#7:

AUTHOR'S NOTE, NOVEMBER 2001:

It's strange to read this essay now, five years after I began writing it, and the process of revision is complicated by my distance, not just from the experiences I describe, but from the language and ways of thinking it demonstrates. Since its original composition, I've moved farther and farther away from theory-not the direction I expected to follow when I first wrote it-but the points at issue here have remained central to my experience of femininity, being a lesbian, being a femme, being a feminist, being a woman, and, as I approach my 50th birthday, of aging.

In the intervening years, my self-presentation has also evolved, although again, the issues remain the same. Rather than clingy sweaters, I now tend toward sheer fabrics-culturally similar and yet visually quite different markers of conventional femininity. After more than 20 years of wearing almost exclusively black, I've also begun to wear colors: vivid, clashing, whatever draws my eye. In fact, after decades of choosing on other bases altogether, I find myself selecting clothes, makeup, jewelry mainly according to an almost magnetic attraction of my eye to the item, a particularly powerful experience in connection with fabrics.

Ironically--or maybe this is actually the explanation for the phenomenon--I discovered at my last eye exam that I'm slightly color-blind ("color-vision deficient" is the official term). Apparently, I owe this trait, like so many others, to my father, who always had a collection of beautiful clothes, despite needing to have his shirts sorted into brown, blue, and white drawers so he wouldn't get them mixed up.