do my disorganized books make you feel horny babe

"Today, I am wearing my hair long and permed into full curls around my face, tying it up in sheer, silken scarves. I often choose to be late for a date rather than go out feeling "unfinished," which some days means a little powder and Chap Stick and other days means a total makeover. I wear long silk shirts and fluffy sweaters when I want, and regard the word pretty as a compliment again. Still, I know I am regarded as a failure and even a traitor by many in this [lesbian] club because I suffer occasional self-recrimination for being a size sixteen instead of a size six, because I enjoy wearing miniskirts and stockings, because I apparently care about and conform to the opinions of the "wrong" people (people in that other world who label us unacceptable or unfit). They say I am selling out, catering to patriarchy, being codependent on my mother and her opinions. Choose your descriptors, choose your chains. Too often, the saleswomen of the so-called freedom are more like the neo-conservatives and fundamentalists of the world, who say, "Do it our way or don't expect any privileges." They are not selling us the right to be who we want to be, they are selling us the right to be what they believe we should want to be. Sometimes, those rights are the same thing. More often, they are not. And when they are not, worlds may collide in a firestorm of indignation, embarrassment, and rage. I want that freedom they sold me. I want the freedom to love women, passionately and overwhelmingly. I want the freedom to love them the way I want, whether I wear a lace dress or jeans, whether I wear press-on nails or no lipstick. I want the freedom to feel sexy at 170 pounds. I want to do aerobics without resorting to stealth maneuvers. And I want the freedom to be who I am, without embarrassment or fear. I want no exceptions, no contingencies, no caveats. And if our community cannot--or will not--grant that freedom, I, and those like me, the rebel-conformists if you will, will take it. We will even steal it if we must. They'll be surprised at how fast we can run in those tight skirts and pumps."

"For femmes in particular, feminism's failure was its pejorative understanding of femme as equivalent to patriarchally imposed femininity, rather than alternatively a positive understanding of femme as a critical approach to femininity. In its (mis)conception of femme, feminism denied femme its radical and critical nature. In doing so, feminism elided differences of class and race in relation to femininity, therefore not recognizing the range of femininities assumed for divergent purposes across different communities. While feminism's analysis of femininity as oppressive was useful for some women, certainly an understanding of the way that femme femininity is subversive and empowering seems crucial for many women. In reading femininity through femme, our project takes as its subject a femininity that is transgressive, disruptive, and chosen. For example, some women, who might otherwise reject dominant cultural standards of feminine beauty, graft a chosen and empowering femininity onto their bodies as femmes."