Here’s a big newsflash for everyone: I have breasts. Two of them. And while not huge, they enter the room before the rest of me and announce my presence. They are, I would say, undeniable.
I also have a vagina. And while this does not enter a room before me, I would also say that it is undeniable. The absence of a bulge in the front of my pants means that you know what’s going to be there instead.
I also have unintentionally big, intentionally fake-blonde hair. I’m round and soft-looking. Although I’m young, I look younger than I actually am. And on days when I’m dressed the way I like, I look like I’m maybe 40% Elvegren pinup girl, 30% cartoon character, and 30% Aging Starlet—you know, the once-perfect ingénue just slightly past her prime, who copes with the passing years with booze and pills and overdressing for every occasion with something that’s a little too sparkly, or too revealing, or too ruffled; the woman who maybe fell down drunk in a ditch while walking into the party, but goddamn it, she still looks good, and she’s going to tell you that loudly and belligerently if you look at her sideways.
I am also fucking brilliant.
I mean that. And while I understand that it’s not socially polite to say that, I do for a number of reasons. For one thing, because it’s true. And for another thing, socially it’s mainly considered impolite for women to admit their strengths. You know, because it’s immodest. And women are supposed to be modest. And that’s bullshit. If women are good at something, they should be able to say that they’re good at something without fear of reprisal. They’re just speaking the truth. So while in general, I’m not so good at the proverbial tooting of my own proverbial horn, and I don’t particularly enjoy talking about my specific achievements, and I have to actively practice taking a compliment well without getting all embarrassed, I *will* occasionally pronounce that I am a genius, or that I am a brilliant artist, or that faults and all, I am all-around fucking awesome. Because I am. And because it’s important for women to say that stuff every once in a while. And for women to hear other women saying that stuff every once in a while.
But then there are those times when you have to say it because some people can’t see past the cartoonish Aging Starlet. You know, the picture of exaggerated femininity that I often present that is sometimes unintentionally reminiscent of circus fat ladies. When fat ladies started out as attractions in circus sideshows, one of the ways they were marketed was as “more woman than regular women”. You know, if an average size woman is feminine, then a woman twice the size is twice as feminine. So they’d be dressed up all extra girly, with extra ribbons and bows and lace, and they’d be billed as being extra charming and extra flirty with extra feminine wiles. And once I found my place within the world of really feminine apparel, I realized pretty quickly that there was a touch of this dynamic in people’s perceptions. So if a particular look makes an average-sized girl seemed girly, me in the look makes me seem extra girly-girly.
Generally this isn’t much of a problem. Except sometimes people equate extra girly-girly with “vapid” or “gullible” or “pushover”. And generally, this isn’t much of a problem, either. Except sometimes it happens at work.
Luckily, as an educator and an artist, I’m in a creative field that allows me leeway in my dress. Now that I’m no longer at that hyper-conservative college in a the hyper-conservative South Central, where I went to work in Professor Drag and where my “real person” clothes caused the village children to follow me around, taking pictures of me with their cell phones, I’ve made a bit of a resolution not to hide who I am through my clothes. I’m at a big university now where some people with their Ph.D.s teach classes in sweatpants, so I’m not sweating my style anymore. So I’m never wearing another pair of black trousers again. I’m never going to dress entirely in neutrals. I will wear my electric blue tights to work, or the kelly green ones, and I will wear my hot pink pinup girl sweater with a sweeping circle skirt, and I will wear my peacock blue silk blouse with a pink angora cardigan and a rhinestone belt. This is happening right now. And it’s great. Because if a person can be smart and authoritative in sweats, she can damn well be smart and authoritative in a fabulous ruffled wrap dress and heeled mules.
But then there are those moments when you see it happen: you see someone look at you, and you see them look at your youth and your pink angora sweater and yeah, your undeniable breasts and your vagina-havingness, and you see them think “irrelevant” or “incompetent” or “stupid”. Which again, is fine because people can think what they want. But sometimes they’re a student in your class. Or a designer on your show. Or working with you in some capacity in which you are in charge and they have to do what you say. And it’s a problem because of course, why would they ever listen to or respect a woman with fake-colored hair and cherries on her dress? She can’t possibly know what she’s talking about.
And then the whole situation turns into one of my least favorite things in the world: the power struggle.
It’s one of my least favorite things because it is absolutely ridiculous, since the power struggle is based on a competitive social model in which there is a limited amount of power to go around. I prefer something much more cooperative or collaborative. But then you’re working in an environment which is inherently hierarchical—like say, when you’re directing a show—but you still want to minimize the hierarchy. So there I am, say, as the director, trying to be all collaborative and inclusive of other people’s ideas…and then the one designer dude decides he can try to push me around. Or not meet deadlines. Or not take my notes. And then things get ugly.
First, I get anxious, because I know there is a power struggle happening, but I don’t want to struggle. I want us to cooperate. But it’s not happening. Then I get more anxious as I try to fix the problem and resolve the struggle in a socially polite way, and more anxious when the dude inevitably refuses to respond to good-mannered negotiation. Then I get more anxious as the date of production nears, and the person not doing his job to a degree that the entire show gets compromised.
And then I get *pissed*. Because someone is trying to fuck with my art. And no one gets to do that. And then I become a Perpetual Motion Machine of Pissed, getting ever and ever more angry at each thing the dude says that implies that I don’t know what I’m talking about, every time he dismisses my notes, every time he treats me like a little girl. And I get pissed at every design element that is not a part of the aesthetic being created, every note that is not followed to a T, every manipulation of my comments that does not contribute to the vision of the production as a whole. Because as an artistic genius, I have brilliant visions. And they can be realized if people quit trying to fuck with them.
And then I become this tower of rage, which pisses me off even more than humanly possible, spilling over into anger that is only SuperHumanly possible, because I hate feeling angry and because I hate being forced into laying the smack down and because I hate it when we can’t all just agree to treat each other with respect.
And I hate it because it reminds me of the day that I realized my capacity to be an Ice Queen. While the whole thing is another story for another day, the nuts and bolts of it is that I found myself caught in an extended conflict with a SuperVillain of epic proportions when I was a tender 21 years old. I had tried in every possible way to diffuse the conflict—indeed, I tried to avoid all contact with him. I pulled out all of my willpower and manners in order to avoid the massive confrontation that was brewing inside him, and thus hopefully keeping the police away and civilization as we know it in tact. But the villain wouldn’t stay away, and he wouldn’t respond to logic and manners, and he kept moving forward towards confrontation with more and more aggression until I could no longer ignore it. Because he showed up at my place of residence to throw down. Now this villain was a good six to eight inches taller than me and about my size-worth of muscle, and I remember getting pushed and pushed until I finally squared off with him, stepping up to him, looking him right in the face, and coldly warning him, “Don’t fuck with me. Because you will lose. You. Will. Lose.”
And I meant it. At that moment, I felt every little bit of nice fall off of me. Every little bit of warmth drained out of me until I was a cold, brittle Ice Queen. Everything soft and kind and polite evaporated into the air, and all that was left was angry sharp edges. And I hated it because it was not me—it was evolution. It was survival of the fittest. Everything that made me me was gone and replaced by the steely resolve and cold rage of someone locked in a mortal battle and is not going down without a fight.
And I hate feeling like that because really, aggression is absolutely unnecessary. You know, unless someone wants to lock you into an epic battle to the death. But there’s no reason for epic battles if you just both remember that the other person is a human being, or if you really can’t do that—avoid them. And I go along for these long stretches of time practicing this, using manners and logic and humor and charm when necessary to make sure we all can interact like human beings, whether or not we see eye-to-eye.
And it works; I really think it works.
But then you’re operating in your professional capacity, you know, in which you are highly skilled, and then you get some dude on your team who demeans you, or treats you like a child, or treats you like an idiot, or behaves as though your opinions are insignificant when this is your project which you are in charge of. And you try the manners and you try the charm and you try all the techniques in the interpersonal communication handbook, and you see the dude treat your male colleagues with respect, but despite all your efforts at being civilized, he still acts like you’re some ridiculous little girl playing at being a professional. And you’re standing there in your little red-and-white-striped seersucker dress and pink ribboned heels trying to say, “Listen to me! I know what I’m talking about!”
And then through his jackassery, the dude tries to destroy something beautiful. Something that you love. Which is the art. And then to protect it, you have to go all Ice Queen and get all hard an immovable and resort to the hierarchy and get all, “Right, we need to remember who makes the decisions around here—me. You can complain all you want, but this is my territory, and what I say goes. You don’t like it? There’s the door.” It’s such an awful feeling. Because it doesn’t have to get to that point. And because I’m not that person.
It’s awful too because it makes me afraid that in order to operate in this kind of Big Time circle I’ve entered into now, I’m going to have to become that person. You know, that I’m going to have to become a permanent Ice Queen just so no one will fuck with me. And I’m afraid that even just whipping out the ice every so often when pushed into it will slowly erode everything I like about who I am—that one time all the warmth will drain out and just never come back. And for all of the angst-ing that I do, I’m still warm, and I’m open, and I feel overwhelming amounts of love. And while, yeah, my bones are made of razor blades, everything that covers them soft and lush and sweet.
And I love that. As difficult as it is to be that way sometimes, I love it. And I don’t want to have to surrender that—or worse, have it all slowly worn away—just to work in this field. Or just to deal with the villains who think that being a younger person with breasts and a vagina and bright red lipstick and a sequined tank and a quirky shoe collection automatically equals incompetent and insignificant.
Because I’m not just competent, I’m fucking amazing. But I shouldn’t have to turn into an Ice Queen to prove it.
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