Reddit /r/femme
I don’t think femme is just about how you dress. I wear tights and skirts and makeup and show off my boobs because that’s what I’m most comfortable wearing. I wear dresses and l like to take my femininity to extreme sometimes, but I wear mary janes instead of high heels. I’m fucking cute.
My room is decorated orange and purple, and is littered with nail polish, clothes, books, dinosaur toys, peacock feathers, necklaces and hats hung on the walls, and lots of pictures of old timey kittens and illustrations of vaginas and pinup girls and lots of other cute shit.
My personality is a bit closed. I like to knit and do needle felting and sew and I’m thinking about taking up embroidery. I care about fashion, although it’s hard to feel like I show it enough because I am a big girl and clothes that look good and fit are expensive and hard to come by. I pretend I like to climb trees but in reality I suck at it. I do, however, like to play in the mud (still, at 23). I don’t expect it, but it makes me swoon when SOs hold open the door for me, or want to pay for dinner, or light my cigarette for me, or want to take care of me in a “you are a princess” way. It makes me giddy as shit. I try to return the favour by cooking for them and making them art - I like it better when that is the kind of thing my SO appreciates because that’s what I’m good at.
I think when most “butch” girls have a struggle with coming to terms with being more “butch” as a child etc, I struggled with coming to terms with being feminine as a child. I had two older brothers and a whole world of extremely feminine women in my extended family. I mean, the kind that are always talking about the diet they’re on, or trying to get girls to wear heels at age 10, and sunbathing, and reading people magazine. I always thought I wasn’t feminine because I wasn’t like that and I didn’t want to dress like them. I wanted to play in the mud and go swimming in my clothes, I liked painting my nails but I didn’t want to wear heels, and they made me extremely self conscious about my body. I had older brothers, and I thought they were cool, so I wanted to be like them (this means I spent a lot of time drawing butts and trying to climb trees).
I’m not always and elegant, graceful intimidating femme (although I can fake it). I’m clutzy and cute and awkward - but I also have a very serious defensive wall up that keeps me from expressing that part of myself to a lot of people, so I don’t seem so girly to some.
It’s also a bit of a political statement, when I get dressed up and go out and see my family, I like the way they look at me. The ones with their heads too deep into a magazine can’t see it, but the others admire and envy my confidence. They don’t need to say it, I can see it in their eyes. I am saying, I do not need to be your kind of woman to be striking. Blowin’ their minds, man.
It’s not just the way I dress that makes me femme, and it’s not just the way butches dress that makes me attracted to them. It’s why I dress femme that makes me femme, and it’s why butches dress butch that makes me attracted to them. (To be fair, I love saucy genderqueer girls the most).
I think anyone who thinks the butch/femme dynamic is necessary in a lesbian/queer relationship is silly. It’s a fun thing to play with a bit.
It doesn’t have anything to do with being a top or bottom either, although it’d be nice if we could have such outward messaging about our sexuality - because like femme girls who find themselves dressing butch to attract the girls they like, I’m a bottom whose finding myself acting top to attract the girls I like. Not enough tops in the queer girl world!
How do you know if you’re butch or femme? Do some self exploration and experiment, and pay attention to how you feel. It goes deeper than “Do I want to wear a skirt or pants today?”.