Remember when Caitlyn Jenner revealed herself on the cover of “Vanity Fair”? Yeah.
I’ve got a lot to say about her conservative politics and her bumpy advocacy, but this, this was cool. Most of you agreed with me. Not all of you, however. Like any woman in the public eye, Caitlyn’s appearance in particular came under scrutiny. “Caitlyn Jenner’s idea of a woman is a cleavage-boosting corset, sultry poses, thick mascara, banter about hair and makeup; nail polish does not a woman make.” “I feel slammed by the decision to portray Ms. Jenner on the cover of ‘Vanity Fair’, as the stereotypical male fantasy of a woman. It’s sexist, no matter who does it.” “I fully support Caitlyn Jenner, but I wish she hadn’t chosen to come out as a sex babe.” These quotations source from Elinor Burkett, Barbara Cohn Schlachet, and Susan Ager, non-trans women with roots in the second wave feminist movement of the 70s and early 80s. Their, perhaps dated, aesthetic preferences of feminist Liberalism clash with femme aesthetics; in this case, trans-femme aesthetics.
But if you ask me, hair, makeup and nails don’t make trans women like me or any women for that matter, bad feminists. Sure, what if Caitlyn had appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in a pantsuit with no makeup, her hair pulled back, arms crossed? I think she would’ve looked really cool, but would we all have accepted her so readily as a woman? Would she have appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair to begin with? It’s time for the aesthetics of upwardly mobile feminist respectability to make room for the aesthetics of survival, particularly trans survival. It’s time to revise what a feminist looks like; especially if hair, makeup, and nails allow her to get jobs, make friends or ride the subway home safely at night. It’s time to free the femme, because some of us need it or just like it, and that’s OK. This charming 1979 text is called, “The transsexual empire: the making of the she-male.” It was written by Elinor Burkett, a second wave radical feminist.
The thesis of this text is essentially that: one, trans women aren’t women; two, trans women are bad for feminist progress. Raymond confesses in the conclusion of the text that she hopes that with enough work, transsexuality - as she calls it - will eventually be morally mandated out of existence. In 1979, shortly after this book was published, Johns Hopkins, the first US medical institution to offer life-saving, gender confirmation surgery, phased out the procedure and dismantled its Gender Identity Committee after coming under fire in this text. Raymond hypothesizes, “If the transsexual merely exchanges one gender role for another, and if the outcome is to endorse a femininity which, in many transsexuals, becomes a caricature of much that feminists have rejected about man-made femininity, then where is the challenge, the transgression, and the breaking of any real boundaries?” I believe that Raymond’s call for women to break real gender boundaries is a call we should answer.
But do we we have to answer with our bodies? Is it our fault, if the dominant, man-made beauty ideals exclude the bodies that most of us were born with? And, is it bad, if we want to do something about that make a couple of changes? Because men are scary pigs, and patriarchy is real.
If hair, makeup, and nails, hormones even, If those things keep us strong and safe, then, I don’t know. Does that make us sell-outs or survivors? Speaking of hair and makeup, I love Lana Del Rey!
I love her so much. In a 2014 edition of The New Inquiry, my good friend Sarah Nicole Prickett analyzes the pop-star’s image. “Two years ago, the prevailing male establishment appeared to not like Lana Del Rey one bit. The New York Times’ John Caramanica called her a poser, a meme, and a has-been suggesting that she could only try again after washing off that face paint and mussing up that hair. In other words, Lana Del Rey should have done a better job of passing, of being a ‘natural woman.’” One, I relate. Are there any trans girls in the room? No? Ah, my stats were wrong. Passing as a natural woman can decide whether I have a good day or a bad day. It sucks, but it is what it is. Number two. Wow. Thirty-five years after the publication of “The transsexual empire,” Raymond’s preferred femme-free aesthetics of second wave feminism have become the mainstream aesthetics expected by the bro-literati of women. Yikes.
Prickett continues - Here’s another picture of Del Rey; Whoops! Should I have shown you that? - that, “Lana Del Rey’s rejection of upwardly mobile feminism and/or high-class femininity in favor of fatalistic glamor makes her a gender deserter to some, but a godsend to most. When girls and women are meant to choose chic, studied effortlessness, Lana’s truth is an alternative, a man-loving woman. Read ‘man’ unliterally, as something big and impossible to get out from money, a whole damn country …” Under patriarchy, money and country inscribe themselves on women’s bodies. We look in the mirror, and we ask ourselves, “Do I look like a rich woman today?” We look in the mirror and say, “Do I look like an American woman today?” We look in the mirror and say, “Do I look like a beautiful woman today?” And if I don’t look rich, beautiful, and American, Am I still a woman? Lana Del Rey and Caitlyn Jenner merely fit the bill we were all charged, and I don’t blame them for that.
If the aesthetics of money and country are, as Prickett argues impossible to get out from, then, why are we being shamed for working it out underneath them? Here’s a picture of me, before I started transitioning, or I had started transitioning but I hadn’t started medical transition yet. At this point in my life, I wore a full face of makeup every day, I shaved my whole body every week which covered me in these angry red spots. I stopped cutting my hair. I wore dresses to morning classes. I started hormones: pills twice a day and a needle in my leg every week. I started going in for a monthly laser hair removal appointments, procedures that were so painful, that I had to chug a flask of vodka before every session just so I would feel it less. I starved myself and abused laxatives so I could fit the clothes I wanted to wear. I did all this because I wanted a body that allowed me to do the things I wanted to do in the way I wanted to do them.
Things men in this country aren’t really allowed to do. I tried to do them in the body I was born with, but people told me, “No, you can’t. “You have to soften up your face, get rid of all your body hair; get breasts, shrink your waist, get a vagina.” Of course, I looked them right in the eye said, “Fuck you,” turned around, and did pretty much all of what they told me to do.
It hurt, and it worked. If my story, or journey sounds difficult or tough, I can guarantee you, it’s even more difficult and more tough for the vast majority of trans women. In 2002, a trans woman named Gwen Araujo was beaten and strangled to death by four men upon their discovery that Gwen, despite her femme appearance, was not assigned female at birth. In 2013, Islan Nettles was slaughtered under similar circumstances. In 2014, Jennifer Laude was slaughtered under similar circumstances by a US marine. In 2016, January, Monica Loera was slaughtered under similar circumstances. Worldwide, a trans person is slaughtered every three days. The vast majority of these victims are trans women of color, and the vast majority of the discovered murderers are men, dissatisfied with our embodiment of femininity, dissatisfied by trans femininity. Men who judge us to be not femme enough. It is so hard to gain access to hormones to jump through all the medical hoops.
It is so expensive to buy cosmetics, new clothes, healthy food, any number of means towards body feminization. Even if a trans woman does manage to look or seem femme, her race, her class, or her citizenship can place further targets on her back. So, when it comes to trans women with limited resources, their femme can be the difference between life and death. So, I got to ask: why are we being shamed for our femme? Let femmes be femmes, if they want to be femme, because some of us need it or just want it, and that’s OK. When the aesthetics of feminist respectability exclude and erase the women who need, not just want, need to give them up, then the aesthetics of feminist respectability need to change. Femme aesthetics aren’t bad or good. They just work. They just are. They work for some of us. So, chill out.
Let us live. Free the Femme. Thank you.