Confessions of A Butch Queen: Girly Moments and Shoe Obsessions

butch  (booch)
adj. Slang
Exhibiting stereotypically or exaggeratedly masculine traits or appearance. Used especially of lesbians and gay men.
n.
One who is butch

queen  (kween)
n.
1. A woman sovereign.
2. Something having eminence or supremacy in a given domain and personified as a woman.
3. Slang Used as a disparaging term for a homosexual man.

Butch queen (butch kween)
n. Slang
1. A man with exaggeratedly masculine appearance, who bears distinctively feminine mannerisms.
2. A butch woman with distinctively feminine mannerisms, who likes princessy shit.
Look Up: Fag dyke

With my recent graduation and the trip to my home country, after 5 years, I have evolved a lot and so has my appearance. I went from looking conspicuously butch, with my short hair and loose clothing, to looking more androgynous with longer hair and fit clothing. I adopted the term butch queen to describe my current state. While I still feel masculine, and in some ways still look masculine, I am becoming more in touch with my femininity.

My nails manicured and painted. (Yup, I’m single)

Clearly, a lot of factors contribute to our style journeys, but in queer circles gender performance matters. There are numerous articles on dapperQ alone, where curvy MOC women voice their struggle to look masculine. Gender performance is also easily conflated with sexuality. I had people asking me about my sexuality more often than usual, concerned that I had switched teams. More men would walk up to me in clubs than the usual lost creep I had to redirect in my butch days. I accepted this change and the consequences that came with it—the perks included. The most noticeable change was that no one asked me the inevitable question MOC women get: “Excuse me sir…madam, are you a man or a woman?” Needless to say, cisgender privilege is more apparent to me.

I really don’t know what really happened; all I can say is, I changed and the people who knew me were not surprised at all. People who had known me longer than others even thought I looked more like myself. It began with occasional limp-wristedness, and then escalated to full blown princessy moments where I had bouts of butch queen shoe jealousy/obsession.

Style Reboot
Last year, my feminine friend invited me to take a gander at her new boots and shoe rack. She had shoes similar to Dior’s lace shoes—it was love at first sight. What struck me was that I didn’t think it would look nice on a femme. I thought, “How do I make this look masculine on me?” beginning my search for high heeled shoes.

 Dior Lace Booties http://www.odysseyhome.com/

As the last shoes I felt this weird love for were my Hellz Bellz x Vans Headley, I knew I needed to do some research on heels.  Not surprisingly, I found a trend—men in heels. Dating back to Ancient Egypt, men in heels has evolved from a sign of economic status, a la Loius XIV, to a practical aid to give short men a lift, as in Sarkozy and Simon Cowell, to a fashion statement, as in Prince and Rick Owens. William Kremer’s article and this essay in Random History give good insight into the history of high-heeled shoes.

Rick Owens

There are many more examples of this trend. Some men just look extremely fierce in heels but for the sake of re-interpreting this into the aesthetics of MOC women, I will focus on butch queen examples.

The YouTube links below show Kazaky, a band known for their performance in their signature high-heeled shoes. The first of the two YouTube links embedded below, Kazaky performs at Dsquared2’s SS 2012 Men’s Fashion Show. In the second link they are looking more dapper in their new single Touch Me.

Here are a few more pictures to whet your appetite. Don’t forget to ask yourself how you can butch the look up.

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