At a dinner party with my closest friends the other night I announced that I am a heterosexual woman trapped inside the body of a lesbian. Truth be told, I am actually more complex than that even, I am a diva trapped inside the body of a housewife trapped inside the body of a heterosexual woman trapped inside the body of a lesbian. I'm like a neurotic matrioshka doll. (That is the name of those Russian nesting dolls for those of you who like me who only see them in souvenir stores. With so much going on inside of me, no wonder I take up so much counter space). When I announced this epiphany my mother reacted in horror, my friends were nervous or angry or something more complicated that is rooted in their earliest primal memories. As I tried to explain, they began to make jokes and one announced that she felt insulted. It is odd to me that after knowing me for so long they would find this announcement confusing. They should know that as a mother of 4, I do not take things like this lightly and would never just glibly announce it without having thought it out carefully. They should know that this revelation has nothing whatsoever to do with sexual orientation but instead has everything whatsoever to do with wardrobe and body image.
I was once an attractive and fit woman (once, for about 19 minutes... ok, well I exaggerate it was for a long time but I was never satisfied with my appearance so it does not count). I am now a bumpy woman. I have lots of bumps where my lots of children used to live. I like those bumps. They are soft to lie on and since I sing well enough to have gotten paid to do it and since I generously breast feed; my children have lived my dream by having a very soft piece of furniture you can eat from that surrounds you with music when you are not napping. This bumpy road side rest I call my body has given me 4 healthy children over the last 19 years and even paid out one last time recently with a seamless pregnancy culminating in a flawless baby in my 40th year. My husband is one of those weird guys who loves me for me, insides and outsides and has no complaints. My body has been really patient with me over the years no matter how I have tried to squeeze it, contort it, starve it or work it into submission. Having recently reconciled with my body over a nasty low back issue (it's all behind me now), I have finally made peace with my body. It is strong and healthy. I have no complaints. And yet, it looks weird in clothes.
I have lost the ability to tell if it looks any weirder than any other woman my age. I can't tell because women who are a mere shadow of my formidable self are dying to be thinner (literally). These women on diets are my "after" picture and so I can either forsake these women on this issue or I can forsake my body. I am no longer in the fellowship of accordian women whose waistlines go in and out as the carbs go in and out, I must break these bonds that keep me tied to the yo-yo diet strings and seek other perspectives. I have never met a woman who was ok with her body unless she just liked women's bodies in general. And those women whom I have met who have liked women's bodies in general, in particular, and in all kinds of other interesting ways, have a lot in common with men. I am not lascivious enough to discuss this from a sexual angle, it makes me feel a little crawly and think about body parts instead of people and I am trying to stay on topic here; my favorite topic here; me and me, in clothes. So, back to the party.
I told everyone I am a heterosexual woman trapped inside a lesbian's body not because I wanted to do anything sexual one way or the other (I have had enough of that for now and have enough of that for now which is why I don't feel a need to discuss it). When I said I was trapped inside a lesbian's body it was a fashion statement. I find that as a bumpy woman there are few items of clothing available to me. I could wear dresses but they make me look like an end table or somebody's aunt. I don't want that. I am not all that conservative so I could pick the tye-dyed, bra-less, bumpy celebration look, but I attend a conservative church and drive a mini-van. I am not prepared for the contradiction. There are conservative cut blouses and capris and stretchy trendy slacks, but words like "blouse", "capris" and "slacks" make me itch. And so I pick the only option I can live with, the "I am far too busy and deep to give such things much thought, I am putting others first and all I care about is getting from A to B in my jeans with a clever t-shirt covering most of my bumpy parts" look. Hence, the lesbian body and the men's clothes on that lesbian body.
Remember "Girls Gone Wild" fans, the lesbian body is not doing anything but wearing men's clothes. You seem to keep stumbling over this concept. I know I could pick another word but "Lesbian" sounds so much hipper and scandalous and bold than "matronly" doesn't it? So I'll ask you one more time, please leave the sex out of it, we are not discussing that right now. How people have sex has no place in the sexual orientation discussion.
So, back to fashion. I see three clear choices, right, wrong, and wronger. "Right" is what you are supposed to look like. "Wrong" is what you probably do look like and "wronger" is trying to look "right" wrong or looking "wrong" even though you are right for you on the inside but you are afraid to look wrong so you dress wrong for you and end up wrong even though you are doing what is right. (Yes grammar police, I know "wronger" is wrong). In my case right is right, wrong is lesbian, wronger is matronly.
Perhaps you are not convinced that a bumpy person like me (after all that is the only bumpy person I am talking about) has so few options. Let me illustrate my point by looking at the animal kingdom. (Oh good, I have always loved to draw animals). If you had to dress the animals in the zoo, you would put the flamingo in the high boots and short skirt every time. With a tight fitting spaghetti-strapped halter and a beaded necklace she would look so hot it might tempt a man (or a lesbian) to jump the species taboo. Try putting the same get-up on the manatee and you have an eye sore. Got a short skirt? Try to imagine it on a hippo, from behind. Euuww! That is just profane. Now, slip it on the ostrich with just the right amount of white feathered ruffle sticking out underneath and you can't take your eyes off her. But what can the hippo wear, you may ask? I'm glad you did because I am about to make my point. If she is past the age of 60 it is ok to put her in a dress and do her hair in a bun and call her Aunt Bee. If she is younger than that just put her in a sweat suit or a pair of jeans with a long t-shirt with a funny saying on it. Now she is not someone you expect to bake you yummy things (and will resent if her cooking sucks) but is instead, a quirky funny somebody you might look past the clothes to get to know. Still not convinced? How about the cheetah? Sleek form fitted spandex, just cries for respect. Same get up on a cow...and you have a bovine that just cries over spilled milk (as in her udders are spilling out all over the top of that spandex top and not in a good way). Now, put a pair of jeans on her with a "GOT MILK!!!" T-shirt and here's a gal who can laugh at herself and someone we'd want to have a drink with (or AT, in this case).
I feel that some of you are still hung up over labels and not the important designer labels I am trying to draw your attention to. "Lesbian" to me means so much more than just what I choose to wear in the morning. It means "screw you if you judge me by my appearance (but in my case, I soften it to say "screw you if you judge me NEGATIVELY by my appearance"). "Lesbian" means, "I am more than my bumps and will not let your one-size-fits all society deprive me of fun things like roller coasters, bathing suits and ice-cream in public" (all three at once would be ideal). "Lesbian" means, "if you hold a door open for me when I have a great pair of udders and just the right amount of tail feather you better be opening the door for me if I have a dorsal fin and answer to the name "Willy". It is just nice and right to do no matter what those feminists might say!". (I am contradicting my terms aren't I?) "Lesbian" means "if you shout "WOO" at someone and wag your tongue around while your eyes roll back in your head, you had better be having a seizure".
Whether it is post traumatic sex syndrome or a platform for my shoes, this is my battle cry. And for all of these reasons I am happier now than when I was a heterosexual woman trapped inside the body of a heterosexual woman. I am not as fast a runner as I was then, but I find I don't need to run anymore. I am not as cute as I used to be but cute is never cute enough and took too long to do and so I spent a lot of time getting cute then looking to see if I was still cute and then wondering why if I was so cute, life was not magically delicious and then wrongly concluding that it was because I was not cute ENOUGH that I was still not content. (And never once stopped to think it might be because weirdos were "whooing" and wagging at me) and so I would just work harder to be cute enough to not have to put up with the stress being cute caused that I thought was being caused by not being cute enough. (yes, grammar police I know that was possibly a run-on but that's what the race to be cute causes you to do, run on and on).
Perhaps I am saying much more than I know I am or want to be saying. Perhaps there is another something trapped inside the body of something else, that I have yet to reveal, but I am fairly certain this is really about clothes and body image and not about being a lesbian which I am fairly certain is not caused by what you wear. I have nothing for or against lesbians (and no lesbians were harmed in the writing of this piece) I just don't really care about what they do or don't do sexually..as long as they do it in the dark...with one foot on the floor..with a Barry White CD on... (that was tongue in cheek by the way, and no, not tongue in ear so please for the last time, stop going there). In other words, nobody does it "that way" whatever "that way" is. My informal research has taught me that we are all very weird in our own way. How you or anybody else is weird is none of my business (and don't make it my business by wagging and "wooing" at me or my kids). I don't want it to be my kids' business or ANY kid's business. Since I am weird, I don't want it (whatever "it" is) to be my business (or my pleasure) so I don't really want to know about it.
This topic is controversial no matter whom I speak to because I have dear friends who are wearing blue states and dear friends who wear red states (purple has always been my favorite color). Frankly, I don't really care any more who did what/how/who to what/how/whom with a rope in the study with Colonel Mustard. I only really care about me/mine/ours and with what/how/whom we are doing what/how/who and more importantly what we are wearing at the time. You can bet that unless something miraculously and deliciously smooths out my bumps, I'll probably be wearing jeans and a funny t-shirt or looking extremely uncomfortable in "big girl" clothes, feeling like a rhino in a rhinestone thong.
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