Fairy Tales

Hackney Marshes

Someone asked me recently what I was like as a kid. I was a mix between girlie and tomboy. I still am, though I have always been visually very femme, and that has nothing to do with "femme" sexuality in that sense. I also wear no makeup at all, occasionally, and anyone who knows me well also knows that I can pull my own and work physically hard, climb trees, gut fish, eschew cleaning, usually much better than self-professed tomboys or even boys. Having said that, it's all about the glitter (not so much the feathers) for me. It's such a damn pity that little girls aren't allowed to be camp without preciousness seeping in - we can be pretty princesses. It's not enough. We should get to be artists - aficionados - too.

Men are allowed, as particular kinds of adults, to love musicals, bitchy wit, high drama. Men are allowed to cry when John Barrowman sings "I Am What I Am" on YouTube. Little girls and big girls, on the other hand, become mere appendages - faghags, everything seen through a male lens. There are those of us who are girls whose hearts soar when we hear the opening, Busby Berkeley-esque strains of "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" (yes!) as well. But we're not allowed to do this - we can be divas (the objects of male admiration), but never connoisseurs. We have to be Liza.

I was watching a great burlesque performance this weekend where the performer threw a pocket's worth of glitter in the air as "rain". It was so fucking beautiful to see the air sparkle like that. I could describe myself as faggy, the stereotype of which might sort of cover my sensibilities, but I always associate fags as admirable angry young male Queer Nation activists and although, gender aside, that was me at one time, it's not truly my word to use. Indeed, an ex-gf recently described me as "a bit of a trouble maker, a bit faggy, and sharp as a tack". I like that one, but even "faggy" makes me feel like I don't get to be me without a male context to explain me. Our society has taken even femininity away from the girls and given it to the men. It was never ours in the first place. I'm still figuring this one out.