great article in the village voice

triumph of the lipstick lesbians

(but really, who uses the term "lipstick lesbian" anymore? it seems so antiquated, if a term from the late 90s / early 2000s can be antiquated...)

here's something that bolsters my suspicion that i was born ten years too early:

I came out in the p.c. early '90s, when being a lesbian meant cutting your hair short and wearing rainbow rings and Doc Martens. Androgyny, or boyishness, was how lesbians recognized each other: If a woman had a crew cut and an Indigo Girls T-shirt, you could safely assume she was a dyke.

precisely why i didn't come out until years after college. i associated being a lesbian with being gender-variant and radical, which i wasn't. (not that there aren't gender variant and radical lesbians, but i wasn't comfortable emulating that model, didn't appreciate the pressure to emulate that model, and there weren't any images in the media that i could relate to.) i was also too frail to play sports. another strike.

i continue to be annoyed that "the L word" (notwithstanding all of its silliness) wasn't created when i was in college. i think i would have had my "eureka" moment a lot earlier. i think a lot of women would have had theirs too. i should have been born in 1985. sigh. oh, bette porter and helena peabody, where were you in the 90s?