Staring at dykes on trains

Article originally submitted to Gender Agenda Zine, edited by Elly Robson and Clementine Beauvais, whose wonderful cartoons you can find here: Doodles from the Bubble

Like this (left), but with less touching and more staring

Saturday afternoon. I’m wearing a yellow vest top and long adidas shorts, listening to Sleater-Kinney at their angry best, reflecting portentously upon an event of singular importance: my next haircut. Should I go for the quiff and shaved side bits again, or is it time to change to the andro-summer crop? Every recent hairdressing experience of mine features this exchange - ‘I won’t cut it that short, you don’t want to look like a boy’... ‘No, I do! Make me a boy! I like masculine! Actually, maybe that’s too short. Oh God, what have I done?! Maybe it will be ok with lipstick.’

Its a truism that every lesbian looks like a lesbian in some sense. But if every lesbian really looked that different we wouldn’t be recognisable at all, and we are. Much of my commuting time over the years I’ve been living in London has been dedicated to figuring out what gives the game away, what distinguishes a straight-looking woman from an obviously, irreversibly flaming dyke.

From humble beginnings trying unsuccessfully to catch the eye of an attractive, shaven headed, twenty stone, dungaree-wearing bull-dagger holding a copy of the (sadly defunct) Pink Paper - she stared me down mockingly as she left the train - I have come to know something of what the signs are.

There are the socially visible markers of a woman with a butch identity. Docs, crop, shirts, jeans, ties, the ‘I can take you, your best friend, and your mother. As long as you all consent.’ attitude. There are the East Londoner signs: slightly more androgynous than your average hipster, likely to be found wearing an aggressive jacket. There are the femme indicators, sometimes nothing more than a look in the eye, a slightly geometrical haircut, short nails, and the all-over back-at-you appraisal which is definitely (in my imagination) more I’d-like-to-fuck-you than I-like-what-you’re-wearing-oriented.

There are lesbian-feminists from the hallowed field of Greenham Common. I often see them holding ‘zines, wearing badges and studiously defying fashion fascism all at once. There are queers who defy fashion fascism by denying that fashion could exist as a meaningful class. There are the bisexual women who might fall into any of these camps.

And of course there are the lesbians that don’t look back at me, who I don’t recognise and can’t put into a lesbian-concepts box based on outmoded ideas about what we look like. There are the straight women who I prejudicially stereotype as lesbians because they’re wearing plaid shirts. There are women of all orientations who probably want to know why I’m looking at them when they’re trying to get to work.

The train is one thing. The scene is another. In a lesbian club, or, more likely, a ‘mixed’ night (i.e. 94% cock, 5% cunt, 1% other) you’d be forgiven for the default assumption that whatever the woman in front of you looks like, she’s on the team. But given the straight female penchant for turning up with gay men at gay nights, it is not just interesting but also quite useful to keep an eye out for lesbians.

Please bear in mind, when I say that, that I once spent a significant proportion of a night chatting up the only straight girl at Brighton Pride. (She didn’t tell me until I tried to kiss her. She was at PRIDE, LESBIAN PRIDE, and I could not have made it more obvious that I was flirting.)

Anyway, in amongst this resuscitation of ideas so hackneyed they lived in squats in Dalston before it was hip, there is a point, I promise. Here it comes.

Why have I spent years, mostly on the tube, trying to distinguish dykes from heteros based mostly on cliche-driven assumptions? It’s not just because trains are long and boring, its because, in this big bad heterosexist world, seeing another queer woman is a little bit of reassurance. When I catch a lesbian’s eye and she catches mine back before I look away in terror, it’s a small affirmation of a shared identity. That’s what it is to me, anyway. And by the way, speaking as someone who has been scared of ‘looking like a lesbian’ for my whole life, I don’t think we should be scared of admitting that there is something true enough to stereotype that the many cultural signifiers of queer-woman-hood are visible to those who look.

By the way, for those of you that find this article pointless, superficial, objectifying, banal and generally offensive, feel free to leave a comment.

How Celebrity Endorsement and a Catchy Title Still Doesn’t Make It Appealing To Stick Diamantes On Your Waxed Pubic Area.

Definitely get this done immediately?

‘After a breakup a friend of mine Swarovski Crystaled my...ummm...precious lady. And umm...and it shined like a disco ball, and so I have a whole chapter in there about how women should vajazzle their, vajayjays....It looks like a little disco ball down there, its great....it does...and...and it’s hot pink today, for you. So that’s good.’
- Jennifer Love Hewitt, discussing her new book on ‘Lopez Tonight’.

A year or so ago a good friend sent me a Youtube clip called ‘Clitter! Its Glitter for Your Vagina!’ Featuring the unforgettable lines ‘thanks Clitter, for turning my labia into a yaybia!’ and ‘Clitter turned my yeast infection...into a jewel collection,’ the clip was an obvious yet diverting send up of those ubiquitous beauty adverts which purport to endow lifelong happiness if only women would buy into the relevant product. The clip showed deliberately crude upskirt shots of female celebrities’ crotches covered over with MS Paint-like attempts at glitter. In short, Clitter was ridiculous, and because it was ridiculous, it was quite funny.

Ironic then, that where my friends send me videos mocking the ludicrous idea of decorative glitter for the cunt, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s friends suggest she lie down and get the hot wax out. That’s right, some women in the world, in the real, substantial world, have decided that pubic diamante applications are not self-evidently nauseating but rather, sexy and fun. Clitter has actually become reality, but cunn(t)ingly retitled as ‘vajazzling’. You’ve got to hand it to Hewitt, vajazzling is a pretty clever name. Because it is a pun. It has two meanings at once, get it? Meaning number one: vajayjay, (I’m presuming that this is a word for the vagina) delineating the general area to be glitzed up. Meaning number two: jazz, like jazzy, like jazzy diamantes. Or jazzy Swarovski crystals, if you have loads of money to waste an expensive crystal collection on the area where your pubes should be.

Except, this fad has nothing to do with the vagina. Indeed, in the vajazzling clip from inane TV show ‘The Only Way is Essex’, which I hold to blame for bringing the vajazzle to British shores, the vajazzling beautician (vajazzler) explicitly warns the proto-vajazzled client (vajazzlee) that the vajazzles are not to be glued to the actual vagina (vajina?). As the Anne Summers uniform-wearing vajazzler says, ‘basically, don’t put it on your bits, basically.’ And therein lies the flaw in what is otherwise a reasonably catchy way to repackage something so banal that I still can’t believe it really exists. Hewitt et al are not really entitled to say ‘vajazzle your vajayjay!’ or whatever it is they say, because the vajazzles don’t go anywhere near your actual vajayjay. The word ‘vagina’ refers specifically to, for want of a better word, the hole that all the other bits of the vulva surround. Vajazzles explicitly don’t go on the vajayjay. They also don’t go on your clitoris, your labia minora, your labia majora, your greater and lesser vestibular glands, your vestibular bulbs, your vulval vestibule, or any of your other external genital organs. As a non-scientist, I admit I just looked up some of those names on Wikipedia. Anyway, apparently, the official name for the place that the vajazzles actually go is the ‘mons pubis’. Perhaps unfortunately for aspiring vajazzlers everywhere, ‘monspubisjazzle your mons pubis!’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

To casually subsume such a politically, sexually, and biologically complex part of women’s anatomies under the totalizing concept of ‘vagina’, or ‘hole that the man penetrates’, is utterly objectionable and highly sexist. This is a retrograde concept of female sexuality, one that overlooks the arguably much more vital role that the rest of the genitals, and more, rest of the body, play in sex and eroticism. I see the lazy conflation of the waxed pubic area with the vagina as symptomatic of the prevalence of the ‘teenaged Nuts-reader’ mentality; in viewing endless pictures of women (repackaged as ‘girls’) nude from the front on, we internalise the idea that the pubic region simply is the female genitalia, and conveniently forget that underneath all that are real, odorous, vital, wet, dry, aggressive, soft, hairy, receptive, hard, human genitals. I mean, what could be less suited to a trivialising star/rainbow/pretty butterfly decoration than genitalia? If this is intended as a way that women can affirm and identify with our own bodies, fine, but can we have something a bit less...diamante? Maybe as a way to affirm, identify, empower, etc, we could instead have cultural narratives that embrace a variety of bodies and a set of beauty regimes that are even slightly less demanding, alienating, and infantilising?

Actually, for something ostensibly presented as idiosyncratic of some modern femininities to lazily take on an ignorant, simplifying, het-male-gaze view of female genitalia really just points to a wider problem with this whole vajazzling practice. In all Hewitt’s self-denigrating talk of cute little disco balls, it is unquestioned that a prospective vajazzler will have to completely wax her cunt, thereby further relegating the female body to the realm of unthreatening object: there for male pleasure. Why the necessary full wax? Can’t I put Swarovski crystals in my massive bush, if I choose to? A liberal sprinkling and it would be like a cute little mohair disco ball down there. I’m joking, my cunt isn’t cute, and I would never decorate my pubes with crystals because a: as I’ve hinted, I think it is endlessly stupid, and b: I would hope that any prospective partner of mine would not be able to have sex for laughing if they took down my underwear and found crystals inside.

Practices like these continue the ongoing process of normalisation of a sexist-ualised culture which simply expects women to conform to pornographic standards. It is well documented that women often self-objectify, how could we not when we receive constant cultural conditioning telling us that even if we don’t want to attract men, we should still shave/wax our legs, armpits, cunts, arms, eyebrows, moustaches, we should still wear clothes that are uncomfortable, impractical and constricting, we should still wear shoes that hurt and prevent us from walking, we should still diet until we are stick thin, still always wear full make up before leaving the house, still straighten or curl or dye our hair, still refrain from making ourselves strong and fit, and what’s more, we should do all these things for ourselves, because we like to do them? Sorry, but I can recognise bullshit when I hear it.

It is not just that monspubisjazzling is silly, even though it is. It is also self-othering and self-trivialising in the way that all needless ‘beauty’ practices are. First and foremost women are human subjects, and even if we sometimes take up ornamental practices, we should not reduce ourselves to them. The general genital region is culturally significant, and reasonably so, and I am not sure that its conversion into a site for decor should be seen as less meaningful than it is. Sure, if a woman performs a stereotypically feminine gender act because she enjoys it, or because she wants to look/feel sexy, or for whatever reason, she totally has the right to do that, but even in our modern feminist lexicon of consumer choice, the motivations behind ornamental practices should never go unquestioned or uncriticised. As Clitter pointed out of cunt glitter, ‘known side effects include extreme vaginal irritation, dry mouth, and fabulous looking herpes.’ However disco-fab pubic diamantes might be, I’m sticking with the hair what grows there.

Disclaimer: I'm aware that Laurie Penny has just written about the vajazzle probably better and definitely more succinctly, but I wrote this ages ago and just hadn't put it up yet. Whatevs Laurie, stop copying me.

A Suitable Aside

This is who I actually want to be: Fran Lebowitz. Just - famous for being a bit dilettante, not writing a book, and wearing bespoke suits. What an amazing woman.

PLEASE DO STOP THE MUSIC, I CAN'T STAND IT ANY LONGER

Putting this down in writing will make it seem true.

The reason I have not done any work today (in spite of the fact that work is the only reason I haven't gone home properly yet) is because of the OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD 'MUSIC' THAT IS COMING FROM DOWNSTAIRS.

I complain to them about once every five seconds but it seems to make no difference to the noise. HOW CAN IT BE FEASIBLE TO PLAY GUITAR HERO SO OFTEN, AND THEN HAVE SO MANY GATHERINGS OF PEOPLE? Why can't they speak quietly? Why can't they whisper, and walk on hushed feet? Why do they play guitar hero so well, and the real guitar so poorly? Why when they play music that isn't guitar hero do they insist on playing mostly adolescence classics? It's not that I object to Don't Speak, or the Chilli Peppers back catalogue, it's just that I want to listen to those things when I am reminiscing about being 14, not all the time.

Anyway, in preparation for one day writing something proper proper, akin to a Guardian comment piece (the pinnacle of journalistic achievement), I am now going to at least talk about something other than myself. Are you ready?

Actually it's still a bit about me. Here we go:


ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LESBIAN HAIR


People often* say things like 'lesbians are hairy and only wear dungarees', 'lesbians can't dance', 'dykesrlame' and so forth. To these people I would say - yes, madam, you are a bigoted idiot, but there is something about lesbians that YOU don't know. If you've never been to a lesbian night at a club you won't have realised this, but just think on your (hopefully numerous) lesbian friends. What do they all have in common? I'll tell you: a bona fide scene lesbian will have a bone fide lesbian haircut. It's not a family resemblance concept, girls, it's an atomic fact.

Your average normative teenage girl, let's call her Edwardina, will probably have nice, pretty, long hair. That's because of the sick gendered society we live in. If she wants to be accepted as a real lezza, however, a new social conditioning subset comes into play. Obviously homogenderidentityfacism isn't as powerful as it's hetero equivalent - it might take some time - perhaps even several years - perhaps even a progression of gradually shortening haircuts. In the end the result is the same. Off comes the hair. Edwardina goes overnight from pretty pretty to pretty spiky. Darlings, at least twice I've seen it happen time and time again.

See below for pictorial evidence proving these facts:

Before

LESBIAN

See? That's what happens. It's an essential part of coming out.

So an initial objection you might make is: 'Ray, obviously not all of the lesbians have short hair. Why, I know many a sapphic-ly-inclined (what a disgusting non-word) person with long hair. And anyway, what has hair length got to do with sexual orientation?'

Well, ha, well, you think you're being well clever, right, yeah, but the point is not just the length but the sheer EFFORT and UPKEEP that necessarily goes into maintaining real lesbian hair. Babe, if it's long and you ain't had it cut this week, you won't get a SECOND GLANCE. Don't give me that shit about appearances being irrelevant. You can be wearing ten years ago bad Donna Karen imitation cast-offs (not in a retro way) and sandals and socks with spinach smeared all over your face, but if you've just had your hair cut and preferably WAXED, I promise you'll pull tonight. That's all. Try it out.

This leads me to my final point.


THE FINAL POINT: RAY'S GUIDE TO PULLING AT A LESBIAN CLUB
(derived from much experience of watching others pull at lesbian clubs)

Rule number 1:

a: Cut your hair quite short.

b: Have a reasonable amount of limbs and give a good semblance of life.


Good luck!