lament on long-haired butchness

i've never seen a dyke with a bob as cute as yours

author’s note: i know this essay’s kind of all over the place (much like my hair), forgive me. also, i’m definitely not claiming to speak for any other butches and lesbians, i’m just sharing some of my very personal feelings as i go through the chaotic and sometimes dysphoric agony of growing out my luscious beautiful locks. i would love to hear what you personally think in the comments.

the femininomebob

any lesbian will acknowledge that butch is basically its own gender (which can be used alongside woman or not) and like any gender it has certain visual markers: masculine clothing, practical footwear, and most of all, short hair. a real butch (fancy edition) will go to the barber. a real butch (classic edition) will have their friend shave their head in the bathroom. a real butch is singled out from her more generally masc friends by her fade or her crew cut. a real butch with a real butch haircut is a visible, identifiable, clear-cut no-arguments dyke.

me when i’m a visible identifiable clear-cut no-argument dyke

lately, as a non-white butch, i’ve been struggling with this visual shorthand. i grew my hair out in 2023 to go better with my wedding lehenga, and during that period, i realized for the first time in my life that my hair is curly. i started to think about how my hair is a gift from my ancestors on both my indian and filipino sides—ancestors who wore their hair long no matter their gender. i have beautiful hair and i know my great-great-great-great-great-grandparents’ hair must have been beautiful too. i want to grow it out in their honor, to make up in some small way for those centuries where my male ancestors were forced to cut their hair due to colonialism. i want to fight against the western influence on presentations of masculinity which continue into the present day.

but the knowledge that people no longer recognize me as butch makes me feel fucking crazy. the last time i had my hair this length and offhand referred to myself as a dyke, my twink friend said dyke? girl, i’ve never seen a dyke with a bob as cute as yours.

fig. 1 & fig. 2: the bob in question

as you can see in fig. 1, the bob could be very masc. but as you can see in fig. 2, while the same outfit with my short hair could potentially be read as butch, with the bob it just comes off as kind of quirky. (i will speak more on the narrow limits of butch fashion shortly.)

obviously i was no less of a dyke, no less of a lesbian, but i understood what my friend was getting at. problematic though the statement might have been, i had to contend with the fact that i was no longer visibly gnc and therefore perceived completely differently than i’d been with shorter hair, despite nothing else about me changing.

bob 2.0

what does it mean to be butch?

i don’t know if i could tell you when i began consciously identifying as butch. it just kind of happened, because of who i was and what i looked and the people i connected with. i was drawn to other butches and to butchfemme history. i wrote and drew and thought about butch characters and was overcome in the rare moments where i saw butches in fiction. maybe most importantly, other butches saw me as butch.

my best friend who you can see in 2 of these photos actually isn’t butch, they’re transmasc, but the butch x transmasc friendship confuses a lot of purely cissexual people let me tell you.

i’ve had a lot of time to think about what butchness means to me. at its core, i think butchness is about caring for people. it’s about taking care of my loved ones, providing for them as much as i can. it’s about cooking dinner. it’s about doing the taxes. it’s about walking the dog when it’s 27 degrees out. it’s about protecting and loving my friends, all of whom are queer or women. being butch is also about silliness, playfulness, joy. it’s about disidentifying with femininity but also passionately loving and tending to the feminine in others and in the world. it’s about being sensitive and open to feeling (mine and others’). it’s about recognizing other butches and tracing butchness throughout history.

from girls’ night out (1998) by chloe atkins

a big part of being butch is just… identifying with butchness. there are many, many masc lesbians in this world who don’t identify as butch even if their visual markers are the same, and i think most lesbians can tell a butch apart from a masc based on vibe alone. and yet, just feeling butch may not really enough to claim butchness, in my opinion. here’s why:

visceral gender nonconformity as a part of butch identity

ultimately, i don’t care how strangers perceive my sexuality or gender. i think it’s impossible to be misunderstood by someone who doesn’t even know you. but i can’t help but think being recognized as a butch is a big part of being butch. most butches dress the way they do because it’s the most comfortable for them. if they’re dressing and cutting their hair in a way that reflects them, can’t help but be visible.

and so to be visible as a gender nonconforming lesbian is in many ways woven into the butch identity. when you encounter cishet people, you shock and even horrify them. people may think you’re a man at first glance, but you turn out to be something else entirely. you throw people off guard instantly, visually, viscerally crushing their existing beliefs about what’s possible in this world.

as a butch, in queer crowds you’re immediately recognized as a protector, a provider, someone strong and safe and helpful. it’s not just an aesthetic, it’s a role—but the role is tied up in the aesthetic, in the visibility. like a muslim woman’s hijab or a sikh man’s dastar or a baptist teen’s denim maxi skirt, a lesbian’s butchwear signals her as a member of a specific community. do you see what i mean?

last photo from the butch is not a dirty word archives

when i’m not perceived as butch, i don’t feel like one. and yet the way i identify with butches and feel kinship with them does not change. the way i care for my family, my friends, for other butches and femmes, does not change. so should i change my identifying label every time i cut my hair or grow it out, or any time i experiment with fashion, just because others’ perception of me has changed?

from thatcontrolfangirl on tumblr

regarding any other gender, of course we’d say no. but—is it really possible to be a gender nonconforming butch, as in, nonconforming to butchness, when you’re already not conforming with something else (womanhood)? is the history of butchness, the way butchness relies on being visible, too intertwined with the identity itself? if existing butch aesthetics are indeed a cultural and community signifier, can we really expand what butchness looks like in any significant way?

“dyke march 1994” by morgan gwenwald, from the wild good: lesbian photographs & writings on love by beatrix gate

the limits of butch fashion

of course, there are other long-haired butches in the world. and butchness is not just a presentation but a culture and a legacy, so it feels important to me that i draw inspiration from somewhere, find a blueprint somewhere, see myself somewhere—

long-haired butches photographed by meg allen they are so hot but none of this is my vibe personally </3

but i can’t find it. i can’t find me. i don’t want a baseball cap, an undercut, a low ponytail. i can’t get braids. i don’t want to dress ultra-masc just to offset my hair, because western menswear is another frustrating roadblock: a t-shirt and jeans never look bad, but it’s not fashion to me. or, really, it’s not enough fashion to me. but what creative fashion choices can still be read as butch, especially when paired with long hair?

there’s a pretty narrow range of fashion options for the modern butch: american working class. city streetwear. pnw hiker. florida man. 2013 hipster wedding guest. all well and good, all clothes i’ve worn or still wear, but i’m bored. outside of stereotypically masculine western clothing, it feels like there’s not much for me in the archives of butchness.

“four asian butches” by parminder sekhon

this past year, i’ve gotten closer to my ideal fashion, but i still rely on a lot of western masculine pieces and silhouettes to signal my butchness. i almost feel like the more interesting the outfit, the less it reads as butch. and once my hair is longer, more feminine, what then?

i’ll write more about my personal fashion journey in another essay. the main point is, i feel like the fashion i’m pursuing—something more experimental than the pictures above—would be a new vehicle of butchness. and if part of being butch is a shared visual identity, a shared idea of masculinity, what does this mean for me? can i really, by myself, commandeer that vehicle?

so am i butch or not?

i’m not trying to make one point or another here. i don’t know if i’m butch. i don’t know if deciding that is even up to me. like i said, i feel butch, but is that really enough? sometimes i wear makeup. sometimes i wear a dress (though everyone i know is taken aback every time). i love a girls’ night. i never felt completely outside of femininity, just like someone who can come and go as they please. i think butchness feels like home, but i like to travel—i think that’s why i keep stepping outside the limits of traditional butch aesthetics, then feeling dispirited and dysphoric when i’m not seen by other butches.

but i don’t feel like i can posit that we should totally expand what butchness looks like, at least not on my own. i feel like community fashion and dress and visual signifiers exist for a reason. so i’d love to hear from other lesbians and butches about what you think: have you ever felt constrained by the limits of lesbian fashion? poc lesbians, do you feel like your ethnic culture and your queer culture are at visual odds? are there any other fashion-forward butches who have found a way to not dress like a white man?

maybe i just have a thing about being the butch. (from dykes to watch out for by alison bechdel)

in spite of it all, i still want to keep growing out my hair, and i still want to consider myself in light of my butchness. i want to see what happens: will i look butcher when my hair is longer, when i can tie it up or sweep it back properly? will i look in the mirror and see my ancestors reflected back at me? will i feel like myself? will my wife think it’s sexy? or will i just chop it all off for the fifteenth time, as part of me has been dying to do?

stay tuned!!!!

author’s note #2: after writing this i really want to cut my hair…???? or do i…

author’s note #3: also i need more butch friends regardless of whether i am one or not. butches (POC BUTCHES ESPECIALLY) please interact.