Who Wants to Be the Lizard King?

My heroes have always been rock stars.

First I wanted to be Billy Ray Cyrus (hush). Not a rock star, per se, but still. Music star. Then I wanted to be a Hanson brother- then a Madden brother as part of Good Charlotte. I wanted to be like Davey Havok of AFI, then Robert Smith of The Cure, then Conor Oberst Bright Eyes.

Never really wanted to be Avril Lavigne- though, looking back, I had a huge crush on her. See, female rock musicians are always heavily sexualized in a way I don't like- God help me, but that quote from Elly Jackson posted yesterday holds a grain of truth, about women's sexuality being used to attract men/fans.

And then there's Patti Smith- probably one of the first women I wanted to emulate. But apparently that's understandable. In Simon Reynolds' book Sex revolts : Gender, Rebellion, and Rock'n'roll, he explains that musicians like Patti Smith actually emulated men, becoming the rock stars in the Mick Jagger sort of tradition.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Aside from occasional whimsies, I'm not a big fan of “women's music.” I don't want to dress like a female musician, and I don't want to be treated like one, because at the end of the day, I'm not entirely sure that I'm a woman.

I'm something completely different. For that matter, I have a low singing voice, so a lot of times I can't keep up with the notes sung by female musicians.

Tegan and Sara, I love you dearly, but those are vocals I can't always handle.

Besides, being a rock star is sort of the ultimate Peter Pan complex. Rock stars aren't men. They're boys. They're living out the “dream,” however dangerous and unsuccessful it may be. They're not having to grow up.

And growing up is really the root of the problem. I look at the options I have to become: Woman or Man. Neither is particularly appealing, and I'd like to draw a nice label outside of the two for me to belong in. Because both of them carry their own expectations and rules that prevent me from being experimental, from being free, and from being myself.

Plus, so often, female-bodied musicians out there claim that they dress in an androgynous way so that their fans focus on their music rather than their appearance. I don't mind the focus on appearance at all. I just want a few more people out in the world to admit that they find androgynous people sexy as hell.

Because we all know they are.

Profile: Elly Jackson of La Roux

I have mixed opinions about Elly Jackson. On the one hand, I like her group's music. I spent all day Sunday with “Bulletproof” stuck in my head. And she wins points for being cute.

Aaaand the positive stops right about there. Bless her heart, but Elly Jackson has a way of sticking her foot in her mouth in interviews. I don't hold it against her too much. I mean, we're around the same age, and God help me if half the things I've said were in print, without my chance to say “Oh shit! Don't say I said that!”

For the most part, it's her attacks on other musicians that irk me. She picks on members of Erasure for their taste in music and calls them, supposedly, “mutton dressed as lamb.” Of course, the singer, to whom this quote was attributed, brushes off the comment saying “it's probably the sort of thing I would have said when I was her age.”

Yes, that's all fine and good, but there comes a point when you can' t keep hiding behind your age as a defense for stupidity and rudeness. Maybe it's my Southern showing, but part of any business is maintaining connections with other popular people in your field, and Jackson keeps taking a machete to these connections. She may think she's being “honest” and establishing herself as not another blonde girly-girl who's all sugar and spice, but really she's coming off as a rude brat.

And all of this culiminates in her June 2009 interview with The Quietus, in which she says:

"[Using a sexuality designed to just appeal to men is] really patronising to women. I know that there's far more ways to be sexy than to dress in a miniskirt and a tank top. If you're a real woman you can turn someone on in a plastic bag just by looking at them. That's what a real woman is, when you've got the sex eyes. I think you attract a certain kind of man by dressing like that. Women wonder why they get beaten up, or having relationships with arsehole men. Because you attracted one, you twat. It's a funny culture, it's definitely a funny culture. Those women are just insecure, but they'll turn round to me and say 'you're just jealous 'cos you want a tan and you want big boobs, stupid boy-looking girl'. You can't win, they wouldn't believe me for a second."

She makes some lovely points in regards to how women can be sexy without being Eva Longoria. And then she makes that comment about attracting certain men by dressing a certain way. I'll admit, the clothes can send a signal, but women (or just people, for that matter) are never responsible for being beaten up because they are “dressing like that.” Fail, Elly Jackson, fail.

Having said that, I will admit that she wins back a few points with her statement in Starpulse:

"I don't have a sexuality. I don't feel like I'm female or male. I don't belong to the gay or straight society, if there is such a thing. I feel like I'm capable of falling in love with other people. I'm not saying I'm bisexual, I'm just sexual!”

Amen! It's very pomosexual of her, and while the whole “I'm not gay, not straight” thing is being picked up by various female singers these days, her statement that she feels in between genders makes me feel a little better. Now, if she can just keep her foot out of her mouth more often, I'd consider her to be an excellent rolemodel, in addition to an interesting musician.

Bulletproof Music Video

Sources:

The Erasure Jibe

The Quietus

Starpulse

Passing Gay

Dwight of The Office with his official Gaydar machine.

Yesterday, my two best friends came to visit and spend the day bumming around Fayetteville, spending money on more books and candy than we probably needed.
While in Romancing the Stone, one of my friends nudged me and pointed out two (hot) guys who were semi-obviously a couple. We proceeded to see them throughout the day at the mall, the encounters culminating into a point where we passed each other, and I turned around to watch them leave, and one of them turned around to look at us in much the same way. We grinned a little, and his boyfriend nudged him back into walking forward, and then they were gone. My friend pointed out that he probably thought we were a couple.

How did I know these guys were gay? Granted, they walked together everywhere, but so did a lot of guys. Other than that, there was nothing- except maybe the way they dressed (very neatly), or the way one of them, the more obvious of the pair, walked (with his hips) and talked (with his hands).

However, I wouldn't consider these sexuality cues so much as gender cues. This man was not presenting himself as being particularly masculine the way so many men in the South do. Of course, my friend's proposed assumption, that the guy thought we were together, followed much the same guidelines of gender cues. Wilting Southern belles we are not.

The thing is, so much of what I read about gender identity makes a huge deal about taking gender identity and sexuality and putting a vast canyon between them. I can understand the point, to differentiate between who you are and who you are attracted to, but you can't deny that in the queer community, gender identity and sexuality blur together a bit.

I think that, as members of the GLBT community make more strides towards legal equality, they also assimilate into straight, vanilla culture, as if to say “Look, we're here, we're queer, and we're just like you!”
There's a quote, I'm having trouble finding it, that says something along the lines that “Gays want you to think that we're just like you, only the sex is different. Actually, we are nothing like you; only the sex is the same.” And I can see this. Few things considered to be gay/lesbian sex are exclusively practiced by gay people.

I know lesbians who like straight girls, who love finding the most feminine, most straight laced coughs girls and “converting” them. They've given me shit for the girls that I like, and God help me if they found me looking at the boys I, on occasion, like. But I'm not queer because I like straight, normal girls. I'm queer because I like other people who are queer, and I wish people would stop drawing their black and white lines in my happy gray area.

Also, reading this book, which will hopefully help me deal with my issues of assimilation and such.

The Problem with College Fashion: Or why skinny jeans can go to hell.

In high school, I spent most of my time in office appropriate clothing, since I went to work at the public library immediately after school every day. College was a huge shock, and I went a little overboard in rebelling against the button up/dress pants/sensible shoes wardrobe I had to wear so much of high school.

Hello, t-shirts. Hello, jeans. Hello, Converses (because flip flops are a fail moment for any member of a marching band).

Of course, the freshman fifteen didn't help my fashion- neither did the other fifteen on top of that. I mainly stuck to t-shirts, baggy jeans, and bandanas my freshman year.

And then I bought the skinny jeans.

Skinny jeans are one of those tiny failures in fashion, for me at least. When I saw skinny jeans, I wanted to look like a skinny little emo boy:



Instead, I look like J. Lo's ass and thighs came to inhabit a grungy college boy's body. I don't know where this ass came from; no one else in my family is so gifted. The thighs?A result of stress-related eating binges.

So no skinny jeans for me. It's something I don't think about, a lot of the time when it comes to passing. Breasts and hair are always my main concern with dressing as a guy- flattening the breasts, hiding the hair. Fortunately, I spend most of the school year in baggy jeans and jackets which help conceal the whole hourglass effect.

In summer, my hips have nowhere to hide. And that's the problem with unisex fashions such as skinny jeans. I would like to look androgynous, but to do that I feel as if I have to dress extra-masculine to cover up obvious female characteristics. I wear sweater vests, loose shirts, and I can pull off looking dressed up and male- but t-shirts and jeans, which are my most comfortable choice, just make me look like a lazy college student.

It's a matter of body dysphoria, I guess, because in my mind I feel like I should still be skinny as I was for that brief, unhealthy time. I see men in AP and Rolling Stone and I want to be thin. To be the waifish-looking musician in an oversized flannel shirt. I admit, normal women have a lot to live up to when compared to their size 0 fashion counterparts. But don't men as well?

Maybe, maybe you could argue that men don't care as much about their appearance, don't study it and how it compares with the media around them (though I doubt it). I guarantee transmen do though, because they're learning through comparison, what parts of their bodies and poses are passable, and what parts- like breasts, like hips, like babyfaces- are not. Passing as a man becomes a test, a study, and we don't have the proper shape/parts to begin with.

So now, the skinny jeans rest in the back of my closet, eagerly awaiting the day that I lose enough weight to have legs that aren't the fine curved gams I've got now.

Transkids

So, this article was posted at the What is Gender forums regarding kids who are transgendered. Long story short, one of the doctor believes in teaching kids to accept their biological gender, the other encourages parents to let their children dress according to how they feel.

And I have no idea how I feel about it all. My main concern is that the kids would be bullied for dressing opposite of their biological sex. These children were mtf, and God knows how quickly little kids like to pick on “boys” who fall short of any masculinity. But then, I've also heard that, because girls are allowed to be more masculine then boys, ftm transkids have it easier.

Bull Shit.

I've spent the past six-ish years in tuba sections composed almost entirely of guys. And I'm accepted- now, because I keep up with any drinking, cursing, or sleeping around that comes up. But band was shit when I first switched, because the guys in my high school tuba section absolutely did not want a girl on their turf. I went through some lovely hazing and hardening before I was accepted, because I was crossing a gender line. At least I wasn't a “boy” showing up to school in a dress.

So, I think parents have to weigh the social safety of their children vs. them being happy in public all the time. Around home is different. It's hard to say that's my opinion, since I have plenty of personal conflicts, especially when I remember that I'm still bitter about my mother's refusal to buy me boys' underwear in the third grade. Of course, now that she buys me boxers, I feel a small victory, but I still can't decide if my mother made the right choice or not. Gender presentation makes you more comfortable in your own skin, but can also label you as an easy target.

Hormone blockers are an entirely different matter. I absolutely hated puberty and fought the special changes every step of the way in the worst ways I could have. For instance, drastically losing weight by not eating/exercising constantly not only gives you a little muscle (at first, before everything melts away), it also cuts back on the boob growth and causes amenorrhea! Eventually, I turned myself around enough to become a good little girl again- though I think that switching from clarinet to tuba immediately afterwards helped make up for the surprise boob growth spurt and reemergence of the period. Had I been self-aware enough to consciously realize why I was doing this, and then brave enough to admit it to my parents, I think I would have taken hormone blockers until I was sure. Maybe. And then, I don't know what I'd do.

Because to be honest, some days I like having boobs. They get me out of tickets. They balance out my belly. They feel good. And I've never really had a problem with the downstairs, just the monthly expulsion.

If I could go back, I might like to try hormone blockers and testosterone, just to see how I'd turn out. But I'm too in the middle right now to be sure. Plus, just as there are some people who are totally sure “My gender is this but my body is that,” there are others (like me) who are in the middle or, more often than not. Maybe my friends are right. Maybe I'm just getting ready to come out to myself. But in a way, I worry that all of this- the medicalization of being transgender, the hormones, all of it- is all tied to the emphasis placed on “passing” as the opposite sex, because if you don't pass, if you fall short of one gender or the other, you're something new. You're threatening the rules of
Manichean genders, and thus, you simply must be threatening everyone that follows those rules. Right?

Passing for the Generations

As I said in my first post, I rarely pass as male. Besides the way my voice climbs in pitch when I get emotional (on a level on par with Elliott from Scrubs), I also have long hair which, no matter how much I tie it back, is still obviously long hair. However, I had a “passing incident” recently with the secretary of our music department.
Ms. A is not known for her intelligence, though she can be a remarkably sweet lady. Well, sometimes. On occasion. But it's disconcerting to see her happy at work. Regardless, she was actually conversational when I went to the music office to permanently borrow duct tape. The duct tape was for a ghetto tuba pad, and the only color of tape my roommate and I own is hot pink. When I explained to Ms. A that I didn't think hot pink duct tape would look professional on my tuba, she agreed, though pink duct tape would look “cute on a girl's tuba.”

I laughed it off, “It sure would,” and promptly went to laugh about it to my tuba professor. He and Ms. A have a love/hate/please-make-the-copier-work relationship, and he thought it was hilarious that she thought I was a guy.

In fact, most people who have passed me off as male have been older, whereas younger people just assume I'm a lesbian, a tomboy, or one of those strange girls from the gamer floor of our dorm (my straight, soon-to-be-married RA is so much more masculine than I am). Is this because our generation has a broader view of gender representation? I don't have the quote, but I believe in Sarah Waters' Tipping Velvet, one of the characters remarks that a woman can easily pass for a man if she wears pants, because only men wear pants of course. That doesn't hold water today, but there are still certain clothing items that are considered appropriate for one gender- such as a tie. I feel like middle aged people still associate the tie as a purely male clothing accessory. However, I grew up in the shudders Avril Lavigne generation, where women can wear ties all the time.

I think that, as each generation has a wider range of gender-appropriate clothing, the ability to “pass” for transgendered people becomes harder. So, after awhile, is passing even worth it? Because the acceptance of nontraditional clothing in terms of gender should also represent a broader scope of gender in the minds of younger generations anyways. This is a generation of straight girls that can identify as straight but still really, really like to kiss/make out with other girls. Hell, thanks to Katy Perry, they have their anthem. Is this going to be a generation where it's okay for me to not completely pass one way or the other?

Boys Will Be Girls, Girls Will Be Cloud Strife

I lucked out when my roommate decided that we should move to an all-female dorm on campus. I mean, my first thoughts were "Great, here comes even more estrogen and rhinestones and jewelry sales pitches as dorm programs."

Fortunately, my roommate ended up choosing the Gamer Girl floor at our school. You know, the one the RA decorates like a Super Mario world, where no one talks face to face and everyone has an anime wall scroll in their room. No time for painting each others' nails- the new Final Fantasy game just came out!

Not just that, but many of the girls on my floor roleplay as well- whether in the classic desktop games such as Dungeons and Dragons, or online via IM or a game such as Gaia. The thing is, they all roleplay as male characters- often in romantic relationships with female characters who are also played by women.

Cloud from Final Fantasy is one of the favorite characters roleplayed by the girls.

This threw me for a loop. I mean, the girls I'm talking about are exclusively heterosexual. If they were roleplaying male characters in M/M relationships, I could understand it a bit better, since they're all also slash and yaoi fans.

However, these girls are playing male characters with female characters, so I'm not entirely sure what to think of it. The only explanation I can find is the same one often used to justify slash. The female characters are often not as developed and thus not as interesting as the male characters in a franchise, particularly in video games, so maybe it's just because the guys are more interesting? Or maybe, because women spend so much of their lives being passive, especially in romantic relationships, that they use video game and anime roleplaying as an outlet to be active romantically. In that case, it's not that the gender that matters so much, I think, as who is playing a more active role.

Whatever the reason, I thought it was still a great example: even people you would never label as being queer (in a sexual sense, anyways) are playing with gender to suit themselves.