There is absolutely no need to read this. I meant to write a small post, but I ended up blurting out things that I've been thinking about for a long time, regarding myself, stereotypes, the gay community, and, well, myself.


So I went out last Saturday with some friends to one of the most popular gay clubs in the city. For the first time, I almost didn't dance at all and everything was particularly boring. I guess this allowed me to walk around and look at an environment I've grown so used to I haven't taken the time to actually see.

As you all probably know, I am an eighteen-year old gal, and most of my friends are around that age. However, we've been going out clubbing for quite sometime, usually to places where people are between 16 and 21. What I hadn't realised until yesterday was that this younger part of the gay community makes me uncomfortable for a series of reasons.

While I was in line waiting to enter the club, my eyes started to go from small groups of girls to other small groups of girls, and I started to feel like I was Tyler Durden himself: living in a state of constant dèja-vu. When I wondered why on Earth was I getting that impression, truth dawned upon me (one that should've done so a long time ago): everyone looked the bloody same. Worst of all: very much like me.

Now, I have always been a very original girl. I don't really care what anybody thinks of my clothes, and always mix up styles (as clichéd as this might seem), not having any of my own. If I feel like wearing a particular dress, I do so. If I feel like using a tie and a suit, I do so. I don't really like labels (again, a cliché, but true), and I don't feel comfortable in being categorized – which is why, when me ex told me I was starting to look like the prototype of "lesbian girl", I didn't really understand what she meant, and plainly disagreed with her.

Most of my objection to her criticism at the time was because she herself had never really had any contact with the gay community, and that made me think she didn't have a basis on which to judge me. Thinking about it now, do see where she was coming from, though.

Maybe, in a way, her lack of contact with "our world" was exactly what allowed her to see things from a different perspective. Truth is, during that period of my life, I had fallen head first in this deep and complex pool we call "the gay community", and was starting to discover there was this whole world outside my inner circle of friends, my city, and even my country (it was also when I first came out as a lesbian on this Live Journal).

Thinking about it, back then, I might have been exactly the "gay girl prototype", but the truth is I didn't think like that – it was something that happened subconsciously. Whenever I see clothes I like on other people, on TV, on a billboard, or wherever, I don't feel like I can't buy it just because it's "mainstream". Ok, I realise this may go against the whole "I am original" paragraph I just wrote, but, for me, being original is not using clothes no one else has – that is actually what most people are trying to do. Being original is using whatever you want, and not care what other people think. Is being who you are, because, if you think about, who is more unique and special than yourself?

I guess that becoming involved with not only the national, but the international gay community, made me dress, and even have opinions similar to other bloggers, podcasters and writers of the sites I read daily, but I'm still not sure if that makes me less like my true self. I'm not sure if I think of that as "influence" or "symbiosis" – I prefer to see it as an opening of a new way to see and think of things I had little notion that existed in the first place.

It's like a new world has opened up to me, and I get to see lots of ways to deal with it, and get to pick, among those, my very own way – like hearing different arguments to sustain different positions and form my own. In a nutshell, inform myself, and then have an opinion.

Maybe my way of presenting myself to the world at that time was more "gay" because I was trying to show myself more as a lesbian (even if most of it was subconscious); maybe it was watching too much The L Word; maybe it was all the so-called influence of the gay community; maybe it was breaking up with my girlfriend and rejecting the way I was before; maybe it was a whole new phase of my life that began in the university; maybe it was a big mixer of all of the above. I'm not sure if I'll know the answer for what happened to me in August of last year.

My point is, I did change – for good or bad. But what is best, I've kept on changing, and that was what, assures me that I have been true to the essence of my being. The only constant in my life is that I have always changed: from day to day, from month to month, from year to year – it doesn't really matter how much time has passed between all the different phases I've been through. Actually, it's really hard for me to define periods of time in which I acted this or that way, because I'm not a black and white person at all (and, I believe, so aren't most people), and defining shades of grey isn't easy work.

We're now in the end of March 2007, and I feel like a completely different person from August 2006, and a better one, at that. I've been giving more attention to my friends, things are better at home, I've been studying more and more, being more responsible, and more comfortable with myself. I feel like I'm not that "gay girl prototype" anymore, and, even though at that time that didn't made me feel bad (and it still doesn't), I am happy for just not being so much categorised anymore. Nothing makes me happier than putting on a dress and some make-up and showing up to people that don't usually see the so-called "femme" side of me. It's good to break the centuries-old notion of dichotomies: there's no need to belong to an extreme or another.

Somehow I see how this has reflected on all my relationships; all the girls I've dated are so different physically and psychologically that I can't say I really have a "type". I've read an article on Reading The L Word: Outing Contemporary Television about how lesbians have never really had a standard of beauty, of the "perfect woman", and the author was really proud that our community was so open to new and diverse things – and I guess this notion can be applied to all my past girlfriends.

Going back to the reason I started to write this post (that has somehow evolved to a great egocentric digression about me – but, since this is my Live Journal, I don't really care), it's rather frustrating to see that, nowadays, and especially with the people of my age group, this has somehow changed: most of the girls that were in the club last night looked alike. One could easily define three or four different groups and fit most of the girls there into them.

I looked at girls that I would absolutely be attracted to and didn't feel anything, because there were ten others just like her all around. I guess this happened because I just value too much diversity, not only in my relationships, but also in my group of friends.

Here in Rio and in São Paulo, the people I hang out with are hard, if not impossible, to define. There are straights, gays and bisexuals; people that support one political party and people that support the other; different ways of dressing; socialists and neo-liberals; lower-class, middle-class, and upper class; people who live on the extreme North and South of the city... What keeps us together is a riddle for me.

Now, I don't know if this current situation in the lesbian community is particular of Brazil, my age group or even the XXIst century (I actually I doubt it). I don't know what happened to make things like they are now (if they weren't before), and no, I don't blame The L Word, even though Shane did have something to do with it (the amount of girls who look like her nowadays is huge). I'm not saying that every lesbian is the same – that would be stupid – I'm just saying it seems like we're heading in that direction. In fact, I'm sure all the girls that looked the same yesterday are completely different when you get to know them (myself included here) – it's exploring this different side of everyone that the world should be all about.

Insecurity is a bitch, and I don't blame anyone for trying to be accepted by being like other people in their group – humans are in general intolerant when it comes to what's different from their own, and yes, even in a minority such as the LGBT community. I hope that we somehow manage to change this, and get that diversity back (and, if it never was there, make it happen). I hope we learn to accept everyone for who they are and who they will be in the different stages of their lives, and not try to change them, even if subconsciously.
That is, after all, what freedom is about, and what the world seems to be running short of.


On a side note, I've quit smoking. It's been five days, no cigarettes. I'm not sure why I did it, but it had been bothering me for a while, and I'll try to make it happen.