Representation of butch lesbians in American media is often limited to cautionary archetypes—a tragic figure of perverted desire or the predatory butch of 1950s pulp fiction, Lea DeLaria’s character in Friends (1996), or Jeanna Han’s Scream Queens character (2015). There have been limited positive examples over the years, putting pressure on those few to stand in for a sweep of butch lesbian experience. These are just a few positive examples in that have risen to the top since the 1960s, but keep in mind that they often reduce real, nuanced, lived experiences across race and class to small snippets and flat images.
1960s:
Peppermint Patty, Peanuts
The tomboy of the Peanuts gang, Peppermint Patty was often shown in stark contrast with Charlie Brown’s highly feminine sister, Sally. Her snarky attitude and affinity for baseball also set her aside from the other feminine characters. Her best friend and sidekick, Marcie, often referred to her as “sir.”
1980s:
Vasquez, The Alien Franchise
Private Hudson: “Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?”
Private Vasquez: “No. Have you?”
Vasquez represents just one of filmmaker Ridley Scott’s masculine presenting female characters. Ripley from the same Alien franchise is another, along with O’Neill, Demi Moore’s character from the later film G.I. Jane. Though none of these characters are ever explicitly stated to be queer, their butch energy has led to speculation.
1990s:
Jess Goldberg in Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
This groundbreaking novel tells the story of a working-class butch lesbian in the 1970s and the bar raids, workplace discrimination, and physical violence she experiences as she fights to live as her authentic self. The Village Voice credited the novel with helping to establish the word “transgender" as part of the contemporary lexicon.
The k.d. lang / Cindy Crawford Vanity Fair Cover
The August 1993 issue of Vanity Fair saw lesbian singer k.d. lang sitting in a barber chair, her face being shaved by supermodel Cindy Crawford. An interior shot inside the spread showed Crawford atop lang, suggesting an imminent kiss. The article that prompted the infamous photo shoot goes on to explain lang’s gender-bending yet universal appeal.
2010s:
Carrie “Big Boo” Black, Orange is the New Black
Big Boo is just one of the queer characters on the hit Netflix series, but she’s definitely the butchest. Played by self-professed butch Lea DeLaria, Big Boo has all the trappings of a brash, out-and-proud, masculine butch lesbian within the backdrop of a women’s prison system.
Lena Waithe
In 2017, Lena Waithe became the first Black woman to win an Emmy for comedy writing with her “Thanksgiving” episode of Master of None, based on her own coming out experience with her family. She’s also captured headlines with her Met Gala outfits. In 2018, she wore a floor-length rainbow cape, and this year donned a suit jacket that read “Black Drag Queens Invented Camp.”
Although theatre is seen as a place where queerness thrives, butch-presenting lesbians weren’t widely represented until recently—at least not on commercial or regional levels. Fun Home made headlines in 2015 as the first Broadway show to feature a butch lesbian protagonist. But the character of Allison stands on the shoulders of more than 50 years of feminist, lesbian, butch, and queer theatremaking that largely existed underground in the nooks and crannies of downtown Manhattan. Beginning in the 1960’s, the social revolution manifested on small stages at the hands of such radical queer playwrights as the late María Irene Fornés and The Open Theater founder Megan Terry.
But it was the 1980s that saw a rapid boom in downtown queer performance, leading to what GO Magazine has dubbed “the golden age of lesbian theatre.” In 1980, Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw founded WOW Café Theater as a festival of women’s theatre, and within 18 months it went brick and mortar. A permanent home for the work led to the formation of by-and-for lesbian companies like Split Britches and The Five Lesbian Brothers, of which Fun Home book writer Lisa Kron was a founding member. Over the following decades, the work slowly crept from the fringes towards the center with lesbian playwrights finding success at larger institutions like New York Theatre Workshop and The Public Theater. But it wasn’t until Fun Home had its world premiere Off Broadway in 2013 that one of these successes featured a butch lesbian lead.
I, myself, am what many might call butch, and I watched Fun Home back in 2015, mouth agape through a haze of tears in absolute awe. I had never seen my own experience of being queer, discovering my identity, and coming of age paralleled so perfectly. I almost didn’t know it was possible. I distinctly remember sobbing in the lobby of Circle in the Square, having lingered so long trying to compose myself that the actors were making their way out of the dressing room. Beth Malone, the out actress who played Allison, waved me over and embraced my partner and me. She whispered, “You’re my people,” as we hugged. It was easily the most important experience I’ve had at the theatre.
Many hoped, myself included, that Fun Home’s success would open the floodgates to lesbian stories on our largest stages, and in the years since Fun Home began its touring and regional life, several plays featuring butch leads have cropped up in its wake. Jen Silverman’s Collective Rage: A Play in Five Betties ran at Wooly Mammoth and MCC Theater. In the New York production, self-proclaimed real-life butches Lea DeLaria and Chaunte Wayans play two of the Betties exploring five different facets of womanhood and self-love. Madeline George’s Hurricane Diane played New York Theatre Workshop where trans performance artist Becca Blackwell played the title character, an embodiment of the god Dionysius bent on seducing a cul-de-sac full of New Jersey housewives. On Broadway, lesbian playwright Paula Vogel’s metatheatrical Indecent told the story of the Yiddish play God of Vegeance, the play that featured the first ever lesbian stage kiss. Currently, The Prom tells the story of a young lesbian couple who were forbidden from going to their prom together. But none of these shows have achieved the meteoric success of Fun Home, leaving an Allison-sized hole in many queer women’s hearts who were given a brief taste of what it was like to see themselves onstage and are now left longing for more representation once again.
Sources:
http://gomag.com/article/dyke_drama/
https://www.wowcafe.org/story/
—Jen Gushue