[Femmadian]

These are just some discombobulated thoughts and observations so hopefully someone will be able to parse some meaning or common bond from them and realize they're not so alone.

Growing up, I always thought I was pretty homely. It wasn't until fairly recently that I started to question that belief.

Anyway... I was a somewhat chunky kid, but "proportionally" so, and always taller than my peers, so instead of being described as "fat," I'd euphemistically be described as "solid," "husky," "big boned," or "larger" (larger than what, exactly?). When I finally stopped growing at ten years old, I was already 5'8 and felt like a freak around the pretty, petite girls and scrawny, petite-for-now boys who were my friends.

I was jokingly called "Baby Huey" by my family for years.

I was always urged to play sports because of my relative size and hated basketball (that catch-all sport that all the tall girls are nudged into playing) but liked soccer... until the year at camp when I was 11 and accidentally broke the ankle of the sporty, also-husky dyke camp counsellor while skirmishing for the ball. She had to be carried off the field on a stretcher and wasn't able to return for a few days. When she did, she hobbled around on crutches and a cast and jokingly made the sign of the cross around me. That pretty much solidified any feelings I had about sports being not for me and I was frankly afraid of my body's size and strength and didn't know what to do with it.

For years I got the "oh, you'd have such a pretty figure/would be such a pretty girl if you just lost X amount of weight" or "oh, if you only dressed more feminine or hung out with the popular girls more, maybe they'd rub off on you."

I was never called pretty or cute or beautiful when I was a little girl and definitely not as a teenager. I was never the cute kid or the "future heartbreaker" or any of the very gendered stuff we describe little girls as. I did have nice hair though which, while thick and long and forming natural ringlets on its own, was also the cause of many tears and frustrating mornings before school trying to get out the knots before the bus came. We, along with my flat iron, have a bit of a love-hate relationship now. I never got the "oh, you have such a pretty face" comments that so many of the "bigger" girls patronizingly got (and still get) and over time I figured that people were just being nice by not stating (what was, to me) the obvious: that I was ugly and fat and monstrous and they were trying to mask their surprise that someone with such a beautiful mother could end up being such a disappointment.

I did have an eating disorder in high school and university which, though I suspect my family knew it was there, was encouraged and hailed as a sign of self-discipline and single-mindedness as I was getting results and shrinking pretty rapidly in front of them. I was starving myself, having greyouts, and exercising like a heart attack-begging fool, but hey, I took up less space and was easier to shop for on birthdays and holidays so it wasn't seen as a bad thing.

I remember very clearly one incident in high school which was seared into my brain when a family friend, late 40's and wistful about not having children of her own, was talking to me late one night about how my mother gave birth to such a beautiful daughter (singular... for the record, my mother has three, two of which share her genes, of which I am one)... and then went on to gush about how attractive my younger sister is. "She's so beautiful and so sweet! And those eyes! She looks just like a young Elizabeth Taylor!" I remember getting very quiet and I guess I must have given her a slightly sullen, stifled teenaged "what am I, chop liver?" look as she quickly backtracked after an awkward few moments and sheepishly added, "oh, and of course, you're a pretty girl, too..." followed by a rapid subject change...

Which brings me to my mother...

My mother was and still is a great beauty. She's like this beautiful, confident, fiery, feminine cross between Julianna Margulies from ER and Cher circa, say, 1989 in her leather phase. She was (is) gorgeous and everyone around her knew it. I grew up hearing how beautiful she was and seeing men of all stripes throwing themselves at her. She was never without a bevy of admirers, flowers, jewellery, gifts, dates... even as a single mother. I remember as a little girl, 3 or 4 years old, watching her sit in front of the mirror for an hour or more doing her makeup before she would ever think of going to the store to get milk or bread and thinking admiringly of how beautiful she was and then followed by a childlike thought of "oh, some day, I'm going to be just like that." And it never came for me. It was expected (by myself and also those around me) but it never happened. Family kept saying, "oh, just wait until you reach high school and you'll have to beat them off with a stick." Well, high school came and went and it never happened. Then it was "oh, just you wait until university where you'll meet educated, 'intelligent' people and not these silly little boys (girls...) you're dealing with and you'll see..." and it never happened. Then it was "oh, once you lose enough weight, then people will notice you." And yes, it happened slightly, but mostly from greasy, gross, creepy, predatory older men who I had no desire to talk to, much less date... so I was noticed, but not in a good way.

And now it's "oh, are you queer because men just didn't like you?"



Up until recently, like, say, the last two years or so, the only people who ever expressed any appreciation for my looks were those who were trying to get into my pants (or skirt, whatever). I'm not quite sure what changed in the past two years (maybe after many years I've finally mastered the winged eyeliner look? That must be it!) but now I'm being described in complimentary terms by people with no ulterior motives and it's completely thrown me off balance. I know how to deal with being ignored or whispered about or being the girl with the nice personality and big lady-brain but with a body completely lacking in sex appeal or any conventional beauty to speak of, but when a random stranger or someone who doesn't know me well describes me as pretty or beautiful, it feels foreign and shocking. When people first started telling me I was beautiful, I had a voice which instantly started screaming in my head "no, no, no, no, they're lying! What do they want? Why are they trying to trick you? They're being patronizing or phoney or conniving. Stay away from them! Go!" and it's fucked up and I know it. It's still there and it's something I have to push down and work around and get by without. It's caused me to stay in relationships I shouldn't have long past their expiration date because of that voice in my head which said that no one else would ever want me or think I was attractive enough to be with and if I broke up with this person who was treating me like shit, then I would be alone for years and years until someone else saw past my ugliness and thought I was a nice person with great hair and maybe that would be enough.

People now are saying I look just like my mother, which is a bit of a double edged sword for me now because of our very complicated relationship but also because that I can remember being that starry eyed little girl who wanted nothing more than to be like her and look like her. My grandmother recently saw my new passport photo and she quite seriously asked me why I had my mother's passport until she looked closer at the name and realized it was mine. So, there's that...

Maybe I was just an ugly duckling for a really long time.

And now to add "femme" to the mix... there's a certain pernicious nagging which wonders "am I entitled to claim this...? Am I pretty enough to carry out feminine without looking like a joke, making myself an object of fun, looking ridiculous? Am I "X" enough to do this?" We've all seen the women and girls who are described as those who just "didn't have it" who tried to look feminine or pretty or whatever and were met with derision and condescension and the "who does she think she is" comments if she was outwardly confident and outspoken and the "poor thing, I know she's trying..." headpats if she was quiet and unassuming. I still sometimes feel like a poseur or that the only person I'm fooling is myself. To reject your feminine side or a feminine aesthetic in response is one way to get around that ("well, if I'm not pretty or feminine, then at least I'm going to embrace that about myself and my style of dress and my entire life will be a big 'fuck you' to anyone who tries to make me feel bad about it")... but at what cost? At what point does the desire to protect yourself become a hindrance and take over who you really are? Does it deny or replace a very real part of you instead of protecting that part you're actually trying to keep intact?

I'm not sure I have an answer to that. It's something I think about often and I wonder how much of it is just me or how much of it is societal. Perhaps that's part of what's so disempowering about the whole thing - we internalize the political as purely personal and in so doing, feel alienated from the very people who are experiencing the same thing but expressing it differently or doing their damnedest to appear otherwise.

I think most women have stories like this to tell and part of the healing is in the telling of them... but I wonder, what then?

The feminist part of me chafes at the idea that women should place any value on being seen as attractive or beautiful at all (because, I mean, really, how many straight men do you think are losing sleep over this?) but when you have a culture at large that's set up for women to find their worth in how they look, it doesn't do anyone any favours to ignore it or just tell that individual woman to get over it and to stop being so vain, superficial, shallow, look-obsessed, petty, vacuous... or any number of other misogynist terms we have for women who are only reacting to the acidic, primordial mix they've been swimming in daily since the moment they were born.

Are we supposed to "just keep swimming" while desperately trying to keep our heads above water? I know this is a hard conversation and I sometimes feel emotionally drained after talking about it, but it's so important and I hope that others will come forward to share their stories too, however incomplete, messy, difficult, or disorganized their thoughts may be and whatever ID they may be speaking from. We need you all.