#brazen femme

[macbxth-pdf]

“As for other dykes, I enjoy my share of appreciation for fabulous form and sense of fat drag. Thats right, I said fat drag. I like to dress in a way that plays with what a fat girl is and isn’t supposed to wear. This includes dresses with huge horizontal stripes and tight, brightly colored cardigans that strain to keep one button done up. There is a particular niche of dykes who dig this kind of look and we share a sort of common understanding about performing our bodies in subversive ways. To others who are more invested in traditional standards of beauty and more of a beige clothing landscape, I’m sure that I’m either invisible or gross.”

Fat Activist Allyson Mitchell

Source: ‘Big Fat Femmes: Squeezing a lot of into One Pair of Control Top Nylons’ by Abi Slone and Allyson Mitchell from Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity Edited by Chloë Brushwood Rose & Anna Camilleri

[macbxth-pdf]

Fevers, Fall-Outs, and Fast Foods by Zoe Whittall from Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity edited by Chloë Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri

Please ignore the fact that some of my annotations are edited out

[sartorialorientation]

You know that as a fem what you are is not fake but it is profoundly made up.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, "Gonna Get My Girl Body Back: This is a Work in Progress" from Rose and Camilleri's anthology, Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity

This quote reminds me of when I have put on a face in an interaction. I am always sincere, even if I am exaggerating, or boldly lying, or being enthusiastic when I'm actually feeling down. My intention in each interaction is sincerely focused on engaging, comforting and inspiring those involved. I am aware that as a sincere liar I make an oxymoron of myself, but I am comfortable with this contradiction.This is how I do femme, and it is not fake, but indeed it can be profoundly made up.

[juliaperchance-blog]

I held my breath and counted for twenty years.

Anna Camilleri

[sartorialorientation]

FEMME as an experience that is informed by and also exceeds lesbian herstory; as a way of being that cannot be described as quintessentially feminine. Instead, femme might be described as “femininity gone wrong” – bitch, slut, nag, whore, cougar, dyke, or brazen hussy. Femme is the trappings of femininity gone awry, gone to town, gone to the dogs. Femininity is a demand placed on female bodies and femme is the danger of a body read female or inappropriately feminine. We are not good girls – perhaps we are not girls at all... OUR TERMS ARE SLIPPERY AND OUR DESIGNS COMPLEX.

Rose, Chloe Brushwood and Camilleri, Anna, Eds. Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2002, 13-14.

[madonnaandthewhore-blog]

She's nobody's princess, baby doll, babe. Her ass is her own until she needs a good spanking. Even then, she's nobody's slut but the slut inside you.

Elizabeth Ruth

Quote preview of Brazen Femme

[tinyspiritz]

"as: do you think that a femme is defined by her date?

am: in theory i don't, but in practice that is what i've experienced. i have been put in the category of femme so often, when this was not my intention, that i have kind of started accepting it as my destiny, and so i might as well explore that by having conversations like this one. what do you think?

as: i would have to agree, although it breaks my heart. i don't think that i personally identify as femme because i like to date butches, it just is right for me - independent of others. but that said, i think that you are right when you say that the general practice is such that this is how it falls."

-allyson mitchell & abi slone, from the chapter “big fat femmes: squeezing a lot of identity into one pair of control top nylons” from the anthology “brazen femme”

[cureelliott-blog]

"Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity"  Co-edited by Anna Camilleri and Chloë Brushwood Rose

Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity is a manifesto for the unrepentant bitch, straddling the furious and fantastic. Celebratory and deeply troubling, this sharp-edged collection (of fiction, prose poetry, personal essay, photographs, and illustration) figures the un-hyphenated femme experience emerging in performance, betrayal, violence, humour, and survival. Brazen Femme recognizes femme as an identity in flux, and unapologetically refuses explanations while bringing into view femme identity through description, reflection, and interpretation. 

This book really helped me come to terms with my femme-queer identity and really solidified for me that I didn't have to be "butch" to be who I was.