Written by:
Melany Walters-Beck
» Order
this Issue of Curve:
Vol. 17#6
It’s Friday night in the Windy City. Temperatures fall to a frosty sixteen degrees but the inside of Circuit Nightclub is thick with the triethylene glycol haze of the fog machine. Bodies writhe and undulate on the small dance floor. The heady scent of booze, sweat and perfume is as intoxicating as the half-price drinks. Moving to the center of the floor, I am coaxed by the throbbing bass line and the words of Akon urging me to “Smack That.”
Huh? I hate this song. This thought occurs to me as my hand reaches out to connect with the posterior regions of my giggling posse of female friends, bouncing obliviously to the dancehall infused hit with misogynistic lyrics like “Women just ho’in, big booty rollin,” and the very poetic “Bend you over, look back and watch me
smack that ‘till you get sore.” Aside from perhaps the S&M types, I’m guessing that getting spanked by a dude until they’re sore is not on the menu for most of the lesbians dancing around me. Yet, here we are, just the same, shaking the booties, swinging the hair and yes, smacking each other. What gives?
To be fair, my friends and I came of age well after feminism’s zenith in the late seventies. Most of us weren’t even alive in the seventies. The first president we remember is Reagan. Maybe even Bush, the Elder. So we missed out on the messages of bra burning and the alien concept of respect for our bodies. Crawling out of suburbs and small towns amongst the corn, we crept into cities, wide-eyed and naïve to the fact that there were women out there who didn’t shave their legs and who had never slept with men, even during nights of drunken debauchery. Somehow we were welcomed into these communities like sorority girls on a consciousness-raising retreat. Wiser lesbians took us under their wings and showed us the feminist bookstores and coffeehouses. They gifted us with Rubyfruit Jungle and did their best to undo the patriarchal brainwashing of our heteronormative youth. Along the way, however, we rebelled. We would guiltily switch on TRL when we thought no one was looking, or put in that old Snoop Dogg CD while doing our girlfriend’s laundry.
As lesbians, we inherently believe that we are nicer to women than men are. We’re sensitive. We know what it’s like to have our birthdays forgotten, or that we need to be left alone with chocolate when we have PMS, or that when our girlfriends flirt with other women, we get jealous. This is obvious by the slamming of doors and the refusal to make eye contact. Even with all this knowledge and empathy, we still get out there and shake our thing when we hear the Pussycat Dolls sing “Don’t Cha.”
What is wrong with us? We all know better. But hidden in every clique of lesbians is that little “Don’t cha?”
“I know you like me. I know you do. That’s why whenever I come around she’s all over you. And I know you want it. It's easy to see. And in the back of your mind I know you should be home with me.”
Don’t you wish your girlfriend was hot, a freak, raw and fun? Sure. We all hope for a girlfriend like that. And if she isn’t? Well there are plenty of women on the dance floor whose eyes and hips and all kinds of other body parts wiggling to the beat, promise that they are. And hips don’t lie. Do they?
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