A butch bridentity crisis: pretending I don't care
Philosophizing
Guestpost by
on December 12, 2011
30
Photo by Nathan Kendall Photography
I never wanted to get married. I saw my parents' unhappy marriage and said "Fuck that. Love doesn't last and I will never tie myself into a miserable situation like theirs." I, like a million other people, thought that a marriage was only about love, and since I decided that love couldn't last, I wanted no part of it.
Not only that, but I am butch. I've softened over the last few years, when I realized that I didn't have to steamroll everyone with my projected invulnerability; nevertheless, I identify as butch. It means a lot of complicated things to me, but the obvious is that I LOOK butch. I have short hair and don't wear bling, or dresses, or sexy underwear, and love button-downs, and am a martial artist… I occupy "masculine" on the public radar.
So, people were surprised when I told them I was getting married.
Even though they all know how happy I am with my relationship, that we had a commitment ceremony at Pride a few years ago, and they've seen me grow out of my general marriage-hating, they were surprised. They try to imagine me, no-frills me, as "a Bride." Strangers, or customers at work, are surprised because, well, they assume I'm gay. They're shocked, not that I'm getting married, but that I'm a Bride. They were expecting me to fill the quiet groom role, while a femme somewhere picks out flowers and dresses and place-settings. And usually they are polite enough to keep that commentary to themselves, but often it slips out in their faces or in offhanded comments.
What really hurts me is feeling like I SHOULDN'T be excited. Feeling like I have a reputation to uphold.
They mentally re-evaluate everything they know about me, because now I have been reborn as a Bride, a Woman. There have been discussions about forcing one's excitement, about feeling the pressure to smile and be able to pull out a planner at a moment's notice and to allow the wedding production to subsume our entire lives. Sometimes I want to shake those people, those excited wedding industrial complex subscribers, and say: "This is just symbolic! This is just a party! I still have a career and friends and normal interests, thank you very much!" We probably all feel that once in awhile.
But what really hurts me more is feeling like I SHOULDN'T be excited. Feeling like I have a reputation to uphold. I saw a good friend last week and she wanted to know about wedding plans; she was very excited for me. I reluctantly admitted that I had made some plans, reluctantly showed her the rings, reluctantly talked about the guest list. I ended a lot of sentences with "or whatever" and kept my voice neutral so as not to betray myself. I didn't want yet another person to consign me to the restrictive role of Bride.
Then I did something that made me truly ashamed. I showed my friend a picture of the thrift store shoes I bought, the Perfect Wedding Shoes that have been the center of my dreams for quite some time. She asked teasingly "So are those your 'something old?'" I choked completely. She may not have noticed my pause at all, but within a nanosecond I internally decided that if I admitted to knowing the whole whole "something old, something new" wedding thing, I would throw away every last ounce of my so-called credibility and become a white tulle shell. I floundered for a moment and eventually said, "my what?" She bought my ignorance (to both my shame and relief) and happily explained the whole thing.
I am very excited for the wedding. I am also stressed like hell and occasionally wondering why this symbolic party is so necessary, but at the end of the day I am damn excited to put on fancy clothes and say nice things to my gentleman and eat awesome food and have our parents meet each other and get my relationship validated by our families.
So, why am I so determined to pretend I don't care? Being excited to plan and execute a wedding puts me, socially, heavily into the "female" category that I've avoided so strenuously for so many years. I'm scared because I think that if I show how invested I am in my kick-ass ring and my sexy wedding shoes and the beautiful invitations and the cupcakes my sister is baking, that suddenly I will invalidate the identity I have slowly and painstakingly built. I will have my "butch" card taken away. I will have my "queer" card taken away. I will have my "Practical and Serious Person" card taken away! Ingrained sexism everywhere will call me shallow, needy, vain. I will be relegated to an uncomfortable, ill-suiting, and utterly inauthentic perception of femaleness, and that is unacceptable to me.
I'm learning that "bride" is just a thing I will be for one day, not a personality I have suddenly obtained.
About Sians
Butchy modified tea-slinging book-loving people enthusiast and martial artist. Fuzzy-headed, jeans-wearing slob with a longing for true dapperness (dapperdom?). Enjoys talking in third person, apparently. Gets really self-conscious whilst writing bios.
S said
I sort of feel that in a some of these comments and slightly in the original post, there's a bit of an unnecessary link between being a female who is getting married and wants a wedding, and being a traditional bride. I know that nobody has explicitly said that they feel obliged to put on the white puffy dress and be girly, but it feels like that for a lot of you it's a very conflicting thing, and I'm really interested in whether that's the case – whether some of these commenters have felt obliged to go into bridal shops and let themselves be put into dresses they could probably already tell just looking at them were too "bridal"? It's just a curiosity thing for me – why try it on? Why go to a bridal store at all instead of choosing a route you're comfortable with?
It's just that I feel from personal experience that if you're embarrassed about telling other people something because it feels like a betrayal of who you "are", then that's sometimes a sign. I did a year of tertiary study and felt embarrassed telling anyone what I was studying – it took a year to realise that if I was feeling that way I wasn't doing what truly made me happy, something that was "me" – I swapped courses. It sounds so simple but that gut feeling of embarrassment was a telltale that things weren't right and that I wasn't living my most authentic life – sure, I was doing something that was interesting and that I liked and that was valuable, but it wasn't "me", and there was no point in forcing it.
Of course the marriage part is right for all of you, and the wanting a wedding part, and even the wanting to be a bride part, but I'm just worried that in some cases people don't see the alternative and are signing up for what they think being a bride is when really almost every single part of the day is negotiable other than signing the contract. You might, for instance (I don't know anyone personally here) find it a lot easier to talk excitedly about wedding plans if they were more of a reflection of not only who everyone else thinks you are, but of who you feel you are yourself. A more hardy dinner of steaks and carbs? A beer menu? Going out for your hens night to the shooting range? Wearing something of your grandfather's with special meaning? Wearing hot jeans and a pretty white blouse, or cowboy boots/military boots under a simple, tea-length dress? And then all the girly stuff you really want would just be icing. I might be missing the point and you all might be dying to get into the makeup and wedding dress, and that's what you're feeling so conflicted about – in that case of course go for frilly and girly! It's your one chance to have it all your way! But if planning things a different way would make you happier – if getting excited about different sorts of things and eliciting a "heck yes, that's so "you" sentiment about the planning from either you or your friends, then maybe focus on those things and cut out all the frilly stuff that doesn't feel authentic, or just downplay it. Don't do anything that is going to make you feel ashamed or self-conscious on what is meant to be such a proud, happy day – it's not worth it. Also, you're allowed conflicting wants – I really would be excited to try on the "big white dress" and love looking at designers and would feel like I was missing out by not going that route. However, at the exact same time, I ALSO feel like the big white dress isn't me, that it's commercial, that I'd like to wear something else . I can (and do) want both of those things, but at the end of the day I'll just sacrifice the feelings of wanting the "big white dress" (which I know I probably just want out of social constructions) and go with what makes me feel comfortable within myself, like I'm being authentic. I'll go with what will make me feel proud to show off. That's just me, though.
(I feel like I've just said a lot of stuff everyone already knows – you're here at offbeat bride after all – but I thought it was worth repeating.)
Kpoene' Kofi-Bruce said
I think this is such a brilliant post. My wife and I had a lot of discussions around this topic when planning our wedding – everyone automatically turned to me when asking about wedding details, and my poor wife, who is an architect and very girly underneath her butch exterior, was totally left out of the conversation. In the end she did most of the planning because I was too busy making myself a pretty dress. I love that you're excited for your wedding, and your own fabulous outfit. Just because you're not always dressed in frilly outfits doesn't mean you can't want to wear one for your big day. Don't let anyone tell you how to feel/act/think.
Jessie said
Thanks for posting this, Sians! I feel like I'm in the "excited but oblivious" camp when it comes to my wedding (mainly because what I know of weddings is traditional and religious – neither of which fits me) and it can be hard to reach out to people for help when they default to thinking that I will be a bride like any other bride (You expect me to know what kind of dress/jewelry/colors/flowers I want? Boy are you going to be confused when I don't want some of those things at all…).
Anyway, long story short: thanks for acknowledging the identity conflict. Whenever I feel like I hate everything to do with weddings, people like you on OBB remind me that I'm not the only one having WTF moments in their planning process.