fandomnumbergenerator | Entries tagged with meghan daum

"And even today when I have long hair and a husband and have resigned myself to dusting on a little makeup if I’m going somewhere fancy, I’m still a butch, I’m a particular kind of butch you find in straight women. A butch not defined by clothes or hair or physicality but by something more essential, something identifiable only to other butches of this genre"

—

Meghan Daum, “Honorary Dyke” The Unspeakable (2014)

Above and beyond the title (apparently she has no idea how contested the borders of both “dyke” and “lesbian” still are), can Daum possibly be unaware that the kind of unflashy androgyny that she calls “flinty Martha’s Vinyard-ishness” is the very specific “good taste” of the New England Wasp. And it’s entirely about class, not in its straight-forward income and wealth inequality sense, but something closer to “breeding” with all its undemocratic implications.

Like Daum, I grew up in New Jersey in the 80s, haunted by the specter of Big Hair. Anything flashy or sexy or feminine (or in the most extreme cases any display of affection not aimed at a large dog) was “tacky,” a word that encompassed poor or nouveau riche or ethnic.