Performing gender as an “out” lesbian

When I went to college I decided to come out and try to pretend like it wasn’t a big deal. I had been in the closet all of high school, despite having a long-term girlfriend and knowing that I was gay since age 13. During the year after starting college and coming out I struggled with how to visually demonstrate my gender and sexual orientation while developing a style that felt comfortable for me.

There are plenty of stereotypes about what lesbians and queer women look like. For example, people think of masculine presenting / butch women, flannels, vests and practical shoes (think Birkenstocks), among other things. When I started college I had long hair and wore generally feminine clothing, although I was never one to wear dresses, heals, or makeup.

Despite my “tomboy” nature, I imagined myself as being a femme-presenting lesbian. Because of this, I felt invisible to the queer community. Having never had any sort of queer community before, I had a desire to both fit into that community and be visually identifiable as queer.

Over the course of my freshman year I intentionally sought out clothing and styles that I associated with stereotypes of what lesbians were supposed to look like. I bought a flannel and a vest, and I always wore a rainbow bracelet as a silent but clear signal to anyone I met that I was part of the queer community. While to most people wearing a simple cloth bracelet might not be significant, to me, and I imagine to others in the queer community, it was a powerful and necessary way of finding other queer people in a world that assumes heterosexuality.

The summer after my freshman year I took it a step further – I cut my long hair short. The act of cutting my hair short made me visually queer. This act of making myself visually queer was a reflection both of what I imagined queer women to look like and the stereotypes that both the queer community and heterosexual community had placed on us.

For a period of time after cutting my hair I had anxiety that my gender expression was not matching with my gender identity. I don’t mean this in the way that I looked like a boy and I felt like a woman, but to use lesbian terms, I self-identified as being more femme, but all of a sudden was presenting more butch.

Over time this anxiety dissipated as I explored my style, met more queer people who expressed their gender and sexuality in a wide range of ways, and became more comfortable exploring my own self-expression. The simple act of cutting ones hair from a longer length to a short length had an immense impact on my life as a woman and a lesbian.

My experience with the visual expression of my gender and sexuality relates to Judith Butler’s 1990 book Gender Trouble which argues that gender is “performative.” Butler argued that gender is something that is done and performed by the individual, that each of us takes on a role and that we are acting in some way.

While my anxiety about my gender expression, or as Butler would say, gender performance, dissipated over time and I found my own individual style and way to perform my queerness, I periodically consciously over-perform my lesbianism. For example I will attempt to “look gay” when going to Pride events or to clubs that cater to queer women. For me this is a combination of a fun way to visually display my queerness in a safe space and to signal to other queer women that I am not straight.

When I had short hair, I didn’t have to perform my queerness as much as I do now that I have long hair again. I now find myself intentionally outing myself to new people by mentioning my female partner so that I am never in a situation where I am assumed to be straight.