Mascara Lesbian: What Does Your Lover Bring To The Beach?
Does she bring a cooler or a bottle of wine and an emotional breakdown?
*Prefer to listen? I got you! Click the voiceover icon above.
I know we’re in more “progressive” times, but today I’m presenting you with an old-school hot take.
Lesbians, despite what the RADICAL LIBERALS might preach, fall into two distinct categories: butch and femme.
JK, JK.
Sort of.
I *do* think dykes fall into two linear categories, yes.
But it’s got nothing to do with femme or butch or anything in-between, my darling.
We’re either cinematic or practical.
There is no nuance, no shade of gray. It’s black as the velvet night or as white as the dress of the virgin sacrifice. You’re one or the other.
Let’s start with the demographic that triggers me the most: the practical lesbian (no, shade, I need you).
The practical lesbian owns a state-of-the-art cooler. With a lifetime warranty. It has wheels that work in the sand.
The practical lesbian never goes to the beach without her trusty cooler in tow, even if said beach is offset by a gorgeous hotel with a tiki bar that’ll serve beach-goers, seaside (purr!). Because, you know.
The restaurant is overpriced, Zara.
Why waste your hard-earned money on a weak pour and subpar lobster roll when you could pack your own cooler with goodies bought in bulk from your local Costco? (Practical lesbians keep Costco in business.)
The practical lesbian knows how to pack. By which I mean a cooler, you filthy animal. A cooler packed with tuna salad stored in the same Tupperware she’s had since college. And maybe if she’s feeling cRaZy, a few cans of whatever alcoholic seltzer is hot to trot—but NOTHING GLASS. DON’T YOU DARE BRING GLASS. No bottles of sauvignon blanc permitted!
It’s dangerous, how dare you even suggest that, Zara? It could shatter, and the dogs could get shards of GLASS in their paws.
The cinematic lesbian, on the other hand, does not own a fucking cooler, h-o-n-e-y.
She’s too busy longing for someone she can’t have; she never got around to purchasing a cooler.
Costco Membership?
Nah, bro.
The lighting in Costco gives her suicidal ideation. She’s only fulfilled in the moonlight.
The cinematic lesbian doesn’t even notice the looks of disdain on the faces of the furrow-browed, practical lesbians as she casually rolls up late to Cindy’s beach gathering, recklessly clutching a (glass) bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon blanc in one hand, and even more recklessly, clutching the hand of the long-distance lover she swore she was done with, in the other.
The practical dyke won’t be able to help but mumble, did you at least bring plastic cups for the WiNE?
And damnit, Zara, how much did you pay for that bottle? Fifty bucks? In Costco, you can buy a case of the same wine for forty-two ninety-nine.
But Zara won’t hear the cries of the practical lesbian.
She’ll be too immersed in a heavy conversation with another cinematic, about something light, like I don’t know.
Death.
Or the holocaust.
A day at the beach might seem like a trivial way to highlight the difference between the two iterations of gay women, but honestly, it tells you all you need to know. Literally.
And metaphorically.
What represents practicality more than a cooler?
What represents “the cinema” more than a bottle of overpriced wine and a lover that will never truly be yours?
It’s a war of comfort vs. masochism; convenience vs. doomed whimsy; aluminum cans vs. delicate glass.
Additionally, I believe how you do *one thing* is how you do *everything.* How you show up to the beach is how you show up to life. Relationships. Career. All of it.
Practical lesbians tend to have practical careers. This can look like everything from a firefighter to a project manager, a security guard to a corporate CEO, a gym teacher to the chief financial officer of the WNBA, a prison guard to a principal of a bougie private school, a mechanic to the original line producer of the Ellen show, to Ellen herself (practical lesbians who choose to walk the path of fame are indeed rare cases, but do exist). They aspire to have steady streams of stable income.
Unlike the cinematic lesbian who has either just overdrawn her checking account or has just sold her life rights for seventeen million.
Cinematic lesbians have improbable, high-risk careers that, like everything else, torture them.
This can look like everything from a mega-successful red-headed pop-star belting the pink pony club on the Grammy stage to an acoustic singer with a shaved head strumming a guitar, wailing about the war, at the vegan coffeehouse. A nurse crossing the picket line at Planned Parenthood and a spoken word poet. A competitive bodybuilder and a drugged-out androgynous model. She’s running for mayor of West Hollywood or a hundred miles in the heat to her ex’s apartment in Tucson. She’s the secret mistress to the closeted actress who breaks her heart every other week, or the closeted heart-crushing actress, herself.
It’s not to say the two can’t be in the same industry; their paths cross every so often in the day-to-day.
For example, the practical produced the movie that the cinematic directed. The practical is the warden of the prison in which the cinematic lesbian is doing time in, for throwing a mango at her ex-girlfriend’s head. And how would a cinematic pop star ever stay safe without her practical security guard?
When it comes to romance, we have vastly different love languages. A practical lesbian expresses her devotion through acts of service.
She’ll get your oil changed for you.
Or even better, change your oil herself (talk dirty to me).
She’ll drive you to and fro’ the Santa Monica courthouse when you need to get a restraining order against an unhinged ex.
Or even better, she’ll be in the same intramural softball league as the judge who oversees restraining orders in your district.
She’ll fold your laundry for you when you forget it in the dryer, and she’ll bake you a cake from scratch on your birthday.
If my last two examples surprise you because laundry and baking are associated with “femininity” and practical dykes, surely, are only of the masculine ilk, you’ve got it all wrong my darling! You’re buying into the patriarchal falsehood that irrationality is a feminine trait.
I’m not shaming you.
I don’t do that.
It’s not anyone’s fault you’ve drawn such conclusions; we’ve been fed the lie for centuries that women are dramatic and emotional, and men are pragmatic and even-keeled. In reality, masculinity is, more often than not, far more hysterical than femininity. Who gets in bar fights? Straight men who think they’re masc as fuck.
And jealous dykes.
And jealous dykes aren’t always, but can very often be as masculine-presenting as it gets.
And a jealous dyke who is rocked so hard by her well of emotions she can’t help but throw a punch in her lover’s honor, is wildly cinematic. Regardless of whether she swings a hammer for a living, or models body con dresses at the mall.
I don’t know about you, but many a butch, cinematic lesbian has come to my window and serenaded me with Melissa Etheridge covers by the light of the moon.
Come to think of it, what is more cinematic than Etheridge, who is not your textbook femme, swaggily howling songs of excruciating lust to an arena filled with hopeless romantics whilst wearing leather pants and cowboy boots?
What is more cinematic than:
I would dial the numbers just to listen to your breath/And I would stand inside my hell and hold the hand of death/You don't know how far I'd go to ease this precious ache…
And, on the contrary, the most femme-presenting dyke on the planet can be the most practical dyke on the planet. Ones who enjoy looking traditionally feminine while they execute their love by embarking on acts of homemaking: cooking and cleaning; steaming the suits and polishing the silverware.
As a high femme, self-identifying mascara lesbian, who has been hyper-cinematic since the womb, I’ve been shamed by many a masc-presenting lover who expects me to express my love through practical domesticity.
An ex once screamed to me, “why don’t you ever get me fucking groceries? All you have to offer is drama and poems.”
Lucky for me, I love who I am, so I didn’t let it get to me. I chuckled, considered titling my next book “Drama and Poems,” and found myself a superior lover who is charmed by both my poetry and flair for the “dramatique.”
Because a cinematic isn’t going to fill your fridge with groceries to express her love. She’s going to write a dissertation on how amazing you are. She’s going to grab you by the face and kiss you hard in public. She’s not going to bake you a cake, but she’ll write you a song. She’ll wax poetic about you to your mother, your boss, the internet at large.
Which leads me to my final points.
Can a cinematic and a practical have a healthy relationship?
Of course.
So long as the differences in our core natures are celebrated, not reprimanded or shamed, and neither tries to change the other.
The cinematic must accept that the practical might not want to spend her Sunday crying whilst masturbating to Blue Is The Warmest Color, and the practical must accept that her fantasies of taking romantic trips together to the Home Depot with her cinematic are just that: a fantasy.
If a practical tries to force Home Depot on her cinematic lover, the cinematic will resent the practical.
If the cinematic forces her practical lover to sit through a five-hour film about the demise of a toxic romance, with subtitles no less, the practical will resent the cinematic.
And you know what’ll kill your sex life?
Resenting your lover. No wonder Lesbian Bed Death is such a common phenomena within the dyke populous.
An equally important question for the culture: Can cinema-on-cinema work?
Can practical-on-practical work in the context of romantic love?
Of course.
I know everyone says opposites attract, but I think finding someone who can match your energy is underratedly sexy.
As a cinematic, I very much enjoy dating a fellow cinematic. Because you know what? I get off on ~intensity~ above all else. And as long as we’re both in bi-weekly therapy and can laugh at ourselves for the heated argument we had over dinner about the artistry of Taylor Swift, we won’t rip each other’s hair out. Just each other’s clothes off.
But without boundaries and mental health resources in place, this kind of partnership can be the kind that gets you uninvited from group trips. Nothing is worse than traveling with two cinematics who can’t regulate their frenzy of hot-button feelings.
And I also happen to know a ton of lesbian practicals in love with one another, who make for fabulous lovers.
They get off on sharing a Google Doc with grocery items to pick at Costco for their weekend trip to Big Bear.
Spreadsheets with budgets for the month are their kink.
They fuck in the aisles of Home Depot.
Bottom line is, there are no hard and fast rules in lesbian love.
There are just hard and fast categories that define us, lesbians: cinematic and practical, end of fucking story, babe.
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