A well-known part of sapphic culture is the concept of a femme lesbian. Often defined as “traditionally feminine”, a femme will often be the counterpart to a butch, a more “masculine” lesbian.
This dynamic has often been critized for replicating heteronormativity; how is “traditionally feminine” subverting anything?
The currently ongoing manga The Skirt Sings at the Landing has the answer to this question at it’s heart: there’s power in embracing an identity that you’ve been denied.
The manga’s (beautifully painted) first page starts with the main character stating that cute things.. just don’t fit her, and thus, she shouldn’t wear them. She needs to wear things that ‘match’ her, and only that. It seems to be a hard, immutable fact of her life; but our second character immediately breaks that assumption simply by asking: is this what she wants?
This struggle is portrayed in the manga’s setting: Haruma Kiki, our protagonist, is part of her school’s ballroom dancing club. A ballroom dance is usually done in a pair, in which one person (the leader) leads the other (the follower). These roles are often associated with femininity and masculinity: the smaller, “more feminine” follower being led by their taller, “more masculine” pair.
Kiki loves dance, but she specially loves playing the follower. The issue is, that as she grew taller and taller than her classmates, she stopped fitting into the expectation of petite femininity put on to the role, and thus, started forcing herself to play the leader - what ‘matches’ her.
That is, until her follower pair suddenly leaves her to dance with another person. Feeling lost and confused, she starts looking for a new follower - and, by coincidence, a new person has just joined the club: Toribami Michiru, who Kiki immediately sees as cute and pretty.
However, when Kiki asks her to be her pair as a follower, Michiru refuses: why should roles be decided by such shallow criteria as appearance?
The next day, skipping practice as to not have to confront her situation. Sitting on the stairs, she hears the school band practicing in another room, and since no one can see her, she starts dancing, doing the steps of the follower by herself.
What she doesn’t know, however, is that there is someone to see her; the insistent Toribami Michiru.
In what has to be one of the most beautiful sequences i’ve seen in a manga, Michiru walks up to Kiki, and the two simply dance as they really want to.
What matters, in this moment, is not society’s roles or stereotypes: it’s what they want. Kiki isn’t ‘playing into what society thinks femininity means’ in this scene, she’s being herself in spite of what society thinks. And it’s the happiest she’s ever felt.