It frustrates me.
Someone wrote…
It frustrates me that androgyny always seems to not include breasts.
What’s your experience?
Posted by julian on September 14th, 2010 at 08:38 am
Category: your voice 34 comments »
34 Responses to “It frustrates me.”
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September 14th, 2010 at 9:44 am |
Agreed! Since when did the medias (including our own) image of androgyny become so limited? Common queers, we can do better!
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September 14th, 2010 at 10:55 am |
I hear you on this. It’s frustrating as hell when people see curves and refuse to see any possibility of androgyny. It’s a state of mind, too!
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September 14th, 2010 at 11:37 am |
This has always infuriated me as it buys into really sexist conceptions of gender where traits associated with the female form are viewed as deviant.
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September 14th, 2010 at 1:25 pm |
I love you for pointing this out because it’s true but also it really made me think about the way I identify and the way I choose to present myself and why.
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September 14th, 2010 at 2:31 pm |
OMG – YES – THIS JUST OCCURRED TO ME THE OTHER DAY : WEIRD ISN’T IT???
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September 14th, 2010 at 2:33 pm |
Hmmm…it reflects a sort of… sex-less, childlike aspect of androgyny, doesn’ it?
Well, the boob-less kind, that is… in terms of the “look” of it…
Very limited, very tried, i must say.
Maybe even over-exposed…
Not that there’s anything wrong with that look, not at all, just the predominance of it…
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Simon replied:
September 14th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Yeah, exactly. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. How do we move beyond that is the question.
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September 14th, 2010 at 3:14 pm |
I’d wager its probably because general society is *so* focused on breasts as a Very Feminine/Female Thing. :/ Which is sad, but there it is…
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September 14th, 2010 at 6:27 pm |
Sigh. This pretty much sums up my struggles with being read as androgynous. Inevitably someone sees the boobs and snaps to FEMALE and then it’s very difficult to shake the female pronouns.
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September 14th, 2010 at 6:39 pm |
Omahyra Mota. Look her up.
Here, have some androgyny with boobs:
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Jessica replied:
September 15th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Oh My, what a stunning person. Speaking as someone with breasts, they are disproportionately important in gender assumptions. The only thing approaching comparable gender identification prejudice is a full beard. Ergo the “bearded lady” “freaks” as standards in road shows and circuses for so many years. Well, in the words of Steven Stills “let your freak flag fly.”
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September 14th, 2010 at 6:40 pm |
Awww, it didn’t show the pic. Here:
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll284/zezizezi/evu_omahyra_boyd_02.jpg
Warning: BOOBS
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Anonymous replied:
September 14th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
P!nk does that look amazingly well too:
http://i53.tinypic.com/rbfsyb.jpg (beware of boobs)
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Jay replied:
September 15th, 2010 at 1:11 am
Oh wow. That’s a great pic!
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Tommy replied:
November 7th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
I like this one: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kz5llv8MNS1qzk5h3o1_400.jpg
They photoshopped the hell out of it, it seems :( but it’s still a nice pic!
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September 14th, 2010 at 6:41 pm |
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September 14th, 2010 at 7:29 pm |
Bean, I *love* photos like that. Shirtlessness is a typically masculine act, yet we’re seeing a torso that many would classify as female. It illustrates androgyny in a way that’s totally different from erasing the breasts.
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September 14th, 2010 at 11:14 pm |
unfortunately, i don’t think that’s actually pink. :(
and i agree with ronan. personally, i feel more masculine when i have my shirt off even though i have breasts.
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Jay replied:
September 15th, 2010 at 6:30 am
Me too! Its a shame I live in a dorm (co-ed, at that), otherwise I’d walk around with my towel around my waist after a shower, instead of up around my chest. Somehow, wearing it around my waist always feels more masculine.
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Jessica replied:
September 16th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
And if you have a regular sized towel, instead of a large towel, having it up around your armpits is not exactly modest, especially if you drop something. And being larger around the top than around the waist means I don’t have as much overlap of the towel. Having the towel around your waist is like a comgy skirt, while having it around your chest is like being a sausage.
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Jay replied:
September 17th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Yeah, I’m lucky and have a large towel and am not very large on the top at all. :/ My sympathies if thats your case!
Meike replied:
September 17th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Actually that is Pink; she has the “What goes around comes around” tattoo on her wrist.
Also, totally agree with the towel sentiments!
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Jessica replied:
September 17th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
@Jay Maybe I just have small towels :-) … I’m much happier (top or bottom) if I have what I call a beach towel than what I consider a normal sized bath towel. The towels they often have at most gyms are inadequate to cover up anyone who’s not five feet tall and anorexic – be they male or female or neither or both.
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September 16th, 2010 at 8:31 am |
I have to agree with this being the more dominant view of androgyny, but my personal view of androgyny includes a wide variety of forms and their combinations. Boobs don’t “make” a woman and they don’t “unmake” a man, you are what’s in your mind. ;)
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September 16th, 2010 at 2:03 pm |
it’s for these sorts of reasons I’ve always hated the term “moobs”… sometimes men have breasts, whatever. it’s not like women have elbows and men have “melbows”.
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Adrian replied:
September 16th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Finally, someone else who hates the term moobs! I feel the same way about guyliner too, and murse. Just because a man has it or uses it doesn’t make it a different thing.
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September 16th, 2010 at 6:32 pm |
If you want to barve controversy, try wearing a kilt in scotland if you’re a girl.
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Jas replied:
November 10th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
While still being read as a girl, I wore a gothypants takeoff of ‘proper’ kilted attire to my grad dance. At a prissy private school in Scotland. It was glorious.
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc3/hs545.snc3/29855_406053571768_653586768_4197006_592899_n.jpg
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September 17th, 2010 at 3:06 am |
I jokingly refer to mine as moobs, I try to say “my chest” as much as possible, I think tit is much more offensive than moob and I’m sure theres tons of people who have brought back and reclaimed “the c word” but I think back to 2 specific situations
1-fight club’s bob has bitch tits
2-the scene in dogma
BETHANY
Oh, those weren’t tits I saw Jay cozying up to?
SERENDIPITY
(tugs on boobs)
What, these? You should know better than anyone at this table that tits
don’t make a woman.
RUFUS
Hell, the tubby, coat-wearing mother fucker’s got tits – don’t make him a
woman.
SERENDIPITY
Aside from an intuitive knack for accessorizing, what traditionally defines
a woman falls between two things : her legs. But as you can see…
Serendipity stands and unbuttons her jeans, dropping them slightly,
revealing yet another smooth, sexless crotch, quite like Metatron’s.
SERENDIPITY
I lack definition.
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Sammie/Faerie replied:
March 19th, 2011 at 9:33 pm
I Love Dogma – so glad you referenced that scene, it made me smile :)
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September 19th, 2010 at 11:55 pm |
Well, My thought is that androgyny is to look like both, yet neither. The step further would be nippleless <funny spelling) Ex. Look at Manson's Mechanical Animals Cover with the body-cast.
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September 21st, 2010 at 9:30 am |
There’s a person at my school who is ridiculously androgynous, despite having breasts. Granted they’re small, but they’re there, and this person often wears shirts that actually show them.
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September 23rd, 2010 at 8:01 am |
Oh my! Thanks so much for pointing that out. I’d sort of realised it and internalised it and let it limit my ideas of what I can really do with myself without ever thinking about it clearly in those terms, and yet it’s so true. I’ve felt for a long time like my body in general is not really fitting to my personality and I really think the part where I feel more or less androgynous and yet look exaggeratedly feminine bodily, as in the above idea, is why.
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March 19th, 2011 at 9:37 pm |
Another example of androgyny with breasts is the character Shane McKutcheon from the L Word. She had an androgynous, skater-esque appearance but did not attempt to conceal nor advertize ownership of her breasts.
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