Wonder.

Meg Allen: Butch

“BUTCH is an environmental portraiture project and exploration of the butch aesthetic, identity and presentation of female masculinity as it stands in 2013-14. It is a celebration of those who dwell outside of the stringent social binary that separates the sexes and a glimpse into the private and often unseen spaces of people who exude their authentic sense of self.

In recent years, like so many other pejorative terms used to oppress minorities, BUTCH is being reclaimed and infused with beauty and pride to more accurately describe a person who claims their female masculinity. These people may choose to cut their hair short, may wear ties, or may swagger with more strength than coyness. BUTCH is an adjective. And like all adjectives, it is fluid and subjective. Just as there are many types of hot women, there are many types of butches. 

These portraits are of the people I know in the San Francisco Bay Area who relate to and claim the term BUTCH. These people are my friends, friends of friends, and are part of a very large gay and queer community world wide. Starting in the spring of 2013, in a effort to practice portraiture, I asked some of my closest butch friends to risk being seen by the lens and sit for me in their private environments. After printing and displaying my first three portraits, I realized I wanted a whole wall of these images. The wall turned into a room and the room into an online gallery. I then wondered what would it have been like to grow up surrounded by these images in addition to the ubiquitous feminine I saw in most magazines. …”

“BUTCH is a celebration of those who choose to exist and identify outside of this binary that has never allowed any accepted crossover. BUTCH is inviting viewers into private lives of female masculinity and suggesting a resilience in nature’s insistence that there is more depth to masculinity and femininity than societal norms care to entertain. Who is policing gender presentation, and why? The fashion world has been asking the same question for ages. Are we ready for the answers now? It is undeniable that we are born with the sex organs that we are born with, but why are so we threatened by what others choose to claim as their gender presentation? Are we ready for these explanations? Or are we more afraid of the question?