My Makeup Makes Me Invisible
On Femme Invisibility in the Gay Community
Originally appeared on HerSheMag.com
In high school, I was in beauty pageants. I even won twice…sort of. For two years in a row I won my division—not the overall title, but I did get 2 sparkly crowns. They’ve gone missing now.
But, in college, I was “that girl who was in pageants LOL”. It was a quirky story to tell, and I gained a lot of the confidence I have now, that has served me well, from the experience, so I appreciated it even while I poked fun at it. Then…
At 23, I got engaged. To a man.
At 24, I left him and dated other men for awhile.
At 25, I married the man I had been engaged to (yep, the same guy I had left).
At 29, I fell in love with a woman, I left my husband, and I entered the queer scene in New York City.
I also pretty much stopped wearing makeup, for the most part. And as a former beauty queen, as you might imagine, this was a big deal for me.
For my entire life after having those crowns placed on my head, I was very, very into makeup. I had a lot of it, I thought about it a lot, I was always trying to figure out how it worked and what to do, and was kind of into the science and art of it. Looking back on it, I also think at that time makeup was a way for me to hide, and escape, and be something other than myself. Despite the pageant thing, I have a conflicted relationship with how I look and I’m pretty sure that for much of my life, I’ve used makeup to be other, and to seem “perfect” and “nice” so that nobody could see who I really was.
It was never a conscious thing though, both wearing makeup each day and then, gradually, not. But as I started dating women and being around women almost exclusively, I felt like I didn’t need to pretend to be something I wasn’t anymore. The pressure to appeal to the Male Gaze was gone, and I felt liberated in that. I was living on my own, starting to live authentically, and felt less of a need to cover up who I really was. Which was a good thing. But I was also confused about how the “girly” parts of myself—my appreciation of lip gloss and a flawless face and dramatic lashes—could fit in with the gay parts of myself.
I remember going to Stiletto (a popular party for lesbians in NYC) for the first time, wearing heels and makeup, and I felt completely awkward and out of place. And like I had missed the memo. I didn’t have to dress like that anymore, duh. And it turned out that I really didn’t want to dress like that anymore, at least not then. And I was relieved. So I threw my heels in the back of my closet, and revelled in being more comfortable when I went out, and in not having to work so hard to “look nice.” I chopped off my hair (not for the first time, but still) and started dressing not for the stereotypical “man” but for women. And, even more so, for me.
Cut to six months ago. On a particularly dull day at work, I found myself watching beauty videos online—-makeup tutorials, product reviews, The Works. And I found myself saying, “Ohhhhhhhhh, pretty….” and was drawn back to my still quite large, but long-ignored makeup collection. I started experimenting again, and… it was really fun. It is fun. And it turns out that I now, again, really like putting sparkly stuff on my eyes and “contouring” and lip glosses and all that shit. I LIKE PLAYING WITH AND WEARING MAKEUP OKAY.
But soon after I embraced my “high femme” ways, I realized why I might have stopped wearing much makeup in the first place. Almost immediately, I found myself wondering, and often: how will anyone know that I’m gay now? And WHAM, just like that the Femme Invisibility problem slaps me in the face.
I think about Femme Invisibility a lot, and have since I started dating women. Both my girlfriend and I “pass” as straight. At my job, even before I started wearing makeup again, the assumption is that I am a straight woman, and if anyone wonders if maybe I’m not straight, it’s only because I am always trying to advocate for queer issues and make sure to always bring the concerns of queer people up in meetings. But if I am walking down the street, especially if I’m dressed for work, no one would ever think that I love women, and date a woman, and like having sex with women.
And that bothers me. Maybe it shouldn’t. And I find myself conflicted and confused and wondering why it matters so much to me that people on the street not assume I’m a straight person just because I’m wearing blush and lipgloss. Why do I care if random people know who I choose to date or if they assume incorrectly? And why is that the assumption that’s made anyway? It’s not fair, to any of us, really, gay or straight or anything in between, that any assumptions are made at all, in either direction.
And yet, we are human beings, and human beings like labels and boxes.
So I find myself being put into the wrong box, by strangers and colleagues and probably other queer women. Of course we are all being mislabeled and misunderstood all the time, but this misreading of me feels… worse than the others. I feel the heavy thumb of hetero-normativity pressing down on me, and it wipes away who I am, and it sucks.
Maybe it’s time to get that rainbow tattoo.
Edie Wyatt writes about being a new lesbian in her 30s (and other things) at New Lesbian. She is working on her memoir “Married, Divorced, and Gay by 30,” about self-discovery, growing up, and sexual fluidity, out later this year.
