thelesbianlifestyle.com

i can not tell you how pissed off i was last night. i mean seriously filled with rage to the point that i was going to hop in my car on a monday night at 11pm and go kick some serious ass. how dare you fucking tell me that i look like a lesbian? what the fuck is wrong with you? do you need to go to the eye doctor? i most certainly do not look like a lesbian. i just don’t.
why am i so insulted? why am i so pissed off? why does that bother me so much?

the person that i was talking to said that she looks like a lesbian at first glance and she was happy about it. happy about it? why would you be happy about it? why would you want people to view you as a lesbian at first sight? why am i yelling angry questions at you right now?

i got off the phone fuming with those angry steam vapors coming off of my body like a cartoon character. “oh, ok, you think that i look like a lesbian. ain’t that some shit. i mean, i wear lipstick and skirts and makeup and can walk in heels and never wear bad shoes or a questionable track suit, shave my legs, would never be caught dead with a bad hairstyle and pluck my eyebrows. what is she thinking, seriously, what is she thinking?” i think that i growled and passed out into a restless sleep filled with dreams of ani difranco concerts and being a vegetarian.

i woke up exhausted and starving. i obviously was not satisfied with my new vegetarian dream lifestyle and was craving a steak and a kelly clarkson concert. i shuffled off to the shower with thoughts of why i was so mad at her for calling me that. she said that i looked like a lesbian. why was that such a problem for me and was being a lesbian predetermined from the start? i think that when i hear that someone looks like a lesbian, i think about all of the stereotypes that i have in my head of bad mullets, pleated shorts, cologned instead of perfumed, carabiners hanging from the belt loop, awful crocs on their feet, a hairstyle that more resembles a hat than hair and just a general butchy way of being. i am a woman, goddamnit, all fucking woman. how dare she? does she not see that i am feminine-ish?

the other night when i was hanging out with my boys and met one of their boyfriends, i suppose that he had said something to the boyfriend about me, you know, trying to describe me. he said that he couldn’t really “put me in a box”, as it were. i looked at him and said that i was happy about that, but if i HAD to describe myself, i would probably say that i was a soft butch but more like a hard femme. i do rock a cute pair of sporty shorts and enjoy a hoodie with flip flops but do those outfits make me look like a lesbian? ugh.

in the shower and really for the rest of the day, this topic ate at me. was it more about the clothes and the short hairstyle than anything, and if that was the case, is this my mom’s fault? so, i started thinking, do straight girls look straight and that is why they turn out straight? if i looked straight when i was little would i then not be gay? if my mom didn’t cut my hair with a flowbee into a dorothy hamill hairdo and have me dress in the best “toughskins” that sears put out, would i have turned out straight just because i appeared straight? no, that is ridiculous. but, how is it that most straight ladies seem to dress the same? do they secretly want to rock a concert t shirt, jeans and doc martens rather than spaghetti straps with a skirt and sassy heels? do straight girls really look all that different from us? god, what am i even saying, what am i thinking? i don’t want to be a lesbian? is this why i got so upset at the notion that i walk around oblivious to the fact that people point and stare and whisper, “look at that lesbian, it’s so sad that she doesn’t know.”

all of this thinking reminded me of something that someone i used to know, said last summer, she said and i quote, “i don’t want to look like a lesbian, i want to look pretty.” i can’t tell you the uproar that that caused as she just so happened to be hanging out with about 8 lesbians. i believe the general consensus statement was, “wtf.” have i turned into her? is that why i was so insulted at the notion that people in the world would see me and say, “oh, sure, she is definitely a lesbian”. did that now mean to me that i wasn’t feminine or pretty? to be fair, the person that i was in the conversation with last night said that neither one of those things were true. she said that i was both feminine and pretty but i could no longer hear her words, only that i appeared lesbian. i wanted to appear straight until proven guilty. what is wrong with me?

the other thing that i have noticed is that i know and have known some lesbians that wear appearing straight as a badge of honor with statements like, “people never know i am a lesbian until i tell them and no one ever suspects me of being a lesbian or people think i am straight.” are they also hating that they are gay or do they have it stuck in their head, as maybe i do, that straight equals pretty and feminine and lesbian equals not? why does it make me cringe at the idea that i am walking around obviously gay?
the thing is, and there is nothing wrong with this if this is how you want to present yourself and what makes you comfortable and happy, but i guess i went all “stone butch blues” in my head. as if, by her telling me last night that i am obviously a lesbian, it meant that i was lumped with all of those stereotypes that i also have about lesbians. to be fair, dear lesbians, you do make these stereotypes come true as i witnessed all over the place last weekend. i am not them and that is not what she was saying. i am not man-ish and super butch but i am also not exactly passing as a straight girl. although, if i had turned out straight, i have to say that i would probably dress exactly the same. or would i? do straights get together and influence each other’s style of dressing and hair just as it seems that lesbians do? would i be in the club wearing fuck me pumps and a brief summer dress or would i be rocking some shorts, a revealing top and my favorite flip flops? things to think on.

what does all of this mean? i guess what it means is that i mistook her comment for meaning that i am a man or butch and not all woman the way that i think that i am. i felt that my femininity was in question and it isn’t. i think it also means that i am deeply entrenched in the ideas of stereotypes of my own people and that kind of sucks. i need to work on that. i also think that i need to think on what being a lesbian means to me and if i have a problem with it. do i have a problem with it? if i am honest, if we had the power to “choose” to be gay the way some right wing asshole christians think we do, i don’t know if i would choose this. however, i didn’t “choose” this, it chose me. the only thing that i chose to do was be who i was born to be and that is a sassy haircutted, sometimes lipstick wearing, sometimes skirt wearing, board short and sports bra bathing suit rocking, softball playing, pedicure getting, eyebrow plucking, concert t shirt and cargo short wearing hard femme lesbian.
there is no good video for this song which truly blows. girls, i love them, in all kinds of shapes and sizes, including myself. enjoy.

Sent in from Bridget
Age: 39
Location: philadelphia

Who writes: my pants won’t stay up