading – and re-reading – the aforementioned NYT article gave me a better understanding of the how and why this woman did not want to look feminine, an attitude that used to offend me, an attitude that felt like a slap in my face because I prize and revel in my own femininity. I am not just one of the guys. Nor do I wish to be one of the guys. Yes, I am woman, hear me "ROAR!" but I am also a lady and it is a balance that is becoming more and more difficult to preserve in a world that demands we choose to be either/or and not both.

I’ll accept you just as you are if you accept me just as I am. Deal?

KJM.

06.18.2018