Senoritas, this is Bevin Branlandingham, and I think it’s high time you met. Bevin is a lawyering, happy-to-tell-you-she’s-31-year-old who lives in Brooklyn, but really that’s just the boring stuff. She works at Re/Dress a plus size vintage shop, runs a blog, has a podcast, performs drag, comedy, burlesque, aspires to having her own talk show and is generally an ultra-rad warrior for self-acceptance.
Laura: Let’s start with what you do — tell me about the art you make.
Bevin: My mission in life is to help make the world safe for people to love themselves no matter what their differences are. So I do that in a sort of huge, any-medium-possible way. I have a blog because I like to write and it’s nice to be able to publish and have that sort of instant gratification. I’m also a performer. I started as a drag king. I’m an amazing drag king, I’m just going to put that out there. It’s a total cartoon character on stage. And I started hosting shows with my drag troupe so that sort of developed me into a multi-facet performer. I also do spoken word, but it’s not like, you know, the sort of lilty Alix Olsen kind. But you know, I’m going to go on stage, and you’re not going to realize what I’m doing is what I’m doing until I do it. I also have my podcast, which is FemmeCast: The Queer Fat Femme Guide to Life and that one involves a lot of fashion but also social justice and stuff that is interacting in the lives of femmes and fat folks and queers of any gender.
Laura: So your blog is Queer Fat Femme. Were you always so comfortable with just being like, “This is who I am”?
Bevin: Oh, no way. It was such a journey. It’s funny because I didn’t become comfortable with being fat or femme until I became comfortable with being both. Going through college, I didn’t know anyone who was fat and who loved themselves, that was weird, and I also didn’t know anyone who was femme and queer who wasn’t apologetic about their femininity or derisive about their femininity. I remember someone telling me I was a lipstick lesbian and feeling so hurt and offended and it was just like, “Why does ‘lipstick lesbian’ have to be such a dirty thing?” It’s just like, “You’re not doing it right,” that’s how it felt.
“I will say that I didn’t start out with politics around fat acceptance, I just knew that I was tired of hating myself.”
And then when I was doing drag, I basically met all these people who were really cool with femme, and femme had a really important place in the queer community. It was visible, and it was amazing and that changed my world. At the same time, I had recently sort of discovered dressing well and dressing in a way that made me feel good about my body and wearing dresses and all that stuff and that became this great feedback loop where I was wearing dresses and having lots of cleavage and people were complimenting me on it and enjoying it, and I was like, “Wow this feels really great, let’s keep doing this!” And then I met people who were fat and loved themselves and performed and were onstage. I will say that I didn’t start out with politics around fat acceptance, I just knew that I was tired of hating myself.
And now that I’ve developed a consciousness about it, I like to call myself a body liberationist because it’s not just about fat acceptance. I think everyone who has a body in this world is subject to scrutiny that’s really unfortunate and unfair. My friend Glenn Marla says there’s no wrong way to have a body, and that’s the truth. I believe that very heartily. I think everyone should have the liberty and luxury to feel good about themselves and to dress themselves in a way that makes them feel good and to just be free to have a body without worrying about what people are going to say or do about it.
Laneia: You say you used to feel apologetic about your femininity. I want to know what you think the difference is between femme and straight femininity.
Bevin: I think femme is conscious, and I think femme is so many things. My friend Leah Lakshmi says femme is a way of being a girl that doesn’t hurt. It’s a way of owning your femininity as a source of power instead of just a default “I’m a girl so this is what I’m supposed to look like.” I think femme can be all genders and all sexualities. I would say that it’s definitely a queer identity, and so whether your queerness manifests in whoever you fuck — I don’t care. You know, I’m not femme because of who’s on my arm or who’s not on my arm. I mean, god, if my identity had anything to do with how much I got laid, it would be so fucked up, right? I think that’s all separate. I can’t possibly limit myself or wait to find the butch or whoever is going to legitimize me, you know?
It’s long, and it’s hard for me to say because I feel really committed to this idea of an open self-identification for femme. I mean for me, femme is a lot about how I fit in in my sexuality and has less to do with my gender. I feel like my gender is more like “fancy” or “muppet,” I don’t know. It’s much more like femme has way more to do with how I came to feel connected to and saw myself in the queer community.
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17 responses to “I’ll Have What She’s Wearing: Bevin is a Fancy Muppet on a Mission”
Care to enlighten us on how to get 6 bras for $20?
Yeah I would LOVE to know that.
Man I went on a bra shopping spree last summer and all of them had the underwire pop out! I went so far as to try and fix them but it was a lost cause. Stupid cheap bras.
Yeah, six bras for a plus-size lady like myself is usually a couple hundred bucks. Tell all, Bevin!
“Clothes don’t actually hide you so I want to look as good as I can and wear things that accentuate the parts of my body that I like the most.”
Here is my ah-ha moment! I always think I can hide in my clothes. Every day. Then some days I wear stuff a little tighter and people say “oh, you look slim, are you working out?” and I’m like what the what! Why I thought I would look tiny in a big sweatshirt is beyond me.
So yeah, this article is awesome and has totally made me think differently about how I dress the body that I have.
Met Bevin at a burlesque show she put on this past Halloween. She is fantastic. Great job with the interview, auto-ladies!
That quote should read that I know how to get 6 bras for $20 *each* but you have to buy them all at once. It’s all about knowing how to work the Lane Bryant sales. I swear by the Plunge Bra. I wear it all the time except when I do yoga.
Thanks for interviewing me, Autostraddle!!
thanks for clarifying. $20 per bra is still a pretty sweet deal, though!
You are awesomesauce!
i love that gold sequined dress so much! i’m so glad this feature still exists! i want to hang out with Bevin!
“There’s no wrong way to have a body”… THANK YOU. I’m not a femme, I do not consider myself fat, yet I feel like if I was a teenager sometimes with all my insecurities. I’m not even attracted to ‘perfect’ girls, why should I feel the need to be that way?
I’ll not say anything else as I’ve had a few beers but this is a great interview!!
i love bevin’s life mission. also i feel like she has a really healthy attitude towards life and she has wonderful hair. sweet interview laura!
Awesome interview!
Interesting comparison between femme and straight femininity… I agree… there’s something very powerful about femmes.
YAY my favorite column is back! more style PLEEZE!
It sucks to be different. And no one should be treated poorly for being bigger.
However, she claimed that the desks in college were “engineered specifically that if you’re above a size 16 it won’t fit across your belly”… I confess I am just in awe of how she thinks that is funny. Being that overweight is unhealthy and she is risking diabetes, heart problems, breathing problems, blindness, death, etc. It might be tougher and more of a challenge to lose weight when she is that big but everyone is dealt with things in life that are obstacles and we have to deal with what hands we are dealt.
I encourage you to read Lessons From the Fatosphere about dieting and health risks around “obesity”. http://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Fat-o-sphere-Dieting-Declare-Truce/dp/0399534970
Also read Bodies by susie orbach which has some interesting facts of the body Mass Index. http://www.amazon.com/Bodies-Big-Ideas-Small-Books/dp/0312427204
For instance the BMI has changed a few times since the FDA approved one brand of diet pill. The politics of the body and “health industry” are real and go deeper than “you’re fat deal with it”
fat is feminist issue I and II are also great reads by susie orbach
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