DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
Yanel Escobar
Hi, I'm Yanel, I go to John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I am THAT girl, that loves girls, that believes she knows everything about anything, especially when it comes to music... particularly hip-hop... but I really love to learn. As corny as this sounds, I find beauty in everything, but I really love to read, novels, the news, hip-hop blogs, song lyrics; I have a hunger for knowledge. I enjoy discovering new places to do hoodrat things with my friends in any of the five boroughs. I want to do everything and I want to know everything and I like telling people that I know all this awesome stuff. I love to paint, mostly the things that I'm too afraid to get tattooed on my body. I usually see something and tell myself that I can recreate it. My dream job would be to literally write about my thoughts or to paint them, thoughts on music, art, film, dance etc. but my brain is always on a thousand; some days I want to be a writer/painter but most of the time I want to be a cop that knows a lot and can stand up for social injustice. 

In the LGBT community, labels are used to classify or categorize people that have a variety of differences such as physical appearance, sexual preference, relationships and many more. In the lesbian world, these labels are divided by whether a woman is more masculine or feminine in her appearance or preference and even her dominance in her relationships. A "Femme-agress" or an "Aggressive Femme" happens to be one of the labels that fits both categories and challenges the qualities of both masculine and feminine traits.

 

Femme-agress dresses feminine and behaves feminine but what sets her apart is that she is the one that takes control in her relationships. It does not matter if this Femme-agress is attracted to the more feminine girly lesbian or the stud/butch lesbian because either way she will still take control. The label itself has the word aggressive which the OED defines as, energetic, enterprising; self-assertive, pushful. The interesting thing about this term is that there is a feminine twist to it; it has been created to define the lesbian that is girly to an extent but behaves "like a man." It is part of a gender performance in lesbian relationships. It does not define what a lesbian is but how a lesbian behaves and presents herself. Mignon R. Moore says in "Lipstick or Timberlands? Meanings of Gender Presentation in Black Lesbian Communities" that in the early 1990s, there was a return of gender performance among lesbians. She quotes Kath Weston's "Do Clothes Make the Woman? Gender, Performance Theory, and Lesbian Eroticism," and says, "differences in gender presentation among lesbians are now seen as frivolous plays on cultural representations of gender and not strongly linked to a personal identity or structure of norms for a community."  The behavior of a femme-agress does not define the entire lesbian community but rather it is a symbol of her own cultural representation. 

 

When it comes to the femme-agress, she dresses how she feels and always acts the part of the dominant mate in the bedroom. She is the one that is in control and usually is the one to start the intimacy in the bedroom. She is known to be dominant but she can have her moments where she is also submissive when intimate. She likes to be in control but can back down and let their partner be in control from time to time. 

 

When it comes to physical appearance, the Femme-agress can wear makeup and do her hair and get all dolled up, or she can decide to wear baggy clothing and go for the "guy" look. She can combine feminine or masculine articles of clothing to create a look that is all her own. She can wear certain men's clothing like shirts, pants, shoes but it will have a touch of femininity. Her hair may be done or she may add a bit of makeup, but no matter what clothing she is wearing, she will remain the one in control. She is "a cross between a feminine gender display and the masculine gender display... they resemble tomboys or straight women who are not very feminine" (Moore 2006). 

 

The Femme-agress can very easily play both rolls in her relationship so unlike the other categories that are used to define a lesbian's behavior, the Femme-agress completely challenges and breaks any classifica

tion that may be given to her. She is not defined by how feminine or masculine she is; she is the combination of both and shows off both sides. 

 

 

  1. Moore, M. (n.d.). Lipstick or Timberlands? Meanings of Gender Presentation in Black Lesbian Communities. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society Signs, 113-139. 

  2. Weston, Kath. 1993. “Do Clothes Make the Woman? Gender, Performance Theory, and Lesbian Eroticism.”Genders 17 (Fall): 1–21.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.