Defining "Femme," Plus Gay Hip Hop

My previous blog was about the value of discussing how appearance affects our lives. In this blog, I'd like to talk about what constitutes "femme" or "feminine." And I'd like to reflect on British rapper and grime vocalist Lady Sovereign, who came out earlier this year. (I wanted to embed a video but I have no idea how to do that, so you can click the link if you want to hear her). Correct if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure she's the ONLY openly gay rapper who's ever been on a major label (she was on Def Jam before going independent).  Though she wears make-up, has long-ish hair, and is like 5 feet tall and tiny, she ain't femme. So what is "femme"?

What makes someone feminine? Is it mannerism and appearance that conform to a given culture's definition of a woman? Is it "girly" interests and hobbies? Can you be "feminine" if you don't like to cook, if you aren't nurturing, if you don't wear skirts and hate the color pink? Are you automatically femme if you're into some or all of the above? But most importantly, who decides? Are you feminine if you consider yourself to be, or if others perceive you that way? Are you "femme" and how do you decide? Can men be feminine? Can somebody be feminine, into girls, and be male-identified?

I identify as "femme" for a lot of reasons, including my love of baking and knitting, but the big one is how I dress and how I appear. I look pretty much in line with our culture's image of what a woman looks like. But does that alone make me feminine? And is feminine the same as "attractive to straight men," as some critics suggest? Can you be feminine without becoming objectified?

Writer Tricia Rose thinks not, at least not when it comes to women in hip hop.  In her book "The Hip Hop Wars," she wrote that female MCs get stuck in one of two categories: either they become hyper-sexualized like the booty girls in videos (like Lil Kim), or they adopt a sort of masculine style and a quasi-lesbian identity (she gives Missy Elliot as an example).

Yet this doesn't address the lack of actual, out lesbians and queer people in hip hop, even the indie, consciousness, coffeeshop varieties. It's not that there aren't any queer artists. It's that only feminist hip hop fans/gay people (often the same group) have ever heard of them. Transman Katastrophe has done pretty well, and rightly so, because the dude's amazing. Openly lesbian JenRo also has a bit of a gay following (sorry to say, though, her flow is kinda lacking). But generally speaking, queer hip hop artists might be known for playing pride parades, but not for their albums, and not by folks who don't come to pride.

Which brings us to Lady Sovereign, the first non-American female ever on Def Jam. I want to preface this by saying that I've been a fan for years, and since I found out that she came out, I've developed a quasi-crush, as I do for nearly any out, queer, andro/butch lady celeb. (It's a knee-jerk reaction). I'm also a hip hop fan, the kind that sometimes quotes Talib Kweli in everyday conversations, not the kind that blasts mainstream radio nonsense thinking I'm a badass. I love Common Market, Blue Scholars, Dead Prez, Jean Grae, the whole hip hop is activism deal. Sov (as she's called) isn't exactly the nerdy stuff I usually love, but she's funny, catchy, and she has skills.

Sov's lyrics frequently reference her rejection of feminine style and behavior, everything from a mock-nightmare that her then-label (Def Jam) would try to pose her in a bikini for a men's magazine to a sarcastic "oh gosh/I'm not posh" to an entire song about her love of hoodies and being dressed "really inappropriately." She isn't girly, even rocking a side ponytail. In one of the weirder turns of our modern age, she cried on camera when she was forced to wear a dress for a reality TV show. Maybe it's the swagger, maybe it's the style, maybe it's that she seems like she could beat people up even though she kind of looks 12, but she is not femme.

Like a number of other women in hip hop, there have been questions about her sexuality for quite awhile, partly for her masculine style, and partly just because she's female in a male-dominated genre. She's also gotten a bit of attention for being white, British, physically small, female, and very young (she was still in her teens when she began touring). I wonder how much of these factors make her coming out charming rather than threatening. Probably a bigger factor is that she's no longer on a major label, and is no longer buffered by publicists.

Shortly after she came out to a British lesbian magazine, Sov's mother died, and Lady Sovereign has taken time off since then. It's too soon to tell whether coming out will hurt her career. But it's telling that she got half a decade of singles and two albums under her belt and had already had her requisite arrest (for spitting in a bouncer's face) before she mentioned the gay thing. It's also telling that she was suspected of being gay in part because she's not feminine and she's working in a hypermasculinized field. Does "feminine" mean "following cultural rules for women" or does it have some other meaning? Can you be femme, work in a male-dominated industry, and not turn into a stereotype of femininity? Can you be straight, be perceived as straight, and not be feminine?

And is anybody else in hip hop going to come out?

Photo credit: Naomi Lir.