The clink of her bangles and crack of her gum were polyrhythmic; my first love of femmes came with a 24K gold pinky nail and stories of taking over her college’s administration building in protest. I had secular music and solo trips to the corner store ushering me into young femmehood. Pineapple waves and Isoplus oil sheen crowned me an around the way girl. My big girl hairstyle got me the only praise I ever received with regard to my appearance. I associated my hairdresser with adornments and a specialness that my everyday regular self dreamt of. I was a real girl when my hair was done. I was pretty to someone else. The way she complimented me made me feel like spun gold. My first love had so much jewelry I likened the sound of her walking to the opening notes of a lullaby.
I couldn’t get the hang of femme. I liked earrings, but I liked baggy jeans. I wanted to dress like TLC, but they didn’t have clothes that big at Marshall’s and Artie’s. Not that I would have been allowed. It was bad enough I was fat. According to my grandmother, baggy clothes were purportedly sloppy, and therefore worse for me. I didn’t understand that. I thought if I dressed more on-trend I’d be cooler than before. I assumed that better clothing would offset my impossible social awkwardness. I hoped a better wardrobe would save me from cracks on my skin and hair. It never came together for me, the effortless and casual girliness I saw in my musical fandoms. I wanted to be pretty to someone else.
My twenties were when I overdressed myself for every occasion, attemptng to feel superior to “underdressed” women with bodies smaller than mine. I never did feel good about it. There wasn’t shit to feel good about. Makeup confused me, so I prided myself on not knowing how to use it. I made up some reason why it shouldn’t matter. Faking it seemed like the better choice; the alternative would be too humiliating. I was conscious or whatever. I was a real woman, or something. It wasn’t until I greeted 29 that I began to understand myself as more than an object. I began to care in ways that I’d previously talked myself out of. It felt indulgent, almost transgressive. What did it mean when the woman who wanted to “be deep” did what her “opposites” did? What did beauty mean when I never thought it could be mine?
I cared to be cute. I wanted to be fine. I needed to be desired by people whom I found attractive. I leaned into it, but only if I could rationalize it: turning 30, I shaved my head and needed to work with my face, I had another happy hour after work. I claimed vanity, but it wasn’t that. I wanted to look together. I needed to tell a story about a transplant who was killing shit. If only. I sought to give the appearance of someone who was ascendant and abundant. Nobody knew but me, how I’d made femme a place to perfom the opposite of what I actually experienced and felt. I made it seem real. Fuck despair; an open bar at another TriBeCa hotel awaits. I had to have something to tell my friends about the life I was living, the replacement for the nervous breakdown I’d tried to leave behind me.
I got the hang of femme once I learned that my comfort mattered a lot and that my pleasure mattered most. My comfort isn’t just physical. I feel at home in my body when I feel protected. I armor myself with acrylic manicures, brass bangles, leopard print and gigantic hoop earrings. I delight in the music of my nails clacking against a keyboard. Good smells announce me before I even say or do a thing. A pair of Js express me as well as leopard print pumps. I hold space for my femme softly and fiercely.
I am in a moment when I hold space for the young me who wanted to express herself through clothes, while ensuring my adult self’s satisfaction and joy in this culmination.