Our Stories, Our Voices

by Amy Reed

  My feminine complexity was deeper than simply wanting to look like a girl. Turned out I wanted to buck some sexuality roles, too. What I didn’t know in my teen years, because I didn’t know it was allowed or possible, was that I was a lesbian. I had no lesbian role models. My parents had no lesbian friends. The closest I got were the two sisters who owned the riding stables where I took lessons. They had a “friend” who lived on the farm with them. My mother decided I would switch stables around the time I hit puberty. I still wonder if this was because, at some level, she knew and feared for my “corruption.”

  There were close calls with self-discovery during my teen years. The younger neighbor girl who I built a fort with in the woods. As we lay on the pine straw and took turns tickling each other with the feathery fronds, I had the kind of breathless (and groin) feeling other friends were having with boys. A sleepover with a schoolmate where we practiced kissing after dark and I didn’t want it to stop. An older neighbor who wanted to show me her room and my stomach lurched with excitement, before my mother interrupted by calling me back home. Tiny moments of titillation and rapid breathing when I found a girl attractive. But how was it even possible? I looked like a girly-girl. I was the kind of girl who would be with a boy. The male gaze told me so.

  It was in the way the construction workers who pulled up outside my school catcalled me, a teen girl in a school uniform. It was the boat owner at the marina where I worked, who put his hands on me during a tour of his boat and when I stepped away, his blithe “I thought you wanted it,” simply because I was dressed in my everyday boat-washing uniform of shorts and bikini top. It was the fraternity boys on the beach at spring break with their white score cards, numbered 0–10, that they would flash at passing girls from their low beach chairs, absolutely self-righteous in their actions even when they left us humiliated. I still have a visceral reaction to this memory.

  I spent so much of my late teens and early twenties confused. I dated more boys than I should have. Being objectified as a teen had left me feeling like hooking up was the way to prove I was someone. By using my femininity to prove how desirable I was, I could be the Southern belle, the popular girl, the daughter I thought my father wanted. Even if I was unhappy inside. Even if I felt lost. Even if I was so much more than the way I looked on the outside.

  Besides, being queer was confusing. Even though the guys were leering and whistling and totally willing to get with me, the lesbians didn’t notice me. At least not many. Because I didn’t conform to those norms either.

  And for a while I was okay with that. The girls I allowed myself to date in college were more questioning than queer and the one girl who was truly ready to be my girlfriend scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t ready to be out and she was. I preferred the girls who wouldn’t challenge me. One early girlfriend even said to me, “Once we finish with our husbands and our families we can find each other and live on a goat farm.” That made sense to me at the time, putting off my true desires for something more socially acceptable. Passing was super easy. Being queer was not something feminine, Southern girls did. My father would hate me. My mother would wonder where she’d gone wrong. So I thought I’d just fake it until I made it. If I could pretend for long enough, maybe I would somehow, magically, change.

  With those early patterns stamped hard onto my psyche, I tried everything I could to make my square peg fit in that round slot. I could conform and proved it by finding a very nice guy with a very good job who loved going to hear bands as much as I did. I thought, maybe this is what marriage is? You find a nice guy who is your friend, and even though your heart doesn’t go boom, boom, boom, you marry him, because he’ll be a good provider and never abuse you or your future children.

  How wrong I was. Because even in marriage it was still there. The same nagging voice inside my psyche that I was living a wrong life. My husband was a gym rat, obsessed with his own physical looks, and so I became obsessed with mine. Was I thin enough, coiffed enough, pretty enough? I stayed on guard and insecure every single day. I judged myself by male standards. I felt like my whole world revolved around how I looked instead of who I was. I was miserable.

  So I went into counseling. All I knew was I was terribly unhappy and self-medicating in ways that weren’t good for me long-term. I still couldn’t name my gay. I’d married a boy. I had long hair. I liked to wear makeup—that meant I was straight, right? But what did it mean that I still thought about the girls I’d known and wondered if being married meant I could never be with another girl again? I wondered if I did, would it be cheating?

  When I did finally fall hard in love, in a way that made not coming out way more difficult than coming out, there was no turning back. I bought a book called From Wedded Wife to Lesbian Life after my husband and I separated and I remember asking my partner, after reading the personal essays and looking at the pictures of the women therein, “Do I have to look so butch?”

  She laughed, but at the same time there was this kind of strange unspoken thing happening. All of the trappings of femininity—makeup, heels, a little cleavage, the perfect accessories—became suspect to her. Was I going to leave her for a man? Was I really gay or just biding my time? Was some guy at work flirting with me? I’d been so happy and relieved to finally name my gay, but now I felt like the way I looked was, once again, interfering with who I was.

  It was incredibly frustrating and at times infuriating. Heteronormativity, especially when it comes to feminine women, is the standard. And the fact that the assumptions came from both sides of the spectrum could definitely nudge a girl into giving up her favorite pair of heels forever.

  But what I discovered in the process of discovering myself was that I still loved being a feminine girl. I loved the perfect pair of earrings or the shimmering necklace that accentuated my collarbone just right. I loved a simple blush, lipstick, mascara combo for every single day. I liked feeling pretty. Not for men. Not for women. Not for some societal standard, but for me.

  I suppose, as girls, we have a choice. We can choose to rebel against the male gaze and stop wearing makeup. We can stop messing with our hair. We can wear clothes that hide our femininity. But what if you like all that girly stuff? What if that stuff fills you up on some fundamental level and you like looking in the mirror and seeing all of the girl that is you? Do we stop simply because eyes are watching? Or because other eyes say tone it down?

  Some girls do. They find it easier to take their femininity down a notch to avoid the stares and assumptions or accusations. Some girls pick and choose the moments to let it shine and go all out only for a special occasion or a special person. Some girls choose to buck gender conventions and standards altogether. Each choice made from a place of personal power and desire is valid. But we should be able to own our femininity, if that’s our choice, without risk and without reprise. And fear of, or actual, objectification should never be a reason to hide our truest selves. We simply have to remember we are not objects.

  Our femininity is beautiful. The way we choose to dress, whether in pink and sparkles, plunging necklines and short skirts, or a men’s department shirt and baggy jeans, isn’t about sending some kind of message to the world. It’s not saying I want it or I’m vapid or Don’t take me seriously. It’s about choosing the things that make us feel whole and complete and beautiful—inside and out.

  So while we may never be able to avoid the male gaze or society’s ideals of the right or wrong way to woman entirely, we can acknowledge that it’s no one’s right to cast eyes upon you and categorize you as an object. Dress how you want for you. Choose to be feminine but at the same time buck gender roles or sexuality assumptions if that’s who you are. There’s no single right way to girl. And no one has the prerogative to tell you how to do it or judge you for your choices.

  Go out and roar.

  EASTER OFFERING

  Brandy Colbert

  I suppose it’s safe to say I never felt comfortable in my hometown.

  Although I rec
ognized feeling uncomfortable, when you’re “the only one” for years and years, standing out simply because you’re different becomes normal. I still noticed when heads whipped around to stare at me, the only brown face in the room time and time again. The murmurs in the background didn’t escape me. But I learned how easy it is to become desensitized to ignorant comments from those who’ve never experienced being around a group of people who look nothing like them.

  Simply put, I adapted. I had to.

  Being a good student was part of adapting, because I couldn’t give anyone a reason to look at me like I didn’t belong or believe that I wasn’t good enough. I consistently brought home As and Bs. There was no other option in my household, where I was raised by two parents who were born into Southern farming families and worked hard to give my older brother and me a comfortable, middle-class upbringing. My parents didn’t often remind us of how far they’d come—there were no legendary talks about walking four miles to school in the snow. But we knew they’d grown up picking cotton in their parents’ fields and sharing beds with multiple siblings and attending schools in rural Arkansas that had to be desegregated.

  Though they seemed so far removed from that upbringing—to this day, I swear I’ve never heard either of my parents speak with a Southern accent—I thought of it frequently, and so I knew it was my job to behave well, achieve good grades, and make them proud.

  History was always one of my least favorite classes, and one of my hardest-earned grades. The textbooks were so dry, even the most inquisitive students would find themselves nodding off after a few paragraphs. But I was probably in third grade when I realized how uncomfortable class was on the days we discussed Black history. It wasn’t until much later that I realized it was also extremely troubling that I could pinpoint the days we talked about Black Americans out of a whole nine months of sitting in class. And we rarely talked about their contributions, which were pushed aside in favor of discussing the horrors of slavery and sanitizing the work of civil rights activists like Rosa Parks.

  US history textbooks have generally been skewed toward the accomplishments of white men, but I always noticed one time of year when my fellow female classmates took particular interest: the story of the suffragettes.

  Because I grew up in a predominantly white town, I’ve had many white female friends ever since I can remember. I was, of course, aware of our differences. When I was younger, I wanted to have long, silky hair like theirs as opposed to the kinky curls that were dutifully worked out of my head through any means necessary. I wanted boys to crush on me and ask me out, even though it was obvious that having a Black girlfriend was incredibly taboo where I lived.

  The girls in my class were so proud when the history lesson focused on the suffragettes. “They gave us all the right to vote!” “They fought so hard for women’s rights!” “They forced men to acknowledge them as equals!” Well, yes.

  But.

  Those same textbooks didn’t discuss the full legacy of the suffragettes—including their racism. There was no paragraph detailing how Susan B. Anthony, perhaps one of the most famous advocates of women’s voting rights, stated that “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”

  In addition to disparaging all Black Americans with that comment, Anthony failed to recognize that Black women face oppression for not only their gender, but their race as well.

  * * *

  In 1906, a young white man and white woman claimed to have been attacked by two masked Black men in Springfield, Missouri. Horace Duncan and Fred Coker, two Black men, were arrested on suspicion of assault, robbery, and rape, though they could not have been recognized, as the assailants were said to be wearing masks. Despite being released after their white employer provided an alibi for the two coworkers and lifelong friends, Duncan and Coker were arrested that same evening on a separate charge of robbery by the white man who had accused them of the initial attack.

  Not satisfied with their imprisonment, a lynch mob dragged Duncan and Coker from their cells in the middle of the night and took them down to the town square, where they were lynched from Gottfried Tower in front of an estimated crowd of three thousand. The mob later returned to the jail and removed Will Allen, who’d been accused of murdering a Confederate veteran. He was lynched at the same site as Duncan and Coker. Newspapers at the time reported that the onlookers took home pieces of the burned rope, clothes, and bones as keepsakes.

  Prior to these lynchings, Black people thrived in Springfield. They were segregated from the white population, but they owned businesses, including the largest grocery store in town. They held office in city council and worked as attorneys, educators, dentists, and pharmacists. At the time, Springfield’s Black population was around 10 percent, or 2,300 citizens.

  After the lynchings, the Black population rapidly declined, quite nearly overnight. When I was growing up in Springfield in the 1980s and 1990s, the number of Black residents fluctuated between 2 and 3 percent.

  Through the years, I’d read extensively about Emmett Till, the fourteen-year-old boy who was kidnapped and brutally murdered after being accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. There were similarities between the cases, but the Springfield lynchings, which took place four decades prior to Till’s murder, hit so close to home.

  It broke my heart to learn that those acts of terror all but decimated the Black population in my hometown. My tears were primarily of mourning for those three men, who didn’t deserve the fate they met on the town square that Easter weekend in 1906. But they were also tears of anger and regret. I felt like I’d been robbed of my chance to grow up with a large and successful Black community, all because of the false accusations of two white people who had nothing to lose.

  * * *

  Talking to my white friends about the suffragettes has always proved less than satisfying. When we were younger, I don’t think anyone ever questioned my lack of enthusiasm directly, but I remember practicing the “If you can’t say something nice . . .” rule around those discussions more often than not. Because even without knowing at the time that many of the suffragettes held racist ideals, something felt off. Why weren’t Black or Native or Latina or Asian women marching alongside them? Why were the only women whose names were mentioned in the history books white?

  When it was clear that Hillary Clinton was to become the first female presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, I felt a vague sense of contentment. I’d never held a strong opinion about her either way, but I felt she was not only the most accomplished candidate, but extremely qualified in her own right. It was an easy decision to vote for her in the primaries.

  As election season continued, I began to feel a deep division between what the majority of my white women friends were discussing over dinner and on social media and what I was personally feeling. While Clinton mostly represented the policies I felt were important, many of my friends were absolutely enamored with her. There were so many emotional posts about what a role model she was, how they’d dreamed of this moment forever, and how they were “with her” that I lost count. And as the months passed and their support became more vocal, I soon realized they felt like I had about the nomination and subsequent election of President Barack Obama.

  I lived in Chicago at the time of Obama’s first presidential campaign, but I chose to spend election night in my apartment alone, watching the results from under a blanket. When he was announced the winner, I let out a noise I’ve never heard before or since from myself—a shocked, elated, and relieved sort of strangled cry. This country that has so many unresolved horrors threaded through its fabric had done the unthinkable: it had elected its first Black president. I don’t know if I’d ever been so proud of someone I’d never met. It felt like a huge and long-overdue victory for Black America.

  Though I didn’t feel that same level of excitement for Clinton, I was proud to vote for a woman in the primaries and general election. Sh
e may not know what it’s like to be a Black woman, but I know what it is to be a woman, and I was well aware of how much opposition she’d faced to get where she was. This country is also long overdue for a woman president, and in those earlier days, I fully expected to see her ushered into the highest office.

  * * *

  I don’t recall when I first learned about Fannie Lou Hamer. Much too late, as I found out about her on my own. In the years since graduating from college—where I took exactly one history class, the one needed to fulfill my general education requirement—I’d become quite interested in history. I could research what I wanted when I wanted, and it was all at my fingertips with instant access to the Internet.

  Perhaps I stumbled upon Hamer when I wondered where the famous quote “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” came from. I was surprised to see a Black woman credited with the quote, and even more surprised to see that she’d been a civil rights activist, particularly focused on voting rights for Southern Black people, before she died. How could I know that quote and not have been taught where it came from? Why did we not learn about Hamer when we studied civil rights, instead of recycling tired paragraphs about Martin Luther King Jr. that excluded the full impact and intent of his activism?

  Hamer resonated with me because she was fighting for the rights of my family. Like my parents, she was born in the South and worked in the fields. She was also from an enormous household—one that, with nineteen brothers and sisters, made my mother’s thirteen-child family and my father’s nine siblings pale in comparison. Though Hamer shared a generation with my grandparents, by the time my own parents were born in the early 1950s, Jim Crow laws were still prevalent in the South, and Hamer was fighting them hard.

  She worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to seek equality through civil disobedience and helped organize Freedom Summer in 1964, a voting registration project in Mississippi. She was also a founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and ran for Congress, though her bid was unsuccessful. Hamer was a philanthropist, donating food and clothing to poor families in her hometown community, and cofounded the National Women’s Political Caucus.