On her last night in town Marisa and I went on a long walk out to Fen Ditton, traversing muddy fields and listening to birds sing. We stood at the river’s edge and watched the light fade from the sky, the colors reflecting on the calm water.
Back in town we stopped at a pub to toast each other with Guinness and observe the population in their natural habitat. We’re both given to quizzical behavior of this kind; it is good to hang out with someone who has an equal need for silent assessment.
At some point when we were not analyzing the group dynamics at the table next to us Marisa informed me that I exercise a high degree of femme privilege.
I objected But I’m a thug!
She answered Yeah, but you get away with a lot because of the hair, lipstick, and skirt!
This was interesting in part because she has only known me in my current incarnation. For most of my twenties I wore military surplus trousers, tattered tshirts, and a black hoodie. I dragged my gear around in a bike bag, and although I didn’t wear patches professing love of gardens, I definitely dwelled within the North Portland bike punk aesthetic.
Before that I had the complete kit of a bureaucrat, including beige skirts, blazers, and ugly shoes. My hair was cut in a very proper bob and I even had normal spectacles (for the first and only time since my mother selected my first pair at age ten).
During my teens and even my childhood I was of course a fashion oddball, with a clear and inappropriate tendency to wear mismatched and brightly colored vintage clothing layered on top of longjohns despite my mother’s best efforts to make me look decent.
Throughout these switches I’ve never been more than vaguely aware of how my clothing is perceived by others. It is true that I deliberately wear costumes, but only for my own idiosyncratic reasons – not to convey some kind of message about my identity.
I’m not very good at the whole girl thing. My hair is an uncontrollable mess, my clothes are generally in a state of profound disarray, my nails are clipped to nonexistence. I’m wearing the lipstick Sarah-Jane picked out for me seven years ago because I am too frightened of make-up counter ladies to seek out a new color.
The rest of the stuff I smack on is just several layers of sunblock to ward off new tumors, even if it appears that I’m trying to look like a china doll. I’ll concede that I do paint my eyes… but I make them look bruised! Mark Mitchell helpfully points out that my shoes are too frumpy for the average nun (and that I have thick ankles; it is true, I’m a peasant).
If I’m exercising what Marisa refers to as femme privilege I do not see exactly how that manifests, since in all of my travels someone has offered to carry my suitcase up the tube stairs exactly once.
The assorted chivalries accorded ladies never come in my direction. I’m admittedly oblivious, but very few people would even dare talk to me.
When I pointed that fact out to her she said Yeah, exactly!