Sugar and spice and everything… well… maybe not everything…

So I’m walking out the back door heading out for my standard, daily bike ride when I notice I’m doing my “jock walk,” — my thighs roll out from the hip joint slightly, making my stride a little wider; my weight seems to rest more forward in my hips and there is a swagger, but not a typically feminine “swish”; my back and shoulders are lifted and squared, but not tense; my chin is a bit dropped. When I stop moving, I’ll usually stand with my weight on my left leg and my right placed a bit in front, pigeon-toed, arms akimbo. I catch myself doing this a lot when I’m working out or at Karate.

It’s a very manly stance and apparently I am — or rather, can be — a very manly girl.

Me and my Beloved Mike -- Hard to see the jock walk in this photo, but trust me, it's there.

You may find this hard to believe (guffaw) but I’ve been accused on more than one occasion of being …. ahem… unfeminine. I’ll discount the Tomboy teasing I got as a child. Who wouldn’t want to be a tomboy in a culture where boys were expected to have all the fun and girls were expected to not get dirty? And yes, I was considered and called a “bruiser” quite a bit. I was tubby so that didn’t help but I was also quite strong and proud of it. I could lift more, hit harder, and show less pain than many, if not most, of the boys around. Again, in my defense, being tough was a badge of honor and being weak was, well, it just didn’t happen or you kept it to yourself if you knew what was good for you.

However there were also more subtle, boy-like traits. I hated dolls. I never played with them. I think that I had two Barbie’s as a child and I literally chewed the legs off one and lost the other. I did, however, like my brother’s G.I. Joe, though that, for obvious reasons, was not considered “a doll.” I rarely played “house” and when I did, it was always under duress; for a while it was kinda compulsive for the third grade girls to play this annoying role play during recess in a time when we weren’t allowed to play on the monkey bars, swings, or ladders because our underpants tended to show when we swung from rung to rung, arched into the air, or climbed to new heights. And yes, you good guessers, it was a private Christian school around 1973.

I have never baby sat. I do not goo and gah over children — infants, toddlers, or otherwise. I do not care for children and no, I don’t particularly care for yours either. I sincerely hope you are raising them to be good, interesting, and worthy adults so that at some point in the future I can enjoy hearing you talk about them. (

Side Note – I find it interesting that this is the trait that most women and an awful lot of men hold against me as being a clear indication that I am not “womanly” enough. Not politics nor religion nor trips to nude resorts nor any of the other weird things I do. No, this is the one aspect of who I am that engenders the most outright condemnation.)

I hated the Girl Scouts (boring, boring, boring) and was all but kicked out for my non-comforming attitude but loved to hang out when Daddy or my Uncle’s Boy Scout troops were camping in Grandaddy’s back field. I used to take my Kowasaki KTV out and give the wildest, scariest, most-likely-to-make-you-cry-for-your-mama rides I could on my lime-green three-wheeled monster machine.

I used to work on my car before they became so damn complicated that only “trained factory technicians” could successfully change the oil. The smell of grease and tires and coolant and hot engines is just fantastic to me. And after I’d replaced the oxygen sensor, fuel filter, or the all the belts and hoses I’d stand back, weight on my left leg, right leg out, yellow rubber-gloved fists resting on my hips and think damn, I love this! Yes, I always wore kitchen gloves to protect my manicure.

So you see, I’m also quite girly as well. Southern girl girly. I don’t leave my house without lipstick on. Ever. In addition to wash-and-go my hairstyle needs to work when I want to put it in curlers. I mean real ones. Not those silly Velcro things. I will never have gray hair. I love to make crafts and decorate my house like Southern Living. I can cook. Underneath the filthiest workclothes or the most proper business attire I’m usually wearing something that would scandalize even the most liberal preacher-man. I do not, DO NOT take out the trash. No way. Period. Mike does not go to the grocery story.

Once, in my twenties, I was sitting around a picnic table after a show with several of my acting buds, drinking beer, and generally carrying on. We were all single at the time and everyone was bemoaning the state of their romantic lives and offering general advice. One of my favorite male friends (still a FB friend all these years later) piped up “Well, ya know Stasha, your problem is you’re just not very fuckin’ feminine.”

Let me set the scene for you, shall I? We’d just completed a comedy improv murder-mystery show where I played the hot, “latina,” sexy-but-dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks girlfriend. And let me tell you something, I was freakin’ funny. I was still wearing the cut down to there and up to here mini dress with black lace-up, thigh high boots. I’d received my usual share of lustful compliments and (welcomed) catcalls from audience that I flirted with unmercifully. I didn’t know it back then (way to dumb in the real sense) but I probably could’ve fucked every man in the audience and definitely every man at the table that night with nothing more than a “ya wanna?”

And still, my friend zeroed in on “you’re not fuckin’ feminine.”

Christ all mighty.

I believe my response was something like “Oh yeah, Jack? Well you can just suck my dick then.” So much for sugar and spice and everything nice.

Sigh. You see, back then and still today, I consistently vacillate between what is “acceptably” masculine and “acceptably” feminine. Just like the jock walk I mentioned earlier. When I catch myself in that particular mode (whether I’m working out or working with a client) I feel my “male mind” kick in. Then just as quickly the seductive, swishy, equally smart but flirty girl shows back up. Moments later, I’m irritated by the irrational, emotional, illogical, ignorant argument being touted by some dingbat woman as a “debate” and just as quickly roll my eyes at how “thick” my Beloved is when I’m trying to “express my feelings” and he’s trying to “fix my problem.”

Back and forth, to and fro, constant, constant, constant little shifts from the sweetest cutest, daintiest wifey-poo in the world to ice cold, karate sparring partner giving and taking punches that would be out-of-bounds in a bar fight.

This “switchiness” has always disturbed me. I felt like a freak since most of the folks I know seemed to exhibit wholly one side or the other (regardless of gender, which is a whole ‘nother post) and were clearly either masculine OR feminine. I first noticed this in the church where I grew up. Men were men and women were women and by God, they acted like it. In high school and college there were girly-girls, manly-men, fags, dykes, and the neutered nerds. I floated easily, to me, in and out of the cultures, slipping into the right frame of mind and body wherever I went. I noticed this masc/fem issue very much in the gay community as well. “Feminine” men behaved that way all the time and “masculine” women did the same. Feminine lesbians embraced femininity though now that I think about it I know very few homosexual men who don’t “present” with some traditionally feminine movements, expressions, or manner of speech.

But here’s the thing, in my dogged pursuit of happiness I think I’m discovering the problem I’m having with all this, why it bothers me so much: Why does it have to be one or the other? In my life I’ve always believed that anything other than ALL one way or ALL the other was, in some way, not normal and therefore, undesirable, but mostly, unacceptable. Women in general and me in particular could not be both “courageous” and feminine. I certainly could not be both assertive and “ladylike.” No, you could be a lady OR you could be a bitch or worse, a slut. A “good woman” was submissive; a bad one was a “trouble-maker.” No, women and men behave certain ways because that is the natural order of things and since I didn’t – no, since I couldn’t  — do that about half of the time I felt like I was abnormal and the other half of the time that I was a fake.

Holy shit, the stupid things I was taught to believe and then went right on believing because I never thought I could choose something different.

Finally, in my fourth decade out of the hopefully eight or nine that I’ll get, I finally see that ANYTHING I do is feminine simply because I am a woman and it comes naturally to me. My “jock walk” doesn’t make me masculine except in the eyes of some who may want to perceive it that way. It is just the way I walk when I’m in that mood. Nor do any of my traditionally womanly actions or appearances make me more “feminine.” I can’t be more womanly because I am already completely, totally, wholly a woman. Nor is it unfeminine in any way to express thoughts and take actions that other people, cultures and groups have decided are the proper purview of the male including sexuality, physicality (fighting), mentality (logic), and spirituality. I can reject traditional roles (motherhood and the irrational belief that if you have tits you lack the ability and certainly the desire to work on your own car) simply because I want to. And I’m not going to take out the trash – not because it isn’t “women’s work” but because I don’t want to and Mike has no problem with it (thank God!); and Mike isn’t going to start heading out to Publix – not because it’s emasculating but because that’s just not the way we run things ’round here.

That’s right. A new leaf has been turned over! I’m free to be me!!

But wait…

That’s all swell and good, but there is a major challenge to all this newfound self-acceptance. Most of society won’t accept it. Yep. There are some things that are just so ingrained in the “just the way it is” rule book that you don’t know the game is running unless you don’t want to play anymore. 

Just the other week Mike and I joined a small group of new friends for drinks and socializing at a local pub. As the table started to fill up it became clear that the girls were going to sit on one side and talk about clothes, shopping, dieting, and children and the men were going to sit around the other side and talk about business, UFC, sex, and sports. I have no interest in talking about clothes, shopping, or dieting, and I already made my feelings on children clear. Except for the sports, I would much prefer to chat about business the Ultimate Fighting Championships, and oh yeah, sex.

Side Note Number Two — Folks and friends, if you ever find yourself in a conversation with me for more than 60 seconds on of the aforementioned “womanly” topics rest assured I am simply trying to be polite while screaming internally and mentally working out how I’m going to (tactfully) change the subject or get the hell out of the conversation.

At another party, one that I mentioned in the previous post about “Compersion” I was having a great time, looking hot, being all wild with the girls, and flirting and talking politics and work and cutting up with guys. Unfortunately, even though I experienced no feelings of jealousy or insecurity and was genuinely enjoying myself more at a party than I had in years, Mike and I ended up having a long and not very fun conversation about “men getting the wrong idea” and “their wives or girlfriends getting pissed off.” In other words, my Beloved brought other people’s limited and possibly imaginary insecurities into my good time and wanted to convince me that as a woman, and especially a married woman, I had to “act appropriately.” The good news is that I (logically) made my case for exactly why I wasn’t going to do this anymore and I think he’s come around to my way of seeing this issue. In fact, I know he has. A week later, I think he recognized I was suffering at the pub and drew me into the “men’s” conversation. In part to help me out. In part to show me off. Loved that! My husband rocks!

Funny. I had to use my male brain to make the case for why I wanted to act more like the woman I am. But who cares? It’s me. It feels natural. And it worked.