You Knew You Were a Femme When...

[lettertodaddy]

It's great to come back after a long time away and see this thread still going strong.

[tiaras-and-books]

I'm just now beginning to be brave enough to refer to myself as femme, and even that I'm only comfortable with here on bfp. I don't know why it takes feeling brave about it.

Anyway! For me it wasn't a single aha moment. It was gradual, and had a great deal to do with finding BFP and being able to connect with a lot of what femmes here shared. It kind of helped me sort out my own feelings, to read about what other people had sorted out for their own, if that makes any sense.

It's a little about outward stuff - if I could afford it, I'd have mani-pedis all the time, the cutest clothes ev-ar, all that sort of stuff. Femme doesn't specifically mean that, in my opinion, but if I had my druther's I'd be one heck of a cute pinup type.

But mostly, and really, it's about the inside stuff. I don't know how to explain it except that once I began to have a grasp on what "femme" kind of meant, it was just a calm sort of "yes. that means me." kind of feeling, as if I already knew that about myself and I was just learning the word for it is all. Which is sort of the way it was, I guess. I feel like the type of energy/power/whatever I have in me, it's feminine in nature. This is remarkably hard to explain! Hopefully/probably a lot of you know what I mean, anyway.

So for me, it's about that energy, and what happens to that energy in response to someone who's butch to some degree.

[Orema]

I always knew I was a feminine woman, but it wasn't until later in life that I realized (accepted) that I am best matched with a butch. I was remodeling a room and was getting estimates from contractors. Was waiting for someone to come by and give me a bid. I knew I was a femme when I looked through the peep hole, saw a woman who could have easily been mistaken for a man by someone with a less discerning eye, and the first thing I thought was thank goodness I put on some lipstick. She came in, sat down, and we talked for three hours. My life hasn't been the same since then.

I should add that I had been with a butch years before. When we started our relationship she was a soft butch but she grew into a stone butch. We were both young, didn't have any role models, and didn't understand the body issues stone butches sometimes have. That, coupled with my own insecurities was a recipe for a disaster. After that relationship, the last person I wanted to meet was a butch ... My heart aches for those two young women who were trying to find love and understand ourselves when the odds were against us (at the time, among other things, homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association and our friends and families most certainly thought the same).

Anyway, the day I looked through the peephole was the day I stopped fighting it and re-assessed my life. Haven't looked back.