“ Soft people have got to shimmer and glow- they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a paper lantern over the light. It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I-I’m fading now!”
– Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
As mentioned in the last post, I’ve spent just about the most unpleasant May in recent memory battling it out with a really rather dreadful spot of stomach lurgy that showed up and decided to make itself at home. Beyond the more prosaic misery attached to it, I’ve been feeling just about the least sexy I have in years. So it seems a good time to talk about body image.
A number of years ago I had one of the most frustrating conversations ever. I was just starting to try to intellectually work out this femme thing, and was opening up to an older gay friend about it. “Oh come on, you’re not femme,” he said. “Sure, you play at being femme like we all do, but you aren’t really femme.”
When I protested, he pointed out a hot guy across the street from where we were sitting. He had nice arms and was wearing a tight tank top and a sarong. “Well, for one thing,” my friend said, “to be femme you’d have to look good in a sarong, and honey, I’ve seen you in a sarong.”
Sigh.
I have a lot of body image issues attached to my being femme, and it really kind of bites. I’m 6’2″, hairy, and pretty physically imposing — I have a large frame, and while most of me is fairly skinny I have a bit of a gut that is very hard for me to accept. When I exercise I tend to gain muscle instead of lose weight, making the problem even worse in a way — the point is that the phenotype I have to work with is very obviously male, not at all androgynous, and associated with masculinity in a way that other men’s might not be.
I spent a lot of my 20s with pretty harsh self-esteem issues around my appearance, especially in a gay culture where a ripply-muscled shirtless torso is practically an alternative rainbow flag for posters and magazines and where male beauty is measured with the Imperial system. Gay men suffer terribly from body dysmorphia, eating disorders, and appalling self-esteem, and it’s no surprise with what we do to each other, right down to the local gay rag that once devoted the first half of its “health” issue to better self-esteem and the second half to all the wonderful products and services you could purchase and inflict on yourself to make you look partially acceptable, you hideous, hideous pig.
But more specifically, I spent a lot of time feeling that the way I look was out of step with my gender identity. Once (not quite realizing that it was pretty appropriative and sketch [ETA: as well as completely incorrectly suggesting that, as a cissexual person, I could know the experience of body dysphoria]), I described myself as a “butch-to-femme transsexual.” I felt like the canonical femme man is a tiny slip of a boy, and trying to be a gentle, faggy, flamey boy at my size was just ludicrous and there was no way I could fully live my gender presentation in the size and shape I’m in.
A lot of times this is seen by others as the femme body, too. I was once complaining on a message board about the lack of effeminate guy visibility in the media as anything other than walking punchlines, and a self-identified butch man dismissed me saying that femme boys were portrayed everywhere and that in his opinion it was the butches who got the short end of the stick. (Have you noticed how often the privileged group thinks that it’s the underprivileged group that’s everywhere and gets everything?) We went around in circles for a while until it became clear that he didn’t mean femme boys at all; he meant young, slender, hairless guys, regardless of how effeminate or masculine they might be.
Femme men are believed to look a certain way, to be embodied a certain way, and when we don’t, we’re even more invisible than we already were. And I end up feeling like I’d need to look that way as well even to have people accept that I am, in fact, femme and not just a butch guy playing at wearing a sarong.
One part of it, indeed, is the clothes. A lot of the things you can wear to tell the world you’re femmer than the av-e-rage bear are cut for the aforementioned small, slender guys. A few weeks ago I was in the Village and decided to try on this cute shirt I saw in a store window. I couldn’t even fit it over my shoulders. The clerk was completely unapologetic about the fact that this was the largest size in the store and if that didn’t fit me, nothing they had for sale would. (Did I mention that I am really not that immense? How many other guys were they excluding? If I couldn’t work my way into the thing, a huge-shouldered gym queen certainly couldn’t either.) Other clothes that are tight, glamorous, revealing, or brightly coloured are similarly out of my range, either because they don’t fit or I feel like I would look horrendous in them.
The fear of looking stupid is the biggest brake on me. I am firmly convinced that you can get away with anything style-wise if your attitude conveys with complete conviction that you know exactly what you’re doing. I am equally firmly convinced that there are a great many outfits that I simply cannot get away with. It would be like Eddie Izzard says: if you’re a girl and you trip in heels it’s embarrassing; if you’re a bloke and you trip in heels, you’ve just got to kill yourself.
A crack in that poise, that self-confidence, the slightest feeling that this looks stupid instead of awesome, it’s a little too revealing, lets my schlubby, masculine body show through too much — it’s not tight and sexy, it makes me look like the planetarium dome — and it all falls apart, and I’m left feeling like the transmisogynistic caricature of the linebacker in a dress. I like eye-liner and nail polish, but to this day I can’t stand to still be wearing it when I’m naked; I have to take it off as soon as I take off my clothes. The dissonance between that and my hairy, unconcealed appearance with my clothes off is too much for me to stand.
I’m trying, though. It’s been a long and difficult road for me to find ways of expressing myself in dress that I actually feel I can get away with. I wear a lot of hoodies and Chucks and little fedoras, a lot of purple and magenta and bright blue, and I can comb my current haircut into both a cute floppy look and an emo-boy effect, to the extent that my hairline wishes to cooperate. Currently, my favourite power-femme outfit consists of tight blue jeans, a bright magenta shirt, a black sleeveless hoodie, Chucks with pink-and-black chequered laces, and matching pink-and-black-chequered elbow-length fingerless gloves.
I especially love my coterie of femme lesbians because those girls know how to dress. They come in all different shapes and sizes, including ones that are neglected by clothing manufacturers and are oppressed and undervalued by society, and they all of them always look absolutely, unqualifiedly gorgeous. They don’t just conceal or diminish their supposed “flaws,” they play up their considerable assets to the max. I can only hope some of their influence is osmoting on me and I can achieve that level of confidence and ease in dress. (This is another example of a constant theme in my life: everything I know about being a fag I learned from lesbians.)
(Let me say, too, that I’m not unaware of what my frame lets me get away with. I am almost completely unintimidating in temperament, but I’m also aware that however much I might like to be 5’6″ and delicate, it would very probably lead to a lot of toads who don’t currently tangle with me thinking they could tapdance on my cranium as they saw fit. Despite my radiant fagginess I have never, touch wood, been physically attacked for my sexual orientation or gender presentation.)
Of course, another major question in the realm of body issues is sexuality, and we get into a whole other set of problems. Effeminacy is already undervalued, tarred not just as unattractive but as inconceivable that anyone should be attracted to us — it sometimes seems as though every other type of gay man has their devotees or at least their fetishists and objectifiers, but despite our numbers, there is nothing at all that suggests that a queen, soft boy, or flamer could be attractive to any other gay man under any circumstances.
In Opposite Sex: Gay men on lesbians, lesbians on gay men, Lawrence Schimel writes:
The very idea of a femme man violates some nebulous and unrealized social construct of masculinity. We’ve adopted the heterosexual mindframe of femme men as undesirable, emasculated antimen. The gay personal ads reading “no fats, femmes, or druggies” are as innumerable as the grains of sand on the shores of South Beach or P-Town. …There are no “male” words to describe the attraction to a man who does not fit this high-steroid profile.
I am a man and I am a femme. I am still young enough that my femme qualities are classically attractive to gay men as youthfulness. I am thin, lithe, smooth…. What will happen to my desirability, my sexuality, when I am an older man and still a femme? At some point I will cease to be a boy…. Is there no room for an adult femme male… to be sexually desirable in this queer culture that so prioritizes the butch male[?]
In a dizzying kaleidoscope of male/male erotica and pornography of seemingly every other kind and quality of guy, of scene, of situation, of uniform, neatly labeled and marketed to whom it may concern, nelly boys are totally, totally invisible. Certainly, there’s twink porn à go go, but with very rare exceptions which practically seem to have happened by accident, the desirable part is not any non-masculinity but their boyishness, slenderness, athleticism, or perceived naïveté, innocence or inexperience.
This hurts badly. When I want to be loved and desired, I want to be so as femme. I don’t want to butch it up or tone it down to attract guys. In a lot of ways for me, being femme is about being desirable, alluring, tempting. Femme lesbians have this to a science or an art, but it goes completely unheard-of with reference to effeminate men, and it hurts worse than I can put into words.
And needless to say, the total exclusion of my desirability as a femme interacts with the overwhelming exclusion of my desirability as a non-twink, non-buff, non-canon-of-gay-hotness type. If I were some adorable boy, I tell myself, I could get away with being femme. Conversely, if I weren’t femme, maybe I could work the body I have — I could be a bear, or at least an otter or something. And the disconnect between my appearance and my gender just grows.
Conversely, on those occasions when certain wonderful gentlemen have let me know that they find my effeminacy beautiful and desirable, I melt. It does more for my self-esteem than I can express to have that part of me seen as I’d like to see it myself, not put up with or overlooked but actively valued and loved.
And it’s remarkably similar to the way I feel when someone goes into detail about how he’s attracted to my body, and not just the things that everyone compliments, but the very things I’m insecure about. (Nothing, by the way, irritates me quite the same way as “Oh, you’re so interesting! You’re so smart!” I’m not just a pretty mind! I want to be loved for who I am on the outside.) The first lover who told me that he thought my midriff was cute — that he found desirable and sexy something I had always been told and told myself was revolting or at least to be played down as much as possible — was a revelation, and I don’t think any single incident has done quite so much for my self-esteem.
As with the clothes, I’ve been working hard to try to improve my self-perception. I’ve long been attracted to other femmes, as well as more masculine guys (although not macho dickheads), and in the same way I’ve cultivated a taste for guys who look a little more like me, and I let them know. Hopefully it improves their day, but it helps me retrain my eye and see myself — not just see myself as unspecifically attractive, but to see in just what way the things I’ve thought of as flaws are desirable and beautiful.
And then maybe I can see them as femme, too.
20 comments
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June 2, 2010 at 8:02 pm
Andrew
Throughout this entire post, I found myself constantly nodding. Though I am a shorter, smaller-framed person (5’6″), I am quite hairy ALL over and have facial hair and stubble that grows in thick and dark. I am also by no means muscular or very thin. This has caused me a great deal of consternation when it comes to identity as a femme guy. How can I be femme and hairy, etc, etc.? I have been able to bring these aspects of myself together more and more lately and have been coming to terms with the fact that I’m a hairy femme fag. It definitely has not been easy, though.
Also, as someone who does porn studies, I completely and totally agree about the lack of femme men in gay porn, especially when you take into account the fact that twink does not necessarily equal femme. It’s really a sad state of affairs and makes me feel as if myself and people like me are no attractive enough to be featured in porn. As you stated, I want people to be attracted to me because I’m femme, not despite the fact!
Thanks again for this blog post! I recently discovered your blog and I think it’s absolutely fabulous! Keep of the great work!
June 2, 2010 at 10:21 pm
femmeguy
I’m so pleased you’re enjoying yourself and that my post resonates for you! I look forward to your continued visits 🙂 and… Could you tell me a bit about the ‘porn studies’ you’re involved in? I think some of my friends do similar work. I’m also curious to know any more details you might have about representation of femme men in porn (if there are any details to be had beyond “ain’t there” :))
June 4, 2010 at 10:01 am
Andrew
Oh yes! I was so thrilled with I discovered your blog a little while ago, as it’s very hard to find anything by or about femme guys.
As far as porn studies goes, what I do is socio-cultural analyses of pornography, generally queer porn. I look at pornography as texts that can tell us a lot about gender sexuality, and the broader society in which we exist. Also, I think that the potential impact of porn, as both cultural texts and as a component of the flow of global capital, is important to look at, especially since we’re talking about a multi-billion dollar per year industry.
When it comes to other aspects of the representation of femme men in porn, I fear I come up a bit short. Like I said before “femme” and “twink” often get elided, which then positions femme as always being young, thin, lean, and smooth. I feel that femme also always gets elided with passivity, which we know is not the case in real life. Honestly, just as with a lot of identities, I rarely, if ever, see complex portrayals of femme men in gay porn.
June 4, 2010 at 10:08 pm
femmeguy
I’d love to hear more about what kind of portrayals you’d like to see more of, whether in porn or more generally of attractive femme men in the wider culture.
June 10, 2010 at 6:23 am
William
Ah, the age-old porblem of other people trying to tell us how to identify. Sigh.
I’m a femme. I’m a man. I’m heterosexual but queer. I’m transsexual. I’m a transvestite. I’m undeniably masculine and dominant. I’m genderqueer and I’m binary-gendered. People try to tell me that I’m not these things, that I can’t ID as femme because:
* Trans men can’t be femme
* Straight men can’t be femme
* Dominants can’t be femme
* It is impossible to be a masculine femme
* I don’t wear makeup so I’m not femme
* I’m not a drag queen so I’m not femme (and trans guys can’t be drag queens anyway)
* I’m not a lesbian so I can’t be femme / I am really a lesbian and I’m a butch
* All genderqueers are androgynous so I can’t be femme
etc. etc. etc.
The usual stupid lies.
But, the truth is, I’m a femme. I’m a femme because that’s how I identify and how I relate to my partners and how I live in the world. I’m a femme because I love bright colours and don’t feel properly dressed without some jewelry. I’m a femme because I love “girly” films and I love dolls and I love beauty. I’m a femme because I say so.
June 19, 2010 at 3:24 am
J
I’m a somewhat genderqueer trans woman and I really feel for you. I don’t know much about the gay scene but I can relate to the body image issues and how people conflate femininity with youth when it comes to males. For women everyone confuses femininity with sexiness, which annoys me because my femininity is more modest and androgynous/boyish. Way too much meaning is forced on people’s bodies.
Hormones helped me get my body to a more fitting place, but I’ve only ever known one feminine male-identified person who went so far as to take hormones to maintain her body image (she preferred male pronouns).
June 19, 2010 at 3:25 am
J
Er, she preferred female pronouns, I meant.
July 22, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Donnie
Wow.
There was so much that you said, that really speaks to me, and how I feel. I recently turned 19, and as im getting older, my features are steadily becoming more masculine. For a long time this really bothered me. When I first started having to shave my face and legs, it made me deeply depressed. My hair use to be long, my legs and face smooth, I could wear dresses, and skirts and feel happy in them.
But now, Id feel like a total fool wearing a dress with stubble on my chin.\
😦
And im really glad you mentioned eating disorders. I myself have been battling Bulimia and anorexia since I was 14. Nothing injured me more as a child, than being overweight. But like you said, I felt ridiculous being my inner femme self, when I didn’t fit that media-mannequin femme, tiny-thin-slender-tooth fairy of a twink.
It really makes me feel less alienated, knowing that others have felt the pain I battle with.
🙂 thanks so much!!!
September 1, 2010 at 12:37 am
femmeguy
I’m really glad you got something positive out of what I had to say! *hug*
August 30, 2010 at 4:32 am
Enoch
This is beautiful and beautifully written. As a transmasculine person, I have some trouble keeping my femme identity visible to people who do not understand the full range of femme possibility. Interestingly enough, I’ve found the that more masculine I make my body appear, the easier it is to layer the trappings of male femininity on top of. Now, this may be because, as a female-assigned person, I will look like a small, youthful man for much longer than my male-assigned counterparts, but I don’t think I’m frequently read as a twink (there are a few creepy old men who sit around in the garden of my local LGBT center who certainly look at me that way, but pretty much no one else). Still, I am presented with the challenge of making my body masculine enough that I will be interpreted as a femme guy rather than a butch woman. I think that people who understand that transfolk have as much variety of presentation as cisfolk generally recognize my femme identity quite quickly. Perhaps instead of looking for cues among femme women, you can look for cues among femme transpeople, some of us have learned how to combine masculine appearance with femme identity in innovative ways you might not have considered.
September 1, 2010 at 12:36 am
femmeguy
That is a *really* interesting point, Enoch, and my intuition says that it could be very fertile!
September 8, 2010 at 11:25 am
Megan
I found this post through the trackback on the link to Questioning Transphobia you included in your discussion of body dysphoria. I just want to say that while you may not be trans, what you described sounds exactly like body dysphoria to me. People tend to conflate body dysphoria with gender dysphoria (as a trans person myself, I can say that it’s very difficult to tell where one dysphoria ends and another begins), which is unfortunate in that it ignores the fact that cis people can experience body dysphoria, too. Perhaps the analogy you used to describe it (“butch to femme transsexual”) was a bit appropriative, but I don’t think that there’s anything at all appropriative about describing your experiences as body dysphoria.
Also, I like what you (and Andrew, in the comments section) have to say about the lack of femme men in gay porn. I definitely miss seeing femme men in straight porn, too – overvaluing butch men is unfortunately an industry-wide thing, I guess…
September 9, 2010 at 1:10 am
femmeguy
Hi Megan, thanks for your comments! Actually — naturally, speaking only about my own experience — it was posts like the one I linked to, as well as what my trans friends have shared with me about their experiences, that made me realize that my experience *wasn’t* dysphoria, or at least that it seems quite misleading for me to use that word.
Specifically, it’s the fact that it was *outside* pressures that made me feel so bad about my body and that convinced me that it was out of step with how a femme man should look. If those tropes didn’t exist, or were part of a much fairer representation of diversity, I’d never have felt bad about how I looked in that way. And that aspect of things is much attenuated now.
What I’m understanding is that this is far different from trans people’s experience of dysphoria: it isn’t a result of social pressure, it isn’t just a result of thinking, “Oh, people who feel the way I do shouldn’t look like this,” it’s visceral and persistent and “in the bone” — as the post I linked to describes so clearly.
None of this of course is to dismiss what I felt, and what other people in similar situations feel. It can definitely be painful, profound, and difficult to work through (Goddess knows I had enough of a time with it). But it *is* its own phenomenon, different both in nature and origin.
For another thing, the way to solve it is much different. Trans people who are dysphoric need access to the gender reassignment care they seek. In my case, what I needed wasn’t to change my body, it was to accept it as one of the world’s wonderful ways of looking like a femme boy. It’s a long process, but it’s working for me and making me feel much happier. That’s not the way dysphoria works for a trans person, to say the least.
I wanted to make sure I added that clarification to my post. Confusion about the nature of dysphoria is all too common and is frequently the result (and the cause) of letting trans people’s voices on the subject go unheard. I was really grateful for the post I linked to as a really clear and personal description of what dysphoria is like. It helped me check my assumptions and be accountable, as well as, for my part, helping me describe my own experiences all the more accurately.
October 27, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Gene Adams
Enjoyed your May, 2010 post very much. As an early 30’s gay male, I couldn’t help but recall many of the same frustrations, questions, and uncertainties I faced growing to adulthood and dealing with this quandary myself, especially with others in the workplace and in relationships. Was I a trans….? How could I be an effeminite gay male? No one was like that! No one wanted anyone like that; they were so silly looking, so unattractive.
Once I realized that my deepest desire was to be dealt with, and treated, as a femme by others, both in the work place and socially; a few modifications to my career path improved my reception and treatment immeasurably. For example, I was an analyst for an investment firm. I surrendered this position and accepted one as a legal secretary for a law firm, a position seen generally as one occupied by a female. I allowed my naturally effeminite mannerisms to emerge, altered my dress somewhat, and soon, everyone in the office began to treat me more as a female.
I wish I could report the same immediate, favorale response in my social life; but I can’t. I have met some men-generally older ones- who were interested in a femme guy- but they are sadly few and far between.
Again, enjoyed your post and I look forward to reading more of your experiences and observations.
October 29, 2010 at 12:25 am
cj9x
It’s sad you had to demote yourself to find a room for your gender. Kind of reminds me of what happens to trans women post-transition: they lose prestige and pay. Sexism is still alive and well…
October 29, 2010 at 4:30 pm
femmeguy
What you say about sexism and the experience of trans women is well taken. But in Gene’s case, he didn’t say whether he actually underwent a pay cut, nor whether he saw his career change as a demotion. (The job of legal secretary is quite skilled and essential to the functioning of a law firm!)
I would tend to think of moving from any job to a job that is more satisfying and enjoyable as a promotion.
December 26, 2010 at 1:42 pm
Cullen
Thank you for your work, it’s very inspiring and illuminating ^_^
I feel your pain…my shoulders are broad, my body hair is coarse and i’m 6’3″ with muscles instead of a toned sleek body…and almost everyday there’s a joke about how awesome my beard is, and an attached perception that it’s all that’s keeping me liked by the people around me…i feel like i could be a great bear, or stereotypical muscled gay man…but i love being myself, whatever items of the spectrum that entails…but that’s easier said than done…
I want to expose the world to your ideas about self image…and being an artist i will try my best to, because these ideas are extremely important…i have this dream that one day i’ll become famous for my work, and then i’ll show up to my gallery showing in a dress…although it’d be nice to cause a stir because of it, i sincerely hope that it’ll be completely accepted by then…i’m tired of going to parties in suits…
i hope that these many blogs about identity and self-esteem become more public and powerful so that the few people who believe in the ideas now dont stay hidden…it’s really a disservice to those who are not able to find these ideas online…
but until then, please keep on working and writing so wonderfully
p.s. i hope you go buy a sarong cuz everyone looks good in one ^_^…although it’s not really the season for them…
December 29, 2010 at 6:51 pm
femmeguy
Thanks for your kind words, and you will be happy to know I now own numerous sarongs 🙂 and it may not be the right season, but it *is* the season for really fabulous scarves, and I’m taking full advantage.
December 30, 2010 at 12:12 am
Cullen
you’re welcome ^_^
that’s wonderful 😀 i’m hoping to buy one soon
i love scarf season! so glamorous and warm X3
March 8, 2011 at 11:27 am
Physical manliness? « genderkid
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