Femme Armour
Alexandre Vauthier
Sometimes I need to feel a little bit protected – insulated – hard. Sometimes I’m angry, vulnerable, anxious. Sometimes I just don’t want to be approached by strangers.
In those times I often spend more time getting ready to go out then I spend at whatever I’m at. More time in the bathtub. More time adding mascara. Usually whatever time the party is supposed to start is the time that I will start my manicure. Then I will put on some tights, change my mind, change my tights, fuck up my manicure. Then I will drink some gin with whatever is in the fridge. Then I will go out.
Alexandre Vauthier
you fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye
— Margaret Atwood
I’ve been thinking a lot about Mark Aguhar and what it means to throw yourself off a building and what it means to be a calloutqueen. And about this Margaret Atwood poem, which has long been a favourite. What does it mean to live life as an accusation, an existence that holds everyone else accountable for their oppressive bullshit? Closeness and pain. Mark lived their life as an artistic practice while knowing that images of femmes of colour are appropriated by whiteness. How can we remember without appropriation? I can contour and lipstick and put on my booty shorts but on my cis white body, that isn’t radical.
How can do femme our own way – AND be visible – while refusing to be co-opted or commodified?
Nick, Bridget and Me by (I think) Bradley Boyle
It might not look like it, but on the day this photo was taken I was doing this eyeliner because of anger. My facebook status was “FUCK YOU LET’S DANCE.” I wanted to be where I was without being on display. My friend Bradley came up to me and said, “tonight you look like everyone who is allowed to talk to you knows who they are and everyone else needs to ask permission.”
In that moment Brad saw exactly how I felt.
Tonight I’m wearing that pair of high-heeled boots that made me feel so fancy in the grocery store & that hurt the next day so much I couldn’t walk. I worked them in and now I have them on at work, am doing lots of heavy lifting in them, and it is only hurting a little bit.
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