ask, and you shall receive
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And the summer is plodding by.
I’ve been in a bit of a weird mood the past two weeks. Hence the prolonged quiet here. I’ve been having trouble pin-pointing its origin, but whatever it is is making me feel dull, listless, uninspired, disconnected. And the mere fact that I’m in this funk is making me cranky on top of it all, because I’m on summer vacation, dammit. I have time and energy out the wazoo, so what’s wrong with me? Ye olde depression is raring its ugly head.
I’m lacking process. I started seeing a career coach because I’ve been having cold feet about graduate school and feeling in general like following my gut doesn’t do it for me. I need more of sense of order in my life about things. And I’m worried that grad school will turn out just like undergrad — I’ll love it, and I’ll be super happy while there, but then once I’m spit out, degree in tow, I’ll just land haphazardly. I need more of a sense of purpose.
That’s it. Purpose. I lack purpose. And so I’m sort of drifting aimlessly this summer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s really nice. I read a lot, I go on lots of walks/hikes around the city with a friend who has afternoons off, I cook (a LOT) and bake (a LOT) and organize my home… I planted an herb garden and harvested the first basil last week. I found an artisan no-knead bread recipe that’s easy as pie (which, come to think, isn’t that easy… so maybe it’s easy as … brownies-from-a-mix?). I’ve been working at the rape crisis center several days a week, and I love the people there. On the surface, everything seems like it’s perfect. Idyllic.
But yeah, purpose. I’m missing inspiration, drive. A reason to get up in the morning. Something that makes me really excited, something beyond the insular projects I do that don’t have a particular direction (like cooking, volunteering, going on walks). I need goals. Something to work towards.
And I guess because of that lack, I’ve been having a hard time writing. I’ve lost my sense of purpose about this blog, too. What am I doing here? Writing a personal journal? Stream of consciousness, whatever comes to mind? Am I writing a coherent series of personal essays about queer and sexual identity? Am I writing an ode to my relationship? What? I’m confused, and I’m worried I’ve gotten off track, started writing to fulfill expectations (but whose?) rather than writing to capture an essence of something real. This isn’t an issue so much of what I have written, but rather of what I haven’t written. Everything I write here is genuine, it’s me. But I haven’t been writing as much lately, largely because I get stymied, paralyzed by self-consciousness. It’s only when I successfully box the self-consciousness that I manage to write a post.
But here’s the thing. I love this place. I love it too much to leave it, and so instead I’m going to try to re-establish a sense of purpose for myself here. A purpose will give me a sense of direction, a reason to write. So while I’m not sure at the moment what the purpose is, I had an idea of where to start. I’m going to start by putting something real here, something to help me re-connect.
So:
My name is Eva. Hi, y’all.
I’m discovering that contentment is rather boring, or maybe it’s just that I’m not skilled enough as a writer to make it sound interesting. Suffice it to say, my life has been pretty, well, content. I’m doing pretty much exactly what I was hoping to this summer: cooking every day, baking, reading, working at the women’s building, cleaning and organizing, doing statistics work… It’s all pretty dull, really. There are a few things, though, that I haven’t been doing that are frustrating me.
1) I haven’t been writing here nearly enough, and I miss it. Originally, I had thought I would start every day by writing, but that hasn’t been possible mostly because I’m still too groggy in the morning to sit down and write. And not only that, but a post will often take me an hour or two or three to write up, and once I’ve done that and looked at the clock and find out it’s already 11, I feel guilty that I’ve been sitting around for that long. I haven’t yet gotten to the psychological place where I see this blog as a job, rather than as an indulgence. Last week I figured out that what might help is starting out my mornings with exercise, instead of writing, so that by the time I sit down to write at 9, I’ll have already gotten moving and burned some energy, and I’ll feel more ready to focus on writing. I’m going to try that.
And, gee, this is still boring, isn’t it?
2) I haven’t been getting out and about enough. I’ve been staying pretty occupied at home, it’s true, but no matter how productive I’m being and no matter how much I’m doing that I want to be doing, it still feels unproductive to spend the whole day around the house. I need to get out more. And although I know that intellectually, I have a really hard time putting that passive knowledge into immediate action. The truth is, I’m not quite sure what to do about this. I’ve tried setting specific times to do specific things (“at 2 o’clock I’m going to go up Bernal Hill with my camera”) but often, 2 o’clock comes and I’m engrossed in something else and I think “oh I’ll just do that tomorrow.” Then the end of the day comes, and I feel guilty and frustrated that I didn’t just do it. I’m a creature of inertia, I guess. I tend to just keep moving in the direction I’m already moving. If it keeps going like this, all these vague ideas I’m having about Things I Want To Do This Summer (start a back porch herb garden, climb as many staircases as I can, take free walking tours of the city) are going to wind up in my Not Done pile at the end of the summer. That depresses me. How do I combat this?
I have several things that I’m going to put into effect in the next week, and maybe they’ll help. One is, a friend of mine has reduced summer hours, and has asked if I want to be her “activity buddy” in the afternoons. Not every afternoon, maybe twice a week, but that’s enough that I will feel more active and adventurous. Not to mention social. So we can make plans together and be accountable to each other in keeping them. (Why do I have such a hard time being accountable to myself?)
Another is, I’m going to plan to post here three times a week, on the days that I don’t go to the women’s building — Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Planning that way makes posting here concrete, something specific to accomplish on those days that I’ll be at home in the mornings. Maybe some days they’ll be short posts, if I’m working on another project that day, or have afternoon plans. But I really want to try to stick to that schedule, and by stating so here, I’m hoping to cultivate that sense of accountability in myself.
And the last thing is, I’d really like to start an exercise routine in the mornings. ML gets up at 6:15 after all, and I’ve been waking up with her. I hate those hours between 7 and 9, when I feel like I’m too sleepy and half-awake to do anything productive, and besides, the streets haven’t woken up yet. (I’m not a morning person, y’all. Although I am remarkably cheerful in the mornings. Just ask ML who, by the way, is totally cranky-pants in the mornings.) But going out for a run or to an early-morning yoga class or even just for a brisk walk would be a good way to start out the day. I’m going to plan to do that on the same days I blog. Three days a week. Should be doable, yeah?
I’m boring myself to tears now. This post sounds a bit melancholy, doesn’t it? No? Yes? I feel a bit melancholy at the moment. It’s 9 o’clock, Tuesday evening, I just had my neighbor for dinner, cooked risotto with green onions and peas. She left half an hour ago, and now I’m all alone. ML is in Baltimore on a business trip. Pathetic, isn’t it? Not being able to look forward to her coming home to me at the end of the day, the day kind of loses its spark. Come back, spark! Come back, ML! I want you here with me.
I know: I’m going to go make cookies. (That’s a really good recipe, by the way.) That’ll give the evening at least *some* spark. ;)
Tomorrow, even though it’s Wednesday, I won’t be posting. I’ve got a full day: waxing in the morning, Frameline volunteering in the afternoon, and then burlesque in the evening (hence waxing in the morning :)). And then Thursday, more Frameline during the day, and then in the evening, she comes back to me. I’m such a sap.
Thank the freakin Lord — I have internet. (For the past few days, I’ve been bumming off my neighbor’s unsecured (but very weak) signal.)
I ordered internet before I left for the East Coast back in May from a local service provider, hoping to avoid the likes of Comcast and AT&T. Great idea, but it meant there needed to be two installation visits, rather than just one. Since I was going to be gone, I left it for my girlfriend to deal with. She tried, but with the logistics of trying to let people in and blah blah blah it’s not interesting, nothing actually got done while I was gone. So when I got back on Sunday, we still didn’t have internet, and there were still two installation appointments ahead.
Fast forward to today — final installation appointment happens, and hooray! The green light is on! And I have internet.
…Sort of. Turns out, I managed to scramble something in my computer by resetting the router the wrong way, and it took me all day and finally a frustrated (and expensive — $35, since my warranty had expired) call to NetGear’s tech support to figure it all out.
Long story short: I HAVE INTERNET, YO.
Which means … posting resumes … TOMORROW! I’ve got so much to say! Phew.
A long, long time ago, both Jude and FemmeFairyGodmother anointed me as a Beautiful Blogger. I have been remiss in not acknowledging and passing the award along, as I ought to have done, according to the rules, which are as follows:
1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.
Okay, so, first things first. Thank you Jude and FFG so much for thinking of me as a beautiful blogger, and sharing it with your readers! I appreciate the love :)
Now, 7 things about myself. Hmmmmmmmm.
1) I have mild scoliosis. It makes me kind of self-conscious about my back, because I know it’s not symmetrical. Yeah, I know, fuck that shit, celebrate uniqueness, yay! Still self-conscious about it.
2) I’m very much a book person. Love looking at them, reading them, holding them, smelling them, being surrounded by them. Libraries and used book stores are my favorite indoor spaces. I have a very, very hard time getting rid of books, and when I moved to California, about 2/3rds of the stuff I shipped were boxes of books. I could never feel quite at home in a place without shelves and shelves of books.
3) My favorite color is mustard yellow.
4) I used to love dollhouses and collected miniatures. This was maybe from about the age of 8 until the age of 14. I built my own dollhouse when I was 8 and then became fascinated with furnishing it and decorating it. Foreshadowing? My favorite thing to do was re-arrange the furniture. I rarely played story lines with it, but I loved to take everything out, eliminate the clutter, put things back in and re-decorate. Also foreshadowing?
5) The hardest thing about my parents’ separation right now is that when I’m visiting them, as I am now, I no longer have time where I’m just hanging out on my own at their house. I can’t just be here anymore. I have to be spending time with them. So when I’m visiting my mom, she thinks it’s borrowed time and tries to cram all our time with activities and conversations and meals (tomorrow though? mother-daughter mani-pedis — not going to complain about that!). And when I’m visiting my dad, he thinks it’s borrowed time and though he’s not an activities person, we’re definitely actively hanging out whenever I’m there. It’s tiring. Love my parents, but it’s tiring.
6) The first time I ever kissed a girl, I wasn’t identifying yet as a lesbian. So afterwards, I thought to myself, “well, now I can say I’ve kissed a girl!” and I felt very accomplished, akin to the feeling I get when I cross something off a list. Little did I know…
7) I do not support the institution of marriage on an intellectual level. And yet I really, really, really want to get married, and I even want some parts of my getting-married process to be somewhat traditional. I want to have an engagement ring and a wedding ring, I want to have a ceremony where we exchange vows, I want to wear a beautiful (maybe even white) dress and have my best friends and family there, I want to symbolically and publicly commit myself to my spouse. Hypocritical? Yes, certainly. And I do intend to be absolutely intentional about everything that goes into it. But, well, it remains an institution I don’t intellectually support. I’m banking on coming up with some sort of compromise in the next few years before it would ever even come up.
And now! Part 3: pass the award along to 15 bloggers I have recently discovered who are beautiful. Well, let’s be honest: I don’t read more than a few dozen blogs, and there certainly aren’t 15 that I’ve discovered recently and committed to reading on a regular basis. But there are a few, and I’m really thrilled to take this opportunity to tell you all to GO READ THEM. NOW. Some of them are newer bloggers, and some are just bloggers I hadn’t read until the past year. Without further ado:
1) Mackenzie blogs at Queer Grrl in the City and she is one of my absolute favorite blogs now. She’s the kind of writer who not only has a way with arranging words, but also has a way with using them to really reach you. And she’s an absolute sweetheart. I want every one of you to add her to your blogrolls.
2) JB at To the FemmeMobile is another one I have in my Google reader. She’s funny, candid, adorable, and so fucking astute I can’t handle it. Everything she writes, I’m like “omg! yes!” She writes about things butch/femme, things sexy, things gender queery, and things like getting bitten by a dog.
3) Kaitlin writes at Not Just a Femme and she is one of the loveliest, funniest, sweetest people I’ve met online thus far. I was Twitter friends with her first, and when she moved to her current blog home, I started following her blog, too. She doesn’t post super often, but her posts are just as personable as her tweets and her comments on other folks’ blogs (including mine!) and I *almost* feel like I know her in real life, even though I don’t. YET.
4) Kara, who writes at The Adventures of Kara and Jessica, is one of my new favorites too. She leaves some of the sweetest, most supportive comments here, always so supportive and positive and encouraging. She blogs about sex, kink, fashion, and “regular” things (music, life, etc.) over at her and her girlfriend’s blog, and I’ve gotten some great ideas from her, both sexual and fashionable. She’s kind and generous and really smart to boot!
And lastly, I’d like to throwback to both Jude and FFG, since they’re both relatively new reads of mine as well. Jude hasn’t failed to make me laugh once in the time I’ve been reading her blog. She has the amazing ability to put a hilarious spin on daily life. On top of that, she’s got an amazing relationship with her wife which has been proof for me that yes, marriages can work, commitments can last. I wish I could adopt Jude as my lesbian aunt.
And FFG really is like a femme fairy godmother. I love her posts doling out relationship advice and cosmetic preferences. She’s the type of person to envelope you in love and warmth and goodwill. And her Butch Swoon list, featuring real-life butches, is, well, swoon-worthy.
So, that concludes my Beautiful Blogger awarding. This turned into quite a lengthy post! But if there’s anything you’ve gotten from it, it’s this: add these folks to your list of blogs to read.
Well, that post on sexual violence was supposed to be Part I of IV, and I was going to do all four this month, in April, partly because it’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month but mostly because I thought it would be easier for me to write it all at once and altogether and then get right back to my regularly scheduled ruminations about my life and my relationship. I also sort of felt insecure about it, like maybe people wouldn’t want to read something so serious and harsh on my blog, so it’d be better for everyone if I just hurried up and got it all out of the way. Except that something happened that I wasn’t planning on, and what happened was I sort of ran away. I hit publish, and then turned off the internet for a week and a half. I mean, I was reading other people’s blogs and doing other stuff on the internet. But I didn’t look at any comments and didn’t check my email or post on twitter or poke my head above ground at all. But the weirdest part is I didn’t even realize I was doing that until a week later.
I guess it just needed time to sit there and have its own life for a minute before I came back to it. And it’s fine, I’m totally fine, I’m glad I wrote it and glad I shared it, and thank you all so so so much for your comments. You can’t possibly know how much they mean to me. In a funny sort of way, my healing in the past few years has been much aided by all the love and support I get now from people in my life; it’s like I can remember that time of my life but also picture the warm and loving spirits of people now saturating the air around the 15-year-old me who had no idea they were there at the time because she was hurting too much to see them, but knowing they were there all along somehow helps me now in a way that doesn’t feel entirely retroactive. It actually is almost as if I’m beginning to learn how to re-remember, re-live that time a little less lost. Memory is a funny thing.
Anyway, to get back to the original point of this post, I don’t think I’m going to be writing parts II, III, and IV quite yet. It will happen, but not this month, and for the time being I’ve got plenty of other things to write about.
Beginning with:
We have a new home! I tweeted a few weeks ago about how disappointed I was that the perfect little garden home we wanted went to another applicant — and Jen told me that it must’ve happened for a reason — and was she ever right! Back story: I currently live in a sexplex (you know, a house divided into six units, duh, minds out of the gutter people!), two flats per floor, and the flats on each floor are flip-flops of each other. The landlord’s son and daughter-in-law have lived in the flip-flop flat to mine for the past few years, and they mentioned at the beginning of April that they might be moving somewhere bigger soon. My roommate and I got excited for a hot minute about the possibility of me and the lady love taking over their flat, but then we never heard another whisper of them moving and figured it wouldn’t be happening for a while, and promptly forgot about it.
Until last week, when suddenly, one day, they were gone. The very next morning I called our landlord, and said (more or less), “hey, you know, my girlfriend and I would be totally happy to move into that flat for you, if you could keep the rent where it’s currently at. It would be so easy for you, you wouldn’t have to renovate it or show it or anything, and you know me already, and I’m already a part of the building family, and, you know, we’re awesome tenants, so how’s about it?” And WHADDOYAKNOW? He fell for it! Well, almost: he did bump the rent up a bit, but it’s still well below market rate for our neighborhood, and it’s got TWO BEDROOMS. So much space! A guest room! A music room! A library! An office! A ballroom! So many possibilities! It’s a mansion you guys, and for so cheap. No, it doesn’t have a garden, but it has a sunny little back deck of sorts, and I’m going to see about having a little herb garden back there. And moving is going to be CAKE. I just have to drag everything next door. Like, three feet.
We’re so excited. May 15th will be the first day of our lease, so that I can move everything before I travel for two weeks starting May 18th. I think I’m going to die of asphyxiation from holding my breath until then, I’m so excited. Our OWN PLACE! :)
I’ve written about enough for now, so I’ll just leave you with a little souvenir of a fun photo shoot I did yesterday. The lady love, who isn’t even a photographer, snapped about 100 shots of me in my bedroom, and they came out so lovely! The lighting is just the gorgeous sunlight filtered through my translucent insulating blinds.
I certainly didn’t expect this to happen, but, well, I am a lezzy, and this is a personal blog, so semantically, anyway, this sort of makes sense:
I’ve been nominated for a Lezzy Award in the Personal Blog category.
So, what this basically means is that one of you (or several even!) likes my ditherings here well enough to think I deserve an accolade. I am deeply flattered. Thank you!
If any of the rest of y’all are inclined to nominate me too (nominations are being taken until February 22nd, at which point the top 5 blogs in each category with the most nominations will become Finalists), here’s how you do so:
1) Click on that pretty pink square right up there.
2) Click on that blue banner right at the top of that page that says “The 2009 Lezzy Awards – Nominate Your Favorite Blogs! – Click Here”
3) Copy/paste my URL in the “Personal” section (is it weird that my fingers kept accidentally typing “sextion”?) of the little pop-up box.
4) Lather, rinse, and repeat every day! If you feel so inclined.
5) Also don’t forget to nominate your favorite blogs in the other categories. Check out my blogroll for my favorite blogs if you’re lacking inspiration!
And I might just add that regardless of what happens, I’m touched that I was nominated in the first place, and that in itself is a gift. When I started writing here, it was just me and my thoughts. I never, ever imagined that I’d be getting several hundred page hits every day, or that I’d have people reading and commenting and sending me kind and thoughtful emails. People care, and that’s pretty fucking amazing. So thank you all so much.
And if you’ll excuse me, I have some real posts to draft. I’ll be back in the morning!
It seems I’m down to just about one really substantial post per week here, which is too bad, because I actually have a lot to write about and I love doing it. I guess working a more-than-full-time job, plus taking a statistics class, plus staffing a rape crisis hotline 32 hours a month, plus having a girlfriend, plus trying to have other friends aside from my girlfriend all sort of adds up. And, while I love the thoughtful substantial posts, I think it might be time for me to expand beyond just a once-a-week post. So, I might start introducing some lighter fare to this here blog-o-mine. I can’t handle the pressure of a regular feature, or anything like that, but you might start seeing around here stuff like fashion snapshots (I’m not the most fashionable person you know, but I’ve been having a lot of fun working on my style lately), cocktail recipes, music/youtube clips (I’m a pianist, you know! maybe I’ll play something for you!), and little sex vignettes. Or, who knows, maybe I’ll just start posting substantial stuff more regularly again. Theoretically, I should have more time now that my grad school applications are in. Theoretically.
Anyway, discussing this blog was not actually supposed to be the topic of this post. I was going to write about burlesque. Last night, I and some friends had free tickets to Teatro Zinzanni, a famous cabaret and cirque show that resides along San Francisco’s Embarcadero at Pier 29. The show was splendid, and while I enjoyed the cabaret and the acrobatics and the live music, I was completely captivated by this one character, played by Rachel DeShon:
And I realized that this captivation was of the “I want to be her” variety. I don’t actually want to be Rachel DeShon. I don’t want to be an opera singer and perform cabaret and all that. But, somehow, I just watched her the entire time, thinking to myself “THAT.” It just sorta clicked. I have a similar body type to her, short hair like that, and LOVE CORSETS. But watching her perform I had this urge—no, it was more than an urge, it was more like a longing—to glam it up sometimes. Strut around, feel utterly confident in my sex appeal, pull off dark purple sparkly lipstick and huge plumes! Yes! I want that!
And so I went home and signed up for a burlesque class. I’ve had pretty healthy body positivity in the past few years, and my confidence issues aren’t because I think I don’t look good. It’s more that I’m somewhat reserved and a tiny bit introverted and so I don’t much like being the center of attention. I tend to sort of shrink into myself. In the past few years, so many people have told me that I’m tiny, and I think a large part of the impression I leave is not actually physical tininess but metaphysical tininess, if you will. I’m sort of ephemeral. I’m very good at not being noticed.
There’s a whole history there, a complicated history of sexual violence and family patterns and all that that I won’t go into right now, though I probably will eventually. And so while I think that some of my metaphysical tininess is my personality—I’m just not the life of the party type—which I’m not worried about changing, I think a lot of it is also a sort of unwillingness on my part to take up space. This certainly isn’t the case all the time; if I’m around people I know and love and trust, I fully take up my space, and am the master of my body. But in new situations, when meeting new people, or when I feel out of place and noticed, I freeze up. Sometimes I panic. Sometimes I withdraw. Sometimes I muster through. But whatever happens, my tendency is to get really small.
So when this intense urge to be like her came up for me, and I realized that it’s not, in fact, because I want to do her but because I want to be her, I decided to run with it. My first class is next Wednesday, it’s a 12-week class, and there will be a performance at the end. Gulp. So scared. But also so. excited. In fact I think I may be more excited about this than I’ve been about anything in a long, long time.
And so, on this Friday night when mi’lady is out of town and the plans I had with my good friend fell through due to a crisis in her family, I am sitting at home, on my computer, drooling over websites like this.
Just wanted to welcome everyone to the new site design, by aag. (Thanks aag!) It feels like I just moved out of a rental unit into a new home: more responsibility, but a lot more flexibility. Oh, and, it’s been at alphafemme.net for a while now, but make sure all your links are updated to reflect that, because alphafemme.wordpress.com is officially defunct!
It has essentially what it had before: archives, blogroll, about page, categories, tags, recent posts, twitter feed. New features are a contact form, where you can email me right from this website, recent comments, where you can see what people are commenting on, and “stuff I’m reading,” which I’m most excited about! I read all my blogs via Google reader, and one of the features of Google reader is that if I like what I’m reading, I can “share” it, and the post I’ve shared will be added to a feed of my shared posts. So the “stuff I’m reading” widget over on the right contains the most recent blog posts I’ve read and decided to broadcast to everyone.
My banner and design are new too, obviously, and aag actually designed several different banners following a similar theme, so when you hit refresh or load the page new, the banner will change. Go ahead, try it! SO COOL!
Lastly, you can now share my posts with one click of a mouse, via Facebook, email, tumblr, stumbleupon, twitter, or digg (see the wee little icons at the bottom of each post). I just like to make it easier for you to spread the love ;)
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I know I’ve been slow on substantive posting this month. That’s been on account of several things:
(1) writing graduate school applications has been taking up a lot of my writing energy this month;
(2) the statistics class I’m now enrolled in (a pre-requisite for the grad programs I’m applying for) is taking up a lot of my non-writing-focused energy;
(3) a lot of the things I’ve been thinking about are time-consuming even to think about, let alone write about (see my post on allyship last week, which took a week and a half of turning around in my brain before I could spit it out into a post; and that post has inspired more thoughts and things to write about, which are in turn taking some time to ferment).
But, after February 1 (deadline of my last grad application), I have a lot to write about and a lot more time in which to write. So sit tight! Don’t go anywhere! Well, ok, you can go, but just make sure to come back :)
A quick note: I posted on twitter a while back (before the umbrella poll) that I was looking for practical but above all CUTE (/fashionable) black leather knee-high boots — something I can wear to work, or around the city, or to a dance party. Turns out a pair of boots like that is harder to find than I’d thought. BUT! I found them! At Shoe Biz on Haight Street (boot by Miz Mooz). Here they are (I think the boots in this photo are brown, but mine are black, just to be clear):
Look at the BUTTONS!!! So cute!
Still sitting on the post I was tweeting about yesterday, the one in response to all the Mary Daly stuff that’s been floating around. That should come tomorrow, hopefully.
In the meantime, see this reaction to my posts on growing into my identity as femme (see here and here), and my response to it in the comments. (As of this posting, my comment hasn’t yet been approved, but hopefully it will be soon.)
She writes about how my definition of femme, and my femme fantasy, are not hers, as a femme domme, and it seems that she equates her version of femme with being both feminine AND powerful, and my version of femme with being … not powerful. Which I take issue with. I thought it was pretty clear in those posts that (a) I don’t think my version of femme is THE definition of femme, and (b) coming out as (my version of) femme was EMpowering me, and the way I am femme continues to empower me, rather than (as she seems to think) DISempowering me.
So, I just wanted to reiterate that for me, being femme and being a nurturer/submissive type IS being “utterly feminine and unquestionably powerful,” as she puts it. That’s where I get my power. And, also, I do not live as a full-time submissive, and I do make my own decisions and do make sure my needs are met, whether by mi’lady or my family or my friends or me, and I’m very capable, kind of a control freak, pretty assertive, and of course feminine and powerful. Femininity does NOT equal submissive. But for me, the two are increasingly intertwined.
My femme fantasy is not to be the Betty to Don Draper. On the surface, it might seem that way. But their relationship is my femme fantasy gone horribly wrong. Betty Draper does not get her needs met, and she doesn’t have any space to even communicate what they are, because it’s her job to be the perfect housewife. That is not remotely what my fantasy is, to be disempowered and living solely for and under another person, unable to stretch my legs and meet my own needs. But I do, in a weird way, want to be a Betty Draper. I want to be perfectly put together yet delicate, host dinner parties like the Heineken one in season two, be a perfect socializer, make my husband slash whoops I totally mean my wife look totally put together, be the quiet engine in her background (who makes noise when called upon… ahem) because it’s all so effortless. Those things make me feel immeasurably powerful. But that’s the extent of the way I want my relationship to resemble Don and Betty Draper’s. That’s IT. Because Betty doesn’t have any power. And I do. (I could also do an interesting discussion on how I relate to Joan, but I’ll save that for another time.)
Apologies for those of you are are not totally obsessed with Mad Men and have no idea what I’m going on about.
(Photo from www.vanityfair.com)
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