Intersectional Femininity in the Queer Eye of the Beholder

musings on the utility of beauty

As of late, there is closer speculation and scrutiny on how womanhood and femininity are defined and understood. Recently it was described to me as a “political act,” to be a woman in this moment. I objected to this. But maybe it’s futile to resist; the politics of simply being are often inherent to the times. Meh, so be it.

A subject that’s always been of particular interest to me is the inevitability of the disconnect between how I perceive myself versus how I am perceived. I am, at any given moment, simultaneously thousands of people at once, and a different person to different people.

In simple terms, if my existence was a ray of pure, blinding light, “perception” acts a lot like a Prism. It scatters me into tiny fragments, and to some people I’m red and to others I’m violet, and maybe there are a few who see me in the same color but different shades. And still others are colorblind. Everyone is wrong and “right” at the same time, to different degrees, but it’s hard to prove either way. It is all only just perception.

And so the reality is, I am never going to have my authentic self match up with the version of me that people dream up in their heads. It’s just not going to happen. And that’s okay.

I touch on this in another essay, when describing the incongruence between my own self-image and the one that is projected back to me by friends, family and strangers:

Soft Launching Your Rebrand Tonite, Queen? 👀

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The other day, I came across an Instagram reel that posed an interesting question, one that I have asked myself years ago:

Are you black before you’re a woman? Or are you a woman before you’re black?

The reel has thousands of comments. Some of the top most liked ones are:

• “I’m a black woman I don’t understand this conversation” (22.1k likes)

• “If I’m around mainly black people, I’m a woman first. If I’m around mainly non-black people, I am black first.” (19.6k likes)

• “1. black woman 2. woman 3. black” (8.7k likes)

• “I’m a BLACK WOMAN because being one is an entirely separate and unique experience unlike any in this country.” (6.5k likes)

• “To me, a woman first. To the world, black.” (1.4k likes)

The last one sums up my perspective neatly. But I would like to talk more about what womanhood means to me, and how I have come into it.

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I know that from an outside perspective I am: black / woman / straight

But when I look at myself I see a woman first. Who is black. And bisexual. I am all these things at the same time but to me there’s always an order to it, always a layer of ‘this one informs the other, feeds the other’. There are days when it varies, but mostly it’s the same.

In my day to day life, I am reminded that I am a woman more times than I am specifically reminded that I am black. Generally the “reminders” are trivial things, like the bubble-gum scented shower gel I lather onto my skin as a proud token of my “stereotypical” femininity. I am reminded I am a woman when I shave my legs as part of my personal beauty regimen. When I schedule an appointment to get a brazilian wax. I am reminded as I contour my face, fill in my brows, pucker my lips. When I dress to accentuate my figure. When I get catcalled and leered at by men for existing in said figure. These things are markers and rituals of how I navigate an existence in this body. It’s not universal. It’s a personal relationship between myself & I.

Blackness, to me, is not as performative as femininity. There aren’t many things that make me feel “more” black by doing them, because that would imply there might be things I could do that would make me look or feel “less” black. I don’t have to qualify my race. I don’t have to view myself as “unapologetically” black when I participate in a certain habit or ritual or whatever else because there is no apology to give. Everything I do is ‘black’ by virtue of the fact that I, a black woman, am doing it. I don’t live an experience that actively reminds me that I am an Other, which I know to be a privileged position. But for this reason, my experience of blackness is often passive, accentuated by external perception.

My race and sexuality do, however, shape how my femininity — which I consider to be my core — is expressed. For example, yes, I style my hair as a ritual of womanhood. But when I’m putting on a headwrap at night, spritzing my tresses in oils and fluffing my curls, this is blackness intersecting with my position as a woman. Similarly, when I don a wig, I have to contend with the various racial assumptions and stereotypes strangers will attach to me according to their own biases. When I look at other girls and feel a three-way mix of envy, lust and admiration, that’s my sexuality informing how I navigate through the world as a woman who is attracted to other women. So in my eyes, I am a woman first — but there are levels.

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femininity is a social shorthand

• Gender is performative. 

• the whole point of gender is to uphold heteronormativity. If ‘man + women’ is the only acceptable combo, then it needs to be easy to identify who’s who...

• The idea that gender is biological or absolute means there are rules around who does or doesn’t count as what gender, and if there are rules then they have to be enforced. 

• to admit that there are no rules, or that there shouldn’t be, or to argue that the rules can be bent or rejected or changed, is to pretty much concede that gender isn’t inherent or essential, it’s simply a convenient shorthand for how society is structured; how bodies are expected to look, behave and be acted upon; and to whom what privileges are granted.

• in order for these rules to stick, a lot of effort (and money) goes into the Binary Agenda.

• these rules aren’t static and they tend to be contradictory,

• the rules sometimes get overly specific to the point of comedy, because everything is gendered suddenly: clothing. hobbies. colors. FOODS.¹

• and it would be funny, were it not for the fact that deviation from these rules is often punishable, with violence...

• The only reason the rules blur, you see, is because for the hetero woman, good news: there are still straight men willing to f**k you even if you do have—checks notes—body hair? A shaved head? Uh, piercings? (ad infinitum - replace ‘body hair’ with any taboo and an exception to the rule emerges so long as there is a man out there willing to overlook your flaws and bless you with a sexual encounter anyways, thank god 😮‍💨)

• attraction, in other words, is not monolithic - but this is what is meant by Shorthand of Gender: the archetypes and familiarities of a body’s design and function and who it is meant to signal 

• fact: bodies exist beyond the purpose of attracting a partner 

• but also what are the guidelines for attracting other kinds of partners outside the heteronormative paradigm?

• there is the obvious route of role reversal - of doing whatever the opposite of your assigned gender expectation is, of rejecting that compliance

• exhibits: the effeminate gay man, the butch lesbian

• But is there room to subvert gender without resorting to the extreme of the other end of the spectrum?

• what are the hallmarks, say, of a woman’s Femininity that seeks to attract women only (or primarily)?

• hyper-femininity, some might say, is an exemplary response: to caricature the tropes in a way that would annoy the cishet man but might intrigue anyone else beyond that scope

• and what are the tropes of that performance? Or any other performance seeking to achieve the same result? How does one come to recognize it? Those on the receiving end of it, how do we learn to pick up the cues without having media to teach us the subliminalities of queer flirting and attraction?

• And is it racialized, this subversion? Who does it belong to? Who is allowed to shape it? Who has the freedom to experiment and whose survival is reliant on compliance?

• And without this shorthand how will we find each other, and how are we to know ourselves, as much as the self can ever truly be known?

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Rowi Singh

Queer Eyes Realize Queer Eyes

There is a large online community of women grasping at an answer to this very question: what do girls want to see from other girls? They’ve chosen to illustrate different possibilities and tagged these videos as examples of “The Female Gaze.”

Now, I know that in truth The Female Gaze isn’t exactly a thing.

the female gaze doesn't exist

However, I’m less interested in disputing the validity of The Female Gaze and more in exploring the utility of the phrase, as there is clearly a gap in the accessibility of content exemplifying queer femininity and how to recognize it, which explains why this trend has gained traction.

If analyzed, the differences are interesting. In these videos², an outfit to “attract men” as a woman is typically tight-fitting, shorter in length, and emphasizes cleavage. By contrast, an outfit to “attract women” as a woman is typically baggier, or frilly with ruffles, showing little to no skin, with a greater emphasis on patterns, silhouettes, asymmetry and color.

Makeup to “attract men” is characterized by simplicity: natural eyeshadow, soft blush placement, gently accentuated lips and eyes. Makeup to “attract women” is avant garde, featuring dark and dramatic eyeliner, and bold color.

There’s a playfulness in queer femininity, it would seem. A breaking of the fourth wall in acknowledging what the expectations are and then rejecting them ever so slightly. Of course, this does not equate to a true subversion of patriarchal standards—in the same way that an English Creole is not a new language but a way of speaking shaped by the oppressive structures that necessitated its formation.

In understanding femininity as a performance designed to attract, it is only natural that women would want to experiment with ways to call to a different audience, even if they can’t fully exclude certain viewers from looking.

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Me as a Renaissance Oil Painting, via AI

welcome to the show

I am defined by my status as a woman. I believe my identity hinges on this detail more than it does anything else. Therefore, I have internalized what my culture expects from its women, I have internalized my displacement within such a culture, and have still managed to carve out a niche for myself within it nonetheless.

There was a point in time, in my adolescence, where I experimented with androgyny as I investigated ways to signal “queerness” outwardly and also as I attempted to explore my gender identity generally. (I was undoubtedly a girl, but there was still the question of what kind of girl I wanted to be.) Eventually, I came to realize I didn’t quite need to abandon “girliness” altogether, that I didn’t even need to embrace neutrality, but instead, I could lean in further—I could be more feminine. And I learnt that there was some armor in this, that my presentation would influence how others regarded me (particularly men) and function as a makeshift protective layer. Realizing this, I reworked my self-image to one that would be quickly recognizable to a wide spectrum of people: that of a princess, of a magical girl.

Upon settling on a thematic aesthetic, I shopped with decisiveness as I updated my wardrobe, I developed a “signature” makeup look (basically lots of blush and lots of glitter), I adopted a softer tone of voice and a no-cursing policy. And I embraced everything pink. With these changes, I finally felt the most in control of my image I had ever been—now when someone looked at me, the conclusions they drew were likelier to align with my self-paradigm. Recognizing that I was playing the role of a “Princess,” people often acted in accordance with those social cues, and regarded me as such.

To quote

Valerie

:

Beyond the obvious purpose of curated self-presentation, does a narrative even matter? It does — if not the reality of it, then at least the intent. Consider this: your narrative is not for others, it’s for you. The manifestation aspect of crafting a story about yourself you can be proud of cannot be downplayed. I think — therefore I tell — therefore I am. It’s not something in the metaphysical realms, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: your narrative is an instrument of determinism and a playbook for how you’re going to show up in certain circles and spaces. — how to be perceived

Everytime I step into the world, I play dress up. I understand how this would be exhausting to others, so I do not fault anyone for rejecting the demand to perform. It is grueling when forced. Rejection of the charade is everyone’s right, though I understand how my participation in the game obfuscates that.³ I wish it didn’t. I have found joy in dressing up and safety as well, and I am attached to the performance now that I’ve perfected it. It is no longer an act but simply my preferred way to exist.

Existing will always be a complicated, layered thing — I can never correct or counter all the ways I am misperceived against my will. Furthermore, I do not endeavor to. If I must exist, I choose to embrace the performance, and in doing so, I’ve stopped focusing on the Prism in favor of reminding myself to be The Light.

1. Seriously, gendering food is the most obvious sign that the agenda has gone too far. Man-approved foods include meat and beer, while woman can expect to find salad, wine and dessert on the menu. Can we all agree this is absurd?!

2. Fashion Videos: Example 1. Example 2. Example 3. Makeup Videos: Example 1. Example 2. Example 3.

3. Barbie Has Cellulite (But You Don't Have To)

Read this in full, but I’m referring specifically to this sentiment:

An individual may be willing to take on these risks for themselves — if they are aware of them at all — but in doing so, they increase the pressure others feel to assume these risks, too. This is not a judgment, but a statement on the observable mechanics of beauty culture. It’s just how it works. The more people opt in to a particular beauty standard, the more normalized it is. The more normalized it is, the more difficult it is for others to opt out without facing emotional, social, financial, and political consequences.