At 14-years-old I knew who I was. I had been raised near Manchester on a diet of old Hollywood films and Project Runway re-runs, and surrounded by women who do femininity in the loudest, brightest way possible. I wanted to grow up to be one of these women, wielding hyper-femininity like a flick-knife. I also knew that I only wanted to be in relationships with other women.
The problem was that I wasn’t sure that I was allowed to be both.
I had searched the internet for queer women and had come back disappointed. These women all seemed so serious, and even the femme ones had an androgynous edge. I couldn’t see myself anywhere.
The only time I saw my kind of femininity in LGBTQIA+ media was on Drag Race, where I saw a femininity that was allowed to take up space without apologising. Here, I thought, were the bolshy, glittery, political queers.
This was clearly where I belonged. I started engaging with my local drag scene, expecting to find a place where people shared my love of the hyper-feminine. But in a space where femininity is performance, little love exists for women, both cis and trans, who live their femininity all the time.
Even though women and AFAB people have been involved in drag since the beginning, our community still sees camp, and by extension, drag, as the birthright of gay men. Queer women are only accepted if they’re masculine enough to be seen as ‘properly’ queer, and femmes are conflated with straight women, as if all femininity was inherently heterosexual.
And then comes Chappell Roan. Like me, her own hyper-femininity is bundled up in her love for women. She’s an ode to what’s magic about femininity, in high heels and big hair.