ju n az 2000 • jM at M C .25
Which brings us to other things worn— or
not— under our shirts: bras. Dykes most likely
to ditch their not-so-wonder bras are probably,
like me, survivors o f the free-wheeling ’60s and
70s.
Zoe of the long tresses also takes the natural
route on this one.
“I would never date a woman who wore a
bra," she says emphatically. “To me a bra is like
a chastity belt— a male idea to keep ’em tied
up and in their place.”
Linda, who is 33 and plays on a softball
team, echoes her sentiment: “I wear a Jogbra
when I do sports, but that’s it. The rest of the
time it just seems stupid— and damned uncom
fortable!”
Krista has bras in every color and enjoys
wearing them under sheer tops; for her it’s a
fashion statement. “1 think they’re sexy,” she
says. “ But sure, it does feel good when my
sweetie lets me loose!”
A t 21, Jesse has been out for six years and is
happy to proclaim she’s never owned a bra. She
reminds us of one advantage of going without:
“When I’m out dancing with my girl, 1 like to
open my jacket so our breasts can press into
each other through our T-shirts. I can feel my
nipples harden as they flirt with hers, and I
love the feeling of my flesh melding into hers.”
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breasts. In fact, 1 ignore them. They are as erot
ic as my knee,” she claims very seriously.
When pressed for reasons, she explains that
her view is in part “a reaction to all the obsess
ing straight men do about them." She quickly
adds that she finds breasts beautiful, but she
also associates them with objects of abuse.
Marcia does seem to hold the minority
opinion on this topic. Most dykes interviewed
love breasts in all shapes, sizes and positions.
“My very favorite thing to do is bury my head
between my lover’s full breasts,"
confides Elaine. “I don’t care if I suf
focate,” she adds, sounding like she
means it.
The good news is that we dykes
seem far more accepting of what
nature gives us. The incidence of
lesbians getting breast implants is a
difficult statistic to pin down, but it
doesn’t seem to happen— at least
not in the great au naturel Pacific
Northwest. (Things you don’t hear
lesbians say: “I’d never date an A
cup.” Sorry guys, we just don’t have
the same hang-ups you fellas do con
cerning calibration.)
Therapist Serena Barton makes a
good point about beauty: “It’s nice if
your partner is gorgeous in a way you
like, but we all change, grow old,
grow bigger and smaller.”
She adds that “people you like
become more attractive the more
you like them.”
Barton is also an accomplished
artist. Sounding like the poster girl
for mental health, she says, “How I
look is far less important than caring
about something 1 do,
such as painting.”
It
is
interesting,
though, how candid peo
ple will be when they are
promised anonymity!
Linda divulged that,
shallow as it may seem,
facial beauty in a lover is extremely
important to her.
“I’m a sucker for a pretty face,"
she says. “Since that’s how I spend
much of my time— looking at her
face— it’s very important for me.”
Massage therapist Mary Ann
Stoddard addresses the issue of beau
ty standards this way: “One of my
favorite parts of being a lesbian is that
I don’t have to look at a man and see
what I look like through his eyes.”
Grand opening
nother advantage is that we
don’t even have to ask that
question to which men will never
understand the answers: What do
women really want?
We understand each other’s
plumbing and mood swings and hor
monal challenges. We’re also not
genitally competitive. (Another
thing you never hear lesbians say:
aturopath Karen Frangt» suggests looking .it golf
“My clit is bigger than your clit.”)
examples of different body types: “ Because golf
I’ve noticed that we’re also less
esn’t require as much aerobic capacity, you can I
likely to succumb to shaming
iger woman and compete and use your power.
thoughts about our vaginas and what
comes out of them. In fact, we can be downright
enthusiastic.
Listen to Nora, a 35-year-old high school
peaking of breasts, whether we like them
teacher:
“I had always rather liked the taste of
tamed and trussed or waving free in the
my own menstrual blood, and I found it an
reeze, we lesbians do have strong feelings
easy
transition to enjoy my lover’s blood," she
bout them.
divulges with a smile. “Maybe its a reversion to
Marcia is 27 years old and doesn’t go there
pure animal ways, that taste for blood. After
'ith her girlfriend. “I don’t relate sex with
\n the eye of the beholder
S
all, I am a carnivore who loves a rare porter
house. And female monthly blood is such a
magical substance.... I love the viscosity, the
sticky thickness of it.”
Andrea is into olfactory delights: “I love the
way my lover smells under her arms, between
her legs.... 1 love a juicy yoni and the taste of
II
sex.
Sure, when it comes to loving our bodies,
some of us may still harbor shame from watch
ing too many Massengill commercials. As ther
apist Jennifer Stock notes, “It’s so hard to move
past the wall of societal pressure.”
According to gynecologist Sharon Hillier,
as quoted in Woman: An Intimate Geography,
“Women are taught that their vaginas are dirty.
In fact, a normal healthy vagina is the cleanest
space in the body. It’s much cleaner than the
mouth, and much, much .cleaner than the rec
tum.”
Who’s afraid
of the *F word?
at. For many women it’s the enemy with
in, the one area of their lives they can’t
control.
Just look at the
famous case of Oprah
Winfrey,
someone
with the resources to
tame her “weight
problem”
by
any
means known to man
or woman. A few years
back, when her name
was called as the win
ner of an Emmy Award
for best talk show host, Winfrey told TV Guide,
she could only think of one thing: “237
pounds, 237 pounds is in my head as I walked
up to the stage.” She claimed she’d been hop
ing someone else would win just so she could
hide in her seat.
After many years of battling her bulges, and
despite a squad of personal chefs, nutritionists
and tTainers, Winfrey remains a full-figured gal.
If her money can’t buy thin, then what? In fact,
F
we spend a staggering amount of money each
year on diet books alone. A search of A m a
zon.com reveals that the company offers 14,915
different diet books! If any one of them actual
ly worked, the rest would gather dust on the
shelves. That’s the obvious point. There are
nearly 15,000 diet books because none of them
work!
Musing on the subject, therapist Serena
Barton asks: “If you’re constantly depriving
yourself and constantly dieting and stressing
out, what’s your quality of life?”
Erica, 27, a self-proclaimed
“fearless fat chick,” exclaims: “We
take up room. A s fat lesbians, we
embody society’s greatest fears
because we don’t need men. In
the lesbian community, we don’t
quite fit in with lesbian chic.”
Zoe, on the other hand,
remembers what happened a year
ago when she had gained 20
pounds and asked her lover if she
minded: “To my surprise, she
made it clear that I was pushing
it, and if I gained 20 more pounds
she would probably dump me!”
And, when asked how she’d
feel if the tables were turned, Zoe
confesses, “I guess I’d actually feel
the same way...isn’t that sad.7”
When larger women come to
Mary Ann Stoddard for a massage
they “often feel they need to apol
ogize in some way for their size....
They worry that I won’t be able
to find their muscles,” she says.
As Jennifer Stock explains:
“A lot of shame that women have
around weight is tied to shame
that began at puberty and the first
emergence of curves. How you
weather puberty has a lot to do
with how you handle weight
issues later.”
She goes on to say that a
woman’s feelings about weight get
connected to her ability to be a sexual being,
to be assertive and feel empowered, and she
warns that a negative body image can become
pervasive in your self-identity.
“You can have a negative body image
regardless of how others perceive you,” Stock
says. “You don’t have to be different from the
standard to feel that you are, and negativity
can be focused on facial features, hair or skin,
but the dominant concern for women is weight
and shape.”
Worst of all, she says, women tend to dis
sect themselves instead of seeing themselves as
whole. Stock has also observed that “one of the
hardest things to do is like yourself the way you
Erica, 27, a self-proclaimed “fearless
fat chick,” exclaim s: “We take up room.
As fat lesbians, we embody society’s
greatest fears because we don’t need
men. In the lesbian community, we
don’t quite fit in with lesbian chic.”
Hip, hip, hooray!
I
n my experience as a woman of size, dykes
are a helluva lot more accepting of all body
shapes and sizes.
One way some lesbians do display sizeism is
noticeable in those personal ads that request a
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