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Being Les: Reimagining Masculinity and Femininity Through Body Work UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Lipstick tales Beauty and precarity in a southern Philippine boomtown Taqueban, E.M. Publication date 2018 Document Version Other version License Other Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Taqueban, E. M. (2018). Lipstick tales: Beauty and precarity in a southern Philippine boomtown. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:05 Oct 2021 Chapter 3 Being Les: Reimagining Masculinity and Femininity through Body Work True to her promise, Ellie introduces me to her les friends. One of them is Junie, who she grew up and went to school with. “We never became a ‘thing.’ We were not each other’s type,” she confides, laughing. Junie is 19 years old and a self-identified les (a term commonly used by young lesbians in the city to refer to themselves). Hanging out in the city’s newest mall, she tells me: I don’t know why but there’s more and more young les in the city. Here you generally see two kinds of les, the hard and the soft. But every les is really different. Everyone is unique. We all have different ways and styles. Although Junie uses the binary categories “soft” and “hard,” she also hints at the various gendered subjectivities and “styles” available to her peers. Junie is not the tomboy of Filipino lore, a cross-dressing masculine- bodied woman attracted to feminine women (Ofreneo 2003). For one, Junie does not embody masculinity. She often wears girl shorts and short skirts, styles her long hair, and wears lipstick. She has always “fashioned” herself this way, she tells me. Junie’s feminine body confronts dominant and traditional notions of being a tomboy in the Philippines. Various studies on the cultural construction of the tomboy have focused on subjective experiences of the body. In her study set in west Sumatra, Blackwood (1998) argues that being tombois is not about acting like men, as masculinity is perceived to be deeply rooted in their bodies. Tombois are “female-bodied individuals who lay claim to the social category ‘man.’” Blackwood proposes that social meanings are learned and embodied (2009: 461). In Jolo in the southern Philippines, Johnson (2005) presents tombois as asserting that they are like men rather than being men. His informants “did not express any sense of being a man 83 CHAPTER 3 ‘trapped in the wrong body’” (2005: 89). Luzatto and Gvion’s (2007) study in Israel similarly finds young lesbians following more flexible body codes, differentiating themselves from straight women and older generations of lesbians by “constructing a body that refuses to completely assimilate into a lesbian culture” (2007: 38). In studying the lives of young les in Cagayan de Oro, their body practices—especially their use of cosmetics—serve as a reference for their “being in the world” (Heidegger 1962; Young 2005: 9). The inquiry begins with accounts of body work among young les—the products they use to achieve their desired “being-in-the-world.” I take inspiration from Wieringa and Blackwell (1999) that “just as there is no sexual desire outside of the cultural ontology that mediates between bodies and cultures, there is also no culture that is disembodied” (1999: 16). Alongside the focus on embodiment, the concept of mobility is central to the inquiry. Mobility is deployed here in several ways: one, to describe the movement of young les to the city, mainly to study and work; two, once in the city, their ability to access different flows and networks (Appadurai 1996); and three, their capacity to aspire to new futures. Mobility thus describes both spatiality and ability. This chapter is based on focused ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Cagayan de Oro in 2015 and 2016 among self-identified lesbians aged 18 to 25. My data come from participant observation and semi-structured interviews as well as general observations and informal conversations. The young les who participated in this study come from lower and middle- income families. While most are students, some work to support their families. A few are “in between,” either out of school or waiting to work. Most migrated to the city from neighboring provinces, while some were born in the city and grew up there. Most are practicing Catholics; a few belong to other Christian denominations. Making the most of their referrals, many of my interlocutors were friends or were acquainted with each other. Cities are central loci in the study of how spaces are gendered (McDowell 2009; Wilson 2001; Bondi and Rose 2003) and provide locations from which to inquire into gay and lesbian spaces and practices (Binnie 1997; Valentine 2003; Nash 2005, 2006). The prevailing view is that gays and lesbians do better in cities where there is more social and sexual diversity (Phillips et al. 2000). The modern city is often imagined as a staging ground for new worlds, new things, a site-precursor for changes in attitudes and providing latitude for unique identities. Cities 84 Being Les: Reimagining Masculinity and Femininity through Body Work are informational centers (Castells 1989; Sassen 2005) that enable young people to access new commodities and ideas, which become part of their everyday and shape practice and culture (cf. Appadurai 1988; Whyte et al. 2002). Cities inspire a particular kind of “imagination” (Appadurai 1996)—the aspiration of achieving mobility and desired subjectivities— where “local” and “global” signals collide, mix and merge. More generally, I adopt Grewal and Kaplan’s (2001) understanding of “transnational relations in which power structures, asymmetries, and inequalities become the conditions of possibility” to study the “empowering practices of consumption and engagements with media and new technologies that create new subjects” (2001: 671). English terms do not capture the ambivalence for gendered words in the Bisayan language spoken in Cagayan de Oro. The Bisayan term uyab, for example, refers to a person one is in a relationship with. While the term translates to either “girlfriend” or “boyfriend” in English, uyab has no reference to gender. Bisayan pronouns are also gender neutral: the pronouns siya, niya, iya, sila and nila do not translate to “she/he” or “her/ his” but more closely approximate “they” and “them.” Blackwood (2009) in her study of tombois in Indonesia uses “s/he” and “h/er” “as a way to disrupt the binary genders of the English language,” arguing that the use of the English pronoun that resembles the person’s gender identity “has the potential to reinsert transgressively gendered individuals into fixed identities” (2009: 479). My interlocutors had no particular preference for either of the English gendered pronouns. Manifestly masculine, Bas, MJ, Pen and Lee were surprised to be asked about their preferences, answering “S’ympre, ‘she’ ko” (Of course I’m a “she”). Conversing mostly in Bisayan, the appropriateness of gender referencing did not present any issues. Writing, on the other hand, presents this dilemma. Cautioned by Blackwood, I use the English pronouns indicated by each informant. Navigating and making space For many young les, coming to the city is a project of claiming opportunities. Pau and Cal, who describe themselves as “hard les, sometimes butch by others,” come from neighboring provinces. They moved to the city to attend the nautical school, both aspiring to work abroad as mariners: “You can’t easily find courses like ours in other provinces. Here in the city, there are around five schools to choose from.” Charlie, Jaime, Di and Chris, also self-ascribed hard les, are classmates in the criminology school. “We enrolled because we didn’t have to wear skirts!” they confide, laughing. With its three universities and various colleges, the city has a large student 85 CHAPTER 3 population. Courses such as nautical studies and criminology attract young people seeking to improve their prospects. Such courses are deemed masculine and attended mostly by male students. Charlie explains: “If you find any females, they’re usually like us, hard.” The city’s booming service sector has also opened opportunities for young people. While the jobs are usually poorly paid and insecure, companies are willing to hire non-college graduates. “Usually, employers are okay to hire tomboys,” explains Dot, a waiter at a local restaurant. “It’s just a matter of finding a job that fits.” Dot has done the rounds: “I’ve worked as a service crew in a fast food chain, as a gas boy, a merchandiser, and a packer at the factory.” Many of the young les I spoke to are proud of their work ethic and see this as a particular “les ethic.” “We work hard,” attests Maru. “If anyone carries a case of beer, I can carry two.” “There’s a gasoline station and a hardware store here in the city that only hire les. A friend who works there says their amo (boss) value a les’ integrity,” adds Kas.
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