1 100 4 https://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/files/original/e2e4f319dccd78d7dc2909d7db03f89e.pdf 8ffe24e99ede33a2a247cca743dfa75d PDF Text Text Alaina Zulli This is Alaina Zulli interviewing [redacted] goes by [redacted] on May 31 2007, in Bobst library. Okay, so [redacted], let's start with your background. Tell me where you were born. Then about your family. Anonymous Excuse me, I was born in New York City, Beth Israel hospital. I am the last born out of four children, two boys, two girls. My mom is a single, single mother. Unfortunately my dad was at the time I was born children. My dad, unfortunately my my father was killed in some kind of confrontation with somebody. So I never really knew my dad. I have a stepfather who raised us who I kind of recognise as my dad because he's the only father figure I've known. And we grew up in Brooklyn, Park Slope, excellent neighbourhood. Should have stayed there. Guess that kind of answers a lot. And I, I mainly grew up with just my sister, just me and my sister. My two brothers were actually raised with my grandmother. I believe my mom probably had them when she was really young. So they grew up with my grandmother. It was cool like, we, we lived in a household where it was just the four of us. Unfortunately, my mom has a my mom has a mental condition. She's diagnosed as being schizophrenic. So that was a little weird sometimes, you know, my mom was kind of always in and out of hospital. I actually when I was born, I was born with what's called CAH, it stands for congenital adrenal hyperplasia. It actually means I'm missing an enzyme in my body, my Adrenaline gland doesn't produce a certain enzyme. And I was actually also born with ambiguous genitalia. Which, as most people know, my sometimes I think about it when I was born, you know, most babies when they're born, they like you have a you have a girl you have a boy, I picture when I was born, it's like you have a Okay. Wait a minute, give us a second, we'll get back to you. So, unfortunately, I I was always in and out of the hospital myself, you know, young kind of went through a series of reconstructive surgeries, which I think also kind of answers a lot in terms of my sexual orientation. You know, being being a lesbian, being �Butch, you know, based on just my overall appearance, you know, I have unfortunate have higher testosterone levels, which gives me a more androgynous Look, when people could kind of think that, you know, I'm a female, but I'm not quite sure. Alaina Zulli Well, you have facial hair, which to many people is a clear indication. Anonymous Yeah, I mean, but nowadays with so many you know, transgender people, like some people not too sure whether it's facial hair due to you know, hormones, right. And, you know, the whole transition over AZ So were you raised as a girl or a boy? Anonymous I was raised as a girl as a girl, my mom put [compensated?] little dresses on me and, and stuff, but I think what was unique about my mom was that she, I think, because I was born with this condition she didn’t really enforce a lot of like, she didn't, when we went out, I if it was a family event, she put a dress on me. But really, I played with I played with cars, Star Wars figures, action figures, I never really had dolls, like my sister was more though, the doll and makeup type, you know, I played with cars, trucks, I was very active. You know, I would, I was always jumping around, you know, just like a little boy, I was jumping around. All my friends were boys. I really never had any little girls as friends. So I think my mom kind of, you know, growing up, which was, I guess, good. She never enforced it on me. You know, except for family events. You know? So that was I think that was really good. In terms of, you know, my upbringing, I wasn’t a kind of, you know, forced to be this little girl. I just grew up as a regular child, you know, just enjoying the everyday life of just being a child �AZ Let you find yourself and just be yourself. Anonymous Yeah, I it's funny because I look back and I know you know, people I always ask about, you know, when when's the first time you realise you a lesbian. And I think back and I had to be like seven years old, in the second grade, like, I used to have a crush on my second grade teacher. And I used to follow her everywhere, like, you know, when the kids would go to lunch, and I never had to go to lunch with the kids like I would, she would, I would have lunch with her. She would take me rollerskating on the weekends. And I slept over her house one time, but you know, I'm seven years old, and I'm thinking like, yes, sleeping with this older woman. You know, and then, of course, you know, not every now and then her boyfriend would tag along, and I will kind of get mad at him, you know, go rollerskating. And I would kind of knock him down because I didn't want him to be around. And then she got married, she announced to the class that she was getting married. And she invited the whole class to her wedding. And I refused to go. I was so upset. I was devastated. I was like, Oh, my God, I just lost this woman in my life. And, you know, my mom kind of was trying to force me to go and I was like, oh, no, no. So I kind of, I always think back and I was like, wow, like, that was my first like, experience with, you know, like, loving, not well, not loving, but you know, like, being attracted to another woman. AZ Sure. Yeah. Anonymous And I guess from Park Slope, we move to the Lower East Side, which was pretty bad. It wasn't that bad. You know, we still should’ve stayed in Park Slope. �AZ Give me a timeframe for when you moved. Anonymous We moved when I was about 11 years old. Okay. So, at 11 we moved because the building that we lived in was being sold. And so my mom just decided, you know, we should move. So we wound up moving to the lower Eastside in Manhattan, and it was good there. It was, I think it was also another confusing time, because there I kind of developed more female friends. You know, like, I even though I still kind of did boyish things. I had, I started having my female friends like my best friend. From that moment on she, you know, we were close. You know, I kind of really didn't look at her in a way that was like, you know, why I'm attracted to girls. But all her other friends I did. And her sister. AZ All the other male friends you mean. Wait, you mean all your male friends looked over that way? Anonymous No, I looked at her other female friends. Like, you know, like, hey, what’s up. And it was just weird because she would always get me because we were best friends. I she would always kind of duped me into like, you know, going out with a guy. Which was, you know, also as confusing because I used to think, well, well, this is what girls are supposed to do. Like dating. Yeah, like dating. Like, she wouldn't be interested in some guy. And of course, his friend would be there. So it's kind of like, you know why I want to be with him. So you got to be with him. And I kind of felt you know, I think I made a lot of sacrifices for my friend kind of like going in and just, you know, dating these these guys. And I guess it wasn't really until I was probably 13. There use there used to be a military Cadet that was ran by the center precinct. And my brothers actually, when they were younger, they used to go there. And I wanted to go so they �finally at one point, they kind of banned girls from being there, I guess because of some altercation, but they started letting them back in. And I went, and it was awesome. Because there I met this young woman. I don't know if I've mentioned her name. AZ Well, you can you can choose not to have her name ever. Really? Anonymous Well, her name was Selena. And she, you know, she then became my kind of, like, secret gay friend. You know, we both came out to each other, which was cool. You know, like, I was like, you know, I you know, when you're young you kind of feel like you know about you've heard terms, you know, lesbian and gay. But you never really impact impacts you until you actually meet you know, somebody that's just like you just like everybody kind of feel like you're alone until you meet somebody. And we came out to each other then we started discovering that there was other, you know, lesbians and actually bisexuals at the time. And in our cadet, you know, which was cool because I felt like you know, not only was I interested in this kind of military cadet, but you know, it was also surrounded by, you know, my people, my kind of discovering a whole new community. And I remember when we, we got on our bikes one weekend and we kind of went kind of girl hunting. You know, we were like 13, 14 years old. And we we got on our bikes and we went to it was about this time, and we ran into all these gay people, like right around here actually around Washington Square Park, it was we kind of got lost, we didn't know we were going. We just We just heard that, you know, there are, you know, gay people in the village. So we, you know, ventured out into the village to go look for, you know, gay people. And girls. And we had just missed the Pride Parade. Hmm. You know, so when you would, you know, we're riding our bikes, and we see like, you know, drones of like women, you know, and girls and other like, we at first we didn't know what what it was until we actually �saw what gave it away is we saw some butch women so like, oh, yeah, we found, we found our Mecca. And we had, we said, Hold this, this has got to be, you know, there are a bunch girls. So that means there's got to be, you know, you know, girls that we like femme girls around here. So we proceeded to dry it, you know, to ride around on our bikes. And we found these, we found these two girls who were 19 years old, of course, we lied about our age, we said we're like 17 years old. And we, you know, proceeded to like kind of walk with them, you know, hitting on them, and, you know, just kind of asking questions. And after that just became our new, a new hangout spot. And from there, you know, as I started going to cadets so I was going to I started going from my timetable was a little screwed up AZ That’s ok. When you, if you can clarify. What your age, there abouts Anonymous Um, I would say like about between 15 and 16 is when like I started discovering the village. And you know, we me and my friends then found out about because I didn't realise that she was part of a youth group, which was called Project Reach. And in the youth group, they dealt with social issues that was like kind of my first interaction with a socialisation group where they spoke about not only lesbian and gay issues, but issues around sexism and homophobia, and, you know, classes and as well. So I learned a lot going there just also, once again, just being around, you know, even tighter community where people that are more of my age rather than me trying to perpetrate and, you know, oh, they're lesbian trying to pick up all the women. And from there we we started interacting with our Hetrick Martin Hetrick Martin Institute, which is actually located here on Astor Place. It's probably one of the largest gay and lesbian youth groups. It's also located the Harvey Milk schools there also �AZ Oh I think I've seen that. Yeah, can you? Well, later, you’ll have to write that for me. But Hetrick Martin Anonymous At first, they were located by the West Side Highway, but where what people call the pier. Yes. So they were located there. So project reach was actually interacting with other youth groups. So once again, my community and I started seeing that this community is a lot larger. And then we started doing work with the yes group for Richmond services, which is part of the gay and lesbian center. So we started doing going over there and networking. And once I got to the center, I was just, like, amazed, like a whole building just dedicated for us. And we, that became our new hangout spot. You know, so about, like, 17 going into 16 going into 17 that became a new, a new hangout spot, which was actually the corner of 13th Street and Seventh Avenue AZ Place. I know Anonymous Yeah, yeah. So we used to all kind of that would be the meeting spot. So one person would like 2 people would get there and then you would wait for the rest of us, you know, the rest of the people so probably like about six seven o'clock there was about close to 20 young people there lesbian young people AZ And you just stand around on the corner Anonymous Yeah, we would all meet up at the corner and then decide what we're gonna do, which always resulted in ending up at the pier. So we would track down, �walk down Seventh Avenue, till we got to the beginning of Christopher Street. And of course, it would take us like two hours just to walk down the block. Because we would stop and see people we know. And stop at stores, you know, and, of course, it was all about fashion, even when I was younger, you know, we used to stop and look at the stores and the clothing. You know, because back then there used to be a lot of, I think it happens now. But unfortunately, I'm kind of out of the loop, there used to be a lot of one was called balls, balls. Yeah, they were basically many fashion shows that there was small communities or houses that were ran by, you know, kind of, they had mothers, which were predominantly like gay men, and by House fathers, which was sometimes, you know, the butcher, lesbians, or sometimes they would just be a gay. Another gay gentleman that was, I guess, a little bit more butcher than the mother. And they would hold these balls, these kind of, kind of mini fashion shows, and people would walk, like literally walk down this catwalk for different categories. So some would run down, some would walk for categories that we would call face, which will cover like you had a girl face. So some of the most feminine gay boys would walk for that category, or they had what was called boy realness. And some of the butch women would actually walk in the whole thing was about passing. It was like, we had our own little kind of fashion Yeah, show, which I don't know if you've ever seen the movie. And you may want to pick it up, it's called Paris is burning. Paris is burning actually talks about the beginnings of the whole ball thing happened like in the early like, 80s. And, I don't know, if you've also ever seen that show America's Top Model, Tyra Banks, yeah, she actually has a gentleman in there, his name is Willi Ninja. And his house was actually called the House of Ninja. And he was the head mother, and they, he actually teaches these these models how to walk, how to walk down the runway. So, we would go to these different balls whenever we found out and we would go in and we would cheer for different people that will walk different different categories. And, you know, we will go �shopping with some people because, you know, you needed to have the latest and greatest clothes. And I think the probably I used to have the most fun when I used to go with the, with the boys, the Gay Boys, because they went by, you know, they would buy these extravagant, you know, dresses, and they would so funny, they would, they would buy them and keep the tabs on them, you know, because it was so expensive. Yeah. And then they would use it in a ball and then have it dry cleaned, and then return the return the dress AZ So would they buy, like down in Soho, they would get designer clothes Anonymous They would get either in Soho, depending on how much money they had, you know, like you know, depending on where were they unfortunately, some of them were street workers. So they would get money that way some of them sold drugs, you know. So, a lot of lots of times I would also go to we would go and go to different thrift shops and kind of put together these ensembles of different clothes. Which weren’t bad, you know, you could find like really hot clothes in a thrift store and still look still a good like I love thrift stores. And so we would go and go to these different ball scenes and stuff. And it was it was awesome AZ That's this is fascinating. Okay, so tell me more about the houses. Was it like those shelters? Anonymous No, no, no, they were just like groups AZ They were just like social groups �Anonymous Yeah, they were just social groups. So you were associated like, you know each house was known for different you know, they will have these you will go to these balls. And they will be like, you know, like the top winners. You know, they would kind of make their own houses. So they were like the best and in their in you know, whatever category they were. And it was like, you know, I want to call them almost like gay gangs. Yeah, you know, where you will belong to a specific house right they have the house of ninja they have the house of Pandora's, they have the house extravaganza. And, you know, there was all these people that were part of it. Matter of fact, if you ever seen Madonna's blonde Blonde Ambition tour, where she did the the whole voguing thing there. And there's three gentlemen that she actually has in there that were part of those houses and Madonna herself would actually sometimes appear at these mini balls, you know, which sometimes would be held at, I been to 2 of them one time that were held at the sound factory. Back then the rumor was that Madonna actually owned the part of the sound factory Junior Vasquez which was a famous DJ and still is used to DJ there. And she would come and that's actually where she found some of her dancers from this from this ball scene, and they would go now back then there was this whole voguing kind of scene. You know which people were done in in the houses AZ Can you explain voguing? Anonymous Voguing is a dance style that originated I think originated out of the ball scene. And it could be anything from like, like hand gestures to the way they move, you know, the way they move their hands and they the way they would pose. Voguing actually came out of there and then people would do these moves these dance moves that were just kind of like voguing is a is a is I think �a cross between dancing and posing. And it's kind of a little hard to explain it where it's easier to see. Unfortunately, I'm butch so I don’t know how to vogue voguing was more voguing was more you know, kind of like the gay guys then. So I didn't unfortunately, I didn’t kind of I'm really bad at it. I tried the one time terrible. But it was it was nice. Like, you know, I really think that that's where my thing of fashion came from. You know, being around the gay young people and everything, everything was about fashion. Everything was about fashion like back then we used to call it used to be called labels. And there was even a category for that you even walked for you walk down this runway for you know, your category that you were walking for was called labels. And it was about who had the best clothes on the most the most expensive clothes or even you know the most of the time it kind of fell in the category of the most expensive clothes or even the somebody would get a Louis Vuitton you know shirt or something or Versace pants you know, I don't I'm not too sure how big bootlegging was back then and they actually really weren't Yeah, these designer these designer clothes but the most of the time they were you know, but it was it was good. You know that actually from there I wanted to actually apply for fashion industries High School. I was the only person in my junior high school actually got accepted to fashion industries. I actually went in for merchandising someone to design in I wanted to design like a Windows like displays. And that that became also because a movie mannequin where he you know, created these extravagant window displays. And I could always remember a few of my friends going and just seeing you know, the Macy's windows, Bloomingdale's, Windows, or even the way that display the way the clothes are put together. Unfortunately, they work too well with me. I got into a lot of fights AZ At the school itself? Anonymous �In fashion industries. Yeah. I think you know, because, because I'm androgynous I used to always get, you know, are you a girl or are you a boy and guys, of course, you know, didn’t like, the fact that I think that they didn't know, or, you know, if they figured out I was a (barrow?) it was like, Oh, well, you know, she's a lesbian, she Butch, you know, so that became a problem. So my mom transferred me out of the school and kind of put me in my zone school, which happened to be two blocks away, which was through a part of high school AZ And this was in the Lower East Side Anonymous Yes, the Lower East Side. It was literally three blocks away from my house, which sucks because I could never cut class without getting caught. And that school was good. I remember being there. And I remember there used to be this one young woman that stood out she kind of stood to herself. And to this day, like I kinda see her but really, I know her because of who she is. You know, in terms of knowing somebody from school, but not really kind of creating a relationship with them. Her name was Lee, and she was like, she made me look femme so much. Like she was like Butch all the way. And I can remember like seeing her, like, get a lot of, you know, like a lot of shit in school. Because, you know, sexuality and just the way she looked like she had her head shaved, which, back then I guess really wasn't acceptable for young women, you know. And she's got a lot of us and I used to feel so bad. And, you know, I used to always want to kind of rate reach out, but I always felt, the whole safety thing where I kind of didn't want to put myself in that position because I just felt like I got a lot of shit for just looking where I was. And I didn't even have a shaved head. And I didn't really be as butch she was, you know, they kind of just associated with me being Butch because the way I dressed I didn't dress feminine. I dressed in jeans, sneakers, you know t-shirt. �AZ What was your hair like? Anonymous My hair was short, kind of the way it is now. And then I like as fashion started changing, I let my hair grow. I kind of had this Steven Seagal type haircut going on with a, I had a ponytail that kind of grew back. And I think a lot of that happened because my friend started growing her hair that way. And since we were so tight, we kind of brought it the same the same way. And we we just continued going in the village and I remember there was a prom. They had a prom. Unfortunately, when I graduated high school, I couldn't attend my prom. I mean, I could have but there was the whole thing on you know, being stared at what was I going to wear? You know, like, can I go there wearing a tuxedo and have to get shit about it? Or do I have to wear a dress? AZ Were there any official rules about it? Anonymous There wasn’t. I mean, I think that never really is because I don't think they can enforce it AZ They do it in some states. But I don't know of any… Anonymous In terms of the girls having to dress? AZ Like a girl can’t go with a girl basically �Anonymous I don't think I was worried about bringing anybody. If I would have went I probably would have went with my with my friend Josephine, which was my best friend that used to make me date boys, who was kind of devastated after she found out that I started you know, being with girls, and she used to always taunt me with Madonna used to have the song, La Isla Bonita. And in the song she talks about when a girl loves a boy and a boy loves a girl. So my friend used to, you know, every time that part came, like emphasize it. She will look at me and go when a girl loves a boy and a boy loves a girl. AZ After you came out to her? Anonymous After I came out. But um, she I think she was just doing that because she was just teasing me. You know, like she was really cool I didn’t unlike, unlike most people's experiences, and I'd say mine coming out was a little not kind of lucky. But it wasn't that hard. My mom kind of found out because she read my diary, which I actually left my diary in a car. And one of her friends found it and gave it to her. So I was a little awkward AZ How old were you? Anonymous 17 when she found out but I think you know mom's always know. Yeah, you know, so. I don't put dresses. I don't put dresses on there nothing feminine about me. You know, I don't bring guys home. You know, I never talk about boyfriends. So, you know, she just kind of did her own little you know, when she when I came in the house, she kind of just not threw it at me she kind of just �like tossed it. And and I can remember when she tossed it because she she made this comment like she said she said cheers to your night in heaven or something, because unfortunately it was talked about my first sexual experience in in the, in my diary. I was just kind of like frozen when she when she said it and that was kind of the only thing she said after that, like we never she never you know, we didn't sit down and talk about it. You know, it was just kind of like that was a one little comment and life just kind of went on. Which I don't know if it was a good thing, but it seemed to work itself now. Yeah. That's the I think I got a little scattered there, timeline. AZ Tell me more about what when you were talking about the balls. You mentioned what the boys wore. The girls I mean, were the girls involved with it Anonymous Yes, yes, the girls were and the girls it, I think what was funny is when the kind of femme girls would go against the femme guys for the same category, you know, because they had a girl realness and even femmes would walk for this category, you know, competing against, like these very feminine gay boys. And I think the funniest thing was when the boys used to win. Right? And the same thing with like, see the, I think the whole bunch femme thing is is an attitude, or I think I want to say attitude, you know, or kind of I think it's attitude because I think I kind of, you know, put out this kind of very rough attitudes sometimes, you know, not so much frail or even then ethical being stereotypically feminine, women are frail as well. AZ No but feminine does usually imply frailty culturally. So there were say butch women walking in these balls? Anonymous �Yeah we would walk like I would walk for boy realness. And I would sometimes go against like you know the kind of like butch gay boys. You know and it was almost the same thing like you know like here is a butch woman you know winning this category you know that was kind of like actual like you are a boy and you can’t win it like what’s up with that. And then after that it kind of faded like you know the the butch boys after that didn’t really walk for realness they kind of they kind of excuse me. A new category started coming out so then they had like b boy realness. Or and b boy realness was all about you know a straight boy passing as a I mean a gay boy walking this category trying to act straight. Like he would act thug. You know so he would have the baggy clothes on and you know the Tommy Hilfiger hoody you know the hat and he would walk and try to pass as a straight boy. And it’s funny because he’s walking for this category that he wins and then you see the gay boy kind of come out and they it was just fun. Like the different then it started after a while it started getting boring because like new categories and things started coming out and then you know there started to be a lot of animosity amongst you know people you know and then it started becoming a thing where people then started fighting like you know you would go to a ball and I can remember like towards the end when I stopped going like I went half the time to kind of watch my friend’s back. Because it, a fight always broke out AZ Over who won? Anonymous Over who won or a disagreement about who won or you know it started coming about you know like things that kinds you know fight about. Like oh well you aint wearing real labels like your labels aint real. You know like your wearing bootleg clothing. Or you know, because it was such a tight community sometimes people would sleep at somebody else’s house and so somebody would be accused of stealing articles of clothing from each other. �You know so after that when people starting fighting over things it just didn’t become fun anymore. You know it was just kinda like I don’t want to go see what fight is gonna break out I want to go to have fun AZ So you know how gay men, they have their own style, the pants are tight, they wear tight little shirts, was there ever a lesbian style that you could say was analogous? Anonymous I would say it was probably the b boy style. Because it was all about us like passing. In terms of butch like I could only talk about like femme girls wore you know femme clothing they wore you know tight jeans tight shirts you know occasionally they wore baggy clothes but they were still they still wore it in a feminine way. You know they would still have makeup on they would wear even the colours the colours were you know feminine colours pink colours you know pastel powder blues and stuff. Where the butches wore you know we wore the big sweatshirts with baseball caps on. We wore jeans you know sneakers then you know timberlands started becoming a new thing so we graduated to timberlands and for us it was just all about passing AZ So your intention was to look like a straight male? Anonymous Yeah were kinda like our intention was to to pass as much as possible but still… AZ Can you define pass? �Anonymous Like right now if I wanted to I could get up and walk to the mens room If I wanted to AZ Ok so passing Anonymous Passing is basically going through the day or going like being able to pass as a male. You know so we would walk into a store and they would be like excuse me sir. So we would be able to pass or being able to you know we would go because women’s bathrooms always got lines like we would walk into the mens bathroom and not hear anything about it. Like that’s passing like going through life or going through everyday with you know just being thought people just looking at you and assuming that you’re you know that you’re a male AZ Right. And is that something that you want? Have you always wanted that? Anonymous I, I just always wanted to always kinda be me. Like I'm a very individual sort of self like I don’t I don’t really like labels. Like I don’t like being categorized you know like I like wearing what I like wearing what I like to wear you know. Right now well my clothes are male kind of orientated you know I work for a urban clothing company so a lot of my clothes is. I wear mens clothes because womens clothes are tighter, I don’t like em at all Alaina Why? �Anonymous I mean on me. I think I’m built too much, I’m built too much like a guy to kind of wear feminine clothes, I think if I put on feminine clothes I kind of look like probably a drag queen so AZ So you feel uncomfortable in Anonymous Yes, even growing up I never liked to wear dresses. Now that I think about it my mom made me wear a dress one time to, for picture day in elementary school, and I cried all day. Because yeah at a young age I had I started developing body hair so I had hairy legs you know I had hair on my arms and I cried all day because she made me go to school in this dress with these little socks on so my legs were exposed. And I was just like, it was never because you know kids are cruel you know kids kids say you know people would look at me and go oh you’re ugly look at your legs like you know I’d be called a beast you know. And it was just I hated it it was so bad like they was really, it sucked AZ Yeah Anonymous It’s and then it’s crazy now that we’re talking like all these memories start coming out and in in the same elementary school I was actually banned from school unless I wore a dress every day to school. Because I was so active, which was another thing and now that I think about it my mom could have actually sued because I went to a public school I didn’t go to a private school AZ Did they have uniforms? �Anonymous No, we wore everyday clothes you know whatever like my mom you know I had school clothes and I had play clothes. Obviously my play clothes were probably a little stained and had holes in them and you know my my school clothes were nicer and newer and they forbid me to wear regular clothes I had to wear a dress. They told me they would not allow me back in school unless I wore a dress because I was too active AZ Oh so they wanted to keep you from being active… Anonymous They thought that if they put me in a dress that it would keep me from running around and jumping because they they thought that you know a little girls they were like I was too active for a little girl. You know I didn’t act like the little girls I was I would get into fights I was climbing I was always with the little boys and never with the little girls. And they made me wear a dress everyday which was another thing that I hated. Like I mean I kind of didn’t have a choice you know my mom unfortunately I guess you know she didn’t know enough to kind of protest it. And it was towards the end of the year so for probably like the last two weeks of school you know I had to deal with it [inaudible] I hated it AZ Its a creative answer to solution Anonymous Yeah AZ �So lets fast forward to now you work in the fashion industry. How many lesbians are there? Are there … Anonymous At work because I work for urban clothing company and I’m talking about urban talking about I work for Rocawear which is right up there with [inaudible] and you know everybody knows Jay Z which is you know CEO of Roc-A-Fella records. And unfortunately you, being gay in an urban society you know what I mean is, not to say that it’s unheard of but you know you hear even the lyrics you hear about you know people being you know you can’t be gay. Basically in in urban society and it’s crazy because when I first started working there I remember this woman who worked in [accounts receivable?] department. And you could clearly tell she was a woman it was nothing you know she didn’t look like butch or androgynous like can look at her and say is that a woman or is that a man. But she wore pantsuits, not men pantsuits, they have pantsuits for women she wore pantsuits. And I remember that they used to call her a shim which I thought was once again excuse me which I thought was fucked up AZ That’s like she him? Anonymous Yes and I used to always like I would like I would say one of the biggest advantages of being androgynous is people always think you’re male. I could put my ID card in front of anybody and as as much as it says female you know you know they don’t look at that people you know sex is not a thing that people actually pay attention to on a card on an identification.They’re kind of always looking at either your name or your your date of birth. So when I started working at Rocawear they just automatically assumed I was a guy. You know and I needed a job and I actually got the job through a temp �agency. So I kind of really didn’t, because it was a temp agency I didn’t think I was actually gonna be there long. So I kind of didn’t correct anybody or make a big thing about it and then even more after they I used to hear them say this. And I asked I used to ask I said why do you call her a shim like why do you call her that? And they used to be like look at her, look at the way she dresses and I would be like what’s wrong with the way she dresses? Like she has a pantsuit on it’s not a mens suit its a womans suit. And they used to be like you know but just look at her shes you know shes shes she looks like a man. She doesn’t look like a man, she’s a woman she’s wearing a pantsuit like what’s the problem. And I would start getting into arguments but and then kind of backed off to kind of not draw and I think the woman was was oblivious to it because they would call her a shim to her face and should laugh and go yeah I’m a shim. And I don’t think she kind of knew what they were saying about her and then she would she would talk about that she had a boyfriend. And of course they would all make fun of her and be like oh your full of shit you know you got a boyfriend, which was like still once again messed up. And so fortunately I didn’t realize it but I I then became full time. At the time I worked when I first started at at Rocawear I worked in the internet department. So I used to basically coordinate what you see on the website. You know getting images together, coordinating photo shoots with the clothes, customer service, basically everything. And they had another des they brought in this new designer and I remember his name was David Ayala he was a gay man and clearly gay flaming as hell. You know cool, you know cool guy and people used to make fun of him. Like like you know they would joke with him but of course always joke with him in like a homophobic way. You know like they would say they would say stupid stuff like you know like how was that dick last night or something like that. Like this is a urban like thing so they didn’t give a shit like there was no biting their tongues there was nothing you know like the office is clearly homophobic. Like people say they don’t have a problem with it you know but you hear like the responses and the �things that they say the snickering like underneath their breath. And he used to get a lot of crap but I think he just used to joke it off he was probably making a crapload of money for being for being a head designer AZ Right, yeah, sure Anonymous And then once again the company just grew you know and now I work I I started about three years ago working for the internet department I was working for the IT department. Because the internet they actually started outsourcing to a company called E fashions, which also runs JLo site baby fat. So I was actually going to be let go. And by the grace of God, I was saved by my boss to come and work in the IT department because Rocawear then started getting big started blowing up started becoming more popular. So they needed more people. And from there we move to 1411 Broadway, which is the fashion district that's the big building that got the if you’ve seen it’s got the giant button. AZ Oh! Anonymous That's the building I work in. And so we expanded we actually used to be 463 7 Avenue, and it became bigger and then they moved to to 1411 Broadway and staff started you know, more people production started getting bigger designs got a bit bigger. And there are people that you could kind of I want to say, you know, when you’re gay, you have gaydar, you kind of know, you know who's or you suspect. And people just ridicule them like you could. I mean, I always thought I always kept it to myself. And like you know I would say in my head oh, she looks like shes gay and then they started this in so funny. I think �nobody messed with him because he was he was a big guy, there was a woven designer [move insurance?] or like these button up shirts. Yeah. And his name was Lesley. And he was he was out. He was clearly out. He's gay. Everything about him. Right. He talked, you could clearly tell as soon as he talked to you, he was gay. And I think nobody said anything to him because I think they were scared of him. You know. AZ Because he was physically. Anonymous He was physically big. You know, like, he was very muscular. He was a big, muscular black guy. And he was Canadian. I didn't know that. But it kind of quieted down a little bit, because I think people kind of curbed their tone around him because he would look like he didn't. He was a person that you would say something that he would just sit there and just, you know, what we call read. Like, he would just read you. You know. AZ What does that mean? Anonymous Read is like a gay term in terms of is a gay word for like, telling you off. AZ Okay. Anonymous Like he would simply put his hand on his head. He would do the whole finger gesture. And it's even funnier when you got this kind of big muscular guy. �AZ Yeah. Anonymous Like you know, like, scolding you, like, how you probably would see a younger, you know, petite woman like scolding. AZ Yeah, yeah. Anonymous You know, somebody and I think he just scared the shit out of people. Yeah, I was like, in the corner. But yes. You know, but, you know, it makes me sad sometime that I can't be like, who I am there. You know, like, my biggest fear, I think at work is people finding out. You know, and it's come like real close at times. When people find it out. AZ Yeah Anonymous Because we have sample sales. Rokawear has these awesome sample sales. I got your number I'll let you know. And I, they open it to the public from like, the first hour. It's it's just employees, and then they open it to the public. And there was this guy who I actually used to go out with his friend when I was younger, when I was kind of going through my you know what am I phase straight or or gay? And he comes to every sample sale. AZ Does he recognise you? �Anonymous I don't let him like I've came real close where I've I've gone in. And I've saw him and I kind of timed real quick, before he didn't even see me. And it was funny one time I went in to talk to Michelle, which is actually J sister, when she works there, she's real cool. And I went in, I was like Michelle, and I said, Michelle, he kind of like I, I saw him like a profile, like view of him and he went to turn. And when I saw him, I did kind of like ran out of room. So Michelle was like [redacted] what. And I'm like, nothing, I'll talk to you later. AZ That's amazing that you have to do that. Anonymous Like every sample, like one every time we have a sample sale I avoid, like passing like the office is huge so I could kind of get to where I need to go through any kind of like, I could just. Sometimes I have to literally walk around the whole entire office to get to the stairs [inaudible]. Or I’ll leave and just take the elevator up one floor, because we have two floors. So I'll take the elevator to the next floor with my office is or cubicle. And just to avoid, just to avoid. It's, it's really crazy. AZ That is something else, yeah. To me, it's like New York City this day. Anonymous But I mean, once again, I work in, I work in a urban culture where, you know, it's really not acceptable to be to be gay or lesbian. And then all the women in my office are kind of like, you know, there are some attractive women. So of course, if you're don't look like the typical woman, you know, you're that oddity, you know, so it just, you know, sometimes I think, you know, I shouldn't be here, �and all like that that's not fair. To myself. Like, I feel like sometimes I'm not being true to myself, because I kind of lead this double life. You know, but unfortunately, I found a career that I really liked. And I made a lot of contacts, I kind of put it to the side, you know, so I could make more women get that 30% off for wholesalers. AZ So how are you doing? Are you getting tired? Anonymous No, I am good. You tired? Break or Anything? AZ No, I have so many questions. I don't know how much contact you had with the rest of the fashion industry. But do you think that other places in fashion would be as bad? Anonymous As long as they're not urban, I don't think they are. I think it's only the urban, like, clothing companies that we you you kind of fall into that. You know, that where its just not acceptable. Like, you could probably like I'm pretty sure in every in I'm pretty sure there are gay people in Rockafella records that are putting their gay people in Sean John, you know, even even in the in the other clothing companies like Echo. Probably [Nietzsche?], you know, there are there people everywhere, but I just think that it's just, I feel bad. I feel like if they could be who they are, and be openly gay at the job like I commend them. Like and, you know, I think it's, I think it's different for men than it is for women. I think the men because you think about fashion, sometimes you think, you know, if a guy's a designer, he's gay. They used to, you know, like, he's a designer, he's gay. So it's kinda like, you know, they already fall in that category. And, you �know, their stereotypes, I say, into that category. So, but I think when it's a woman, it's still like, I think if it's, if she's femme, you know, she kind of just passes, you know, but if you're Butch, then you're hit with that whole oh you want to be a man or you haven't had a guy to give it to correct or, or something like you’re just considered like, odder than odd. You know, I mean, like, you're just worse than that gay designer. But we could deal with him. He's gay. We know. He's a designer, you know, but you're there's something wrong with you. AZ Yeah. Anonymous So but I think they're I think, you know, I think there are gay and lesbian in every single aspect of you know, in fashion. I mean regardless in urban, I think they’re everywhere. AZ You just don’t know who they are. Anonymous No, I wish they did. I wish I did. You know, like, if I could go to a company where I know that there were probably other gay and lesbian people that were out like I would in a heartbeat. AZ My boss is Lesbian actually. And her partner was the also the business partner. But that's besides the point. And actually, I think you've hit everything. Is there anything else you want to talk about? Anonymous �Is there anything else you wanna know? AZ Let me see. Not really, let’s end there. Okay. Thank you very much. This has been an excellent interview. � https://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/files/original/09eb364f891e947eb646ed85077af3be.mp3 bdf9c741c88259419e5bd84ba2e1816a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource History of New York Lesbian Style Oral History Project, 2007 Description An account of the resource The History of New York Lesbian Style collection is an oral history project created by Alaina Zulli in 2007. Zulli was a NYU graduate student studying fashion history at the time and was working with the oral history collection as a student employee at Tamiment Library. This motivated her to document changes in New York City’s Lesbian culture as expressed in fashion through the personal accounts of women who identify as a lesbian. This collection includes four audio recordings of interviews conducted by Zulli, digitized from CD-R by students at Pratt Institute’s Library and Information Science Program. The original materials are held in off-site storage by the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Transcriptions were made by Amelia Leventhal, Marissa Moxley, and Sophia Santaniello. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The information available on this site, including any text, data, artwork, video, audio, images or graphics may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Entities other than the Lesbian Herstory Archive may own copyright of the material. Material from the website may be used for non-profit or educational purposes. However, if copies are printed or displayed, copyright notice must be included. Except as provided above, you may not reproduce, republish, post, transmit or distribute any material from this website in any physical or digital form without the permission of the copyright owner. For information regarding any further use of the materials contained on this site, please contact the <a href="https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/">Lesbian Herstory Archives</a>. Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Lesbian Style Project Anonymous Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. History of New York Lesbian Style Title A name given to the resource Lesbian Style Project: Anonymous Interviewee Description An account of the resource The interviewee recounts her experiences growing up lesbian and intersex in Brooklyn and Manhattan. She discusses the lesbian community, the ballroom scene, workplace and school bullying, and her experiences working at an urban clothing company. The interviewee's name has been withheld at her request. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Contact LHA at </span><a href="mailto:dyv.lha@gmail.com"><span style="font-weight: 400;">dyv.lha@gmail.com</span></a></p> <p><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND</span></a></p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 5/31/07 Extent The size or duration of the resource. PT54M53S Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mpeg Medium The material or physical carrier of the resource. CD-R PBCore PBCore is a metadata standard for audiovisual media developed by the public broadcasting community. See http://www.pbcore.org/documentation/ Interviewer The person(s) conducting the interview. (For personal names use "LastName, FirstName MiddleName, Suffix"). Alaina Zulli Autobiography Coming Out Discrimination Fashion Femininity & Masculinity Intersex Interviews Lesbian Community Support Groups Voguing https://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/files/original/b38c09f0608596805327b8c2b4d29056.pdf 3da92099c1725300eefeb621293800e2 PDF Text Text Alaina Zulli Okay, this is Alaina Zulli interviewing Fumio Ichikawa on June 4 2007, in the Barney building of NYU. Okay, Fumio, start by going over your background. Tell me about where you were born when, etcetera. Fumio Ichikawa Okay, I was born in 1968, in a small town in Kanagawa, which is a prefecture next to Tokyo. My parents were both from that region. And they lived in Tokyo at the time. But traditionally women go home to their parents to give birth so I was staying with my grandparents when I was born. It's an interesting story that my great grandfather passed away two weeks before I was born. It was a natural death, he went to sleep, he had a habit of taking a nap in the afternoon, by the sunny spot on by the window. And in one day, he didn't come back after the sunset. So my father was [unintelligible] my mother, and it's in my maternal grandparents home. And my father went away, got my great grandfather, and he never woke up. So he, my father was actually the first one who discovered my great grandfather passing and it was almost like exactly two weeks before I was born. And you know, depending on what you believe in, but in some of the Buddhist mythologies and the ideas about, the idea of like, passing from this life to the next life, and in between, that's just about the time where you're supposed to be crossing over this lever that separates this world to the next one, wherever that may be. And they may be, you know, he may never have left, he may have stayed with me. And so they decided to take residence in my mother's room. And the reason why I mentioned that is my great grandfather actually wanted to come here to the United States. He was a fifth son of a very large family, and because of the primogeniture, the oldest son takes over the family business in the land. So he wanted to get a strike a fortune outside, so he actually got on the ship, heading over to the United States. I think he made it over to Hawaii, then that's when he found out that his �older brother passed away, and he had to go back. So he never made it to mainland. But his plan was to come to the United States, make a lot of money, go home successful. It's quite didn't happen. But he did make it to the uh, to Hawaii. So my family came here when I was 17 because of my father's job. Everybody left but me after my father's assignment, and they went back, I stayed behind. And I have a feeling. I never thought of it that way earlier. But now that I think about it, I think it's my great grandfather making me stay. So that's one of the family or the personal, that I have about me being here. So I grew up in a suburb of Tokyo. It's within Tokyo prefecture, but it's one of the new developments in the 70s. There was a lot of urban growth, but not affordable housing in central Tokyo. So there was planned housing projects, all over suburbs, in the countryside there was nobody. So I grew up among people from all over Japan. People, their parents came on in the job assignment, they came for higher education and stayed, or they're transient, you know, moving from different city to city. But it was an interesting environment. Nobody was from there. Anybody sort of came there, anybody lived there. But so many different dialects, so many different cultures. During the summer vacation, the town emptied out, because everybody went back home where their grandparents were from or their parents are from. So it was a very interesting time that everybody knew each other and their parents and nothing beyond. You came there with like no baggage, no family history, just you. So there was no sense of like, insiders, outsiders and also the kind of what we call village mentalities that a lot of people associate with the Japanese, where you're closed in, which is basically everybody knows everybody's parents, cousins, you know, who knew who we didn't have that growing up. We didn't have natives versus outsiders. We, our class sized up from like 15, starting on the beginning of the year, by the time we move to the �next grade, we had 30. So that was the norm, which is very unusual in most of Japan. AZ The growth you mean? FI Well, just in terms of the, the growth as well as sort of the mobility of people is quite unusual. So when I compare my experience to my cousins who grew up closer to my grandparents is very, very different thing, where they grew up with all kinds of history, like, even before they go to school, everybody knows you. Because both my grandparents were teachers. So all the teachers from your school, the next school over, the parents, they knew who you are before coming in. Whereas where I, me and my sister grew up, it's just you. And, you know, you get to know other people's parents through the kids of, the connection were the children, not necessarily the kind of kinship or the location or sort of family history that you brought. So that was unique, I think. So that gave me a different perspective from a lot of people who grew up, so tied to the land and the community and family history. So that was really interesting and fun place to grow up. And then my father was transferred here, when I was when I was 16. We didn't come here until the year later, because my sister really, really, really wanted to graduate from junior high school before coming here. I was happy to leave Japan, my mother and my sister weren't. They were so afraid of going to places where they don't speak the language, they don't have any friends, all kinds of anxieties. I was ready to leave, I was not happy where I was. Because of many different things, but um, and also, I had a very different image of the United States being a more individualistic, freedom, creativity, democracy that a lot compared to sort of Japan in the 80s, where things were very structured, what seemed very structured. �AZ Even in your area? FI Yeah, well, it was because of the national sort of, um, it was a time of economic growth. And there was an expectation that the parents wanted their children to do better. And there was a very specific and clear path to do better. Higher education was the key, and there are school [unintelligible] and it was very clear that which colleges or university you went to connected you to the types of opportunities you had after graduation, it's a lot more systematic than here. Really, here, it's more sort of implicit, in sort of class and networking aspect of it. In Japan, once you get to a particular school, the network is there for you. It doesn't matter where you come from, you get plugged in, so everybody understood that. And everybody sort of aspired to that. And also, there was a shift from highly urbanized economy and society around that time, like market economy. And global economy impacting a lot in terms of how Japan was shaping up to be very much urban centered society. Transition from like the more, more small towns, villages, and diversity of that, too, everybody aspires to be the city dweller with the latest and greatest. So I think it was a time of convergence of many different influences, defining very clear a singular idea of what's successful. And [unintelligible, laughter]. Yeah, part of the reason is, you go through entrance examination after you graduate from junior high. I mean, some wealthier kids go through that earlier but for most, you know, kids, that's sort of the first rite of passage on age 15. After you graduate from junior high, you choose a high school to go to, you decide if you can go to public schools, private schools, you stay close to �home, or you travel. There aren't really that many boarding schools. So it's really I think, you take the train to commute, an hour and a half versus staying that's the school that's close to the home, maybe, [unintelligible]. So not but, that's sort of the first time you get filtered into different groups based on, supposed to be based on academic performance, but there's a lot more to it than that. And when I got to high school, it was a very different world because we mixed with, well, that was my first encounter with people outside of my community, which were very, very – It was weird. I go to a new community, it's a lot more homogeneous than the diversity that I was so used to in terms of people's expectations. The, the weird thing about where I grew up is economically very homogeneous, because of the housing project, housing prices, rental system. I guess there'll be equivalent to coops here, determined in the your parents income level, right? Like where you live and the community we lived in was based on the fact that everybody could afford to live in the same housing project. AZ And it was middle class? FI It was really like the middle class back then, in Japan, versus what we think of middle class here, versus what we think of middle class in Japan, now are completely different thing. It was sort of for the the economic bubble of the nine, early 90s. So it's, it's a working community, mostly, like white collar, mix of white collar office workers, some professionals, teachers, you know, a lot of school teachers, office workers, but not like senior management. It's sort of, you know, middle to lower. And also, generationally they were still young, so and they were on the path to becoming middle managers, and senior managers but not quite there yet. �So, culturally, we were very diverse but economically we were very homogeneous. And then, when I went to high school, we get thrown into the places where economically, it's very, very diverse. That was the first time I actually met somebody whose parents own like sushi restaurant, you know like the small business owners, the shop owners. We weren't, I wasn't used to that, I'm used to dealing with, you know, teachers, office workers, people who commute to work. Versus you having business at home, and you sort of grew up in an environment that was very different. But at the same time, it was very, I mean, I think it's the same, high school everywhere, it was very cliquey. And um, I didn't quite fit into, both the cliques, and also sort of the culture at the time. That was really, um. It's gonna be like the long history of the 60s, the 80s. But it was a time of very conservative period, a lot of the people who were student radicals in the 60s, late 60s, early 70s, sold out and became an office worker, and they're sort of, you know, telling the children that you have to study really hard, you know, go to the good school, get a good job, work for major corporations and your life will be successful and stable. And I knew those are the same people who burned down the campus and didn't have a graduation because they were against what was going on in Vietnam, what was going on with the uh, the treaty between the United States and in Japan the Security Treaty. They were against the nuclear war and whatnot in the 60s, and it's the same people telling us, "no, this is the way to happiness." So I was really frustrated with the fact that I'd have to sort of stay within that scheme of things. And I wasn't creative enough, I wasn't talented enough to just say, Forget you, I'm going to do my own thing. So I was reasonably smart enough to do well enough in academic performances. That was like what I was good at, but I didn't really like that, that was the only thing... and what you get at the end. And also the fact that there was a vague understanding and expectation that even if I do as well as the boys, you know, I can score as high �on exams, but there will be other "attributes," and in quotation marks, attributes that teachers would add to the application process, that would not necessarily disadvantage me in terms of going to college itself. But at the end of the process, that, that that sort of is not going to matter less than the fact that I'm a girl. Which, unbeknownst to me drastically changes in the four to seven years that I'm going to be away. But that was the understanding then, before I left. AZ So, you're saying that it was harder for girls to get into college? FI No, cause, not, cause examination process was fairly straightforward. You take the exam, you pass you get in. There weren't any slot based on gender. But to get the high school, especially public high schools. There was a little bit of a backlash on heavy reliance on testing, academic testing. So a few years before I – well maybe, when I was in junior high school, the government decided, well the Tokyo government decided to add a few extra, um, weight to like art, music, Home Economics, and, what's the last one... physical education. We had nine subjects, four, those four sort of more based on, you know, academic talent, and we have like five different subjects, Japanese, English, math, science and social science, before you take the exam in five subjects, if you score high you get in. After the reform, you have to carry the score, the uh, your grades from your school. But your four subject is going to be weighed a lot heavier than your academic subject. So before you go take the exam, you also need to have schools that you can apply to predetermined by how well you do in your school, including those four non academic subject, which is very subjective in terms of either getting these categories versus taking the exam and scoring 100 on the academic side of it. �So and it's it was fairly common that if you had the same score, and if you're sort of borderline between the A line schools versus the B line schools that the teachers get a little bit of an edge to the boys. And also, the expectation is that a lot of the women would go to junior college as opposed to the four year college, work a few years and, and get married. So the aspiration, it's not necessarily that it was structural barriers to get into four year college. But the aspirational pattern was very different for boys and girls. It wasn't that case with my family, the expectation with my parents always like to go to the four year school. And I think, looking back, my father never said that I couldn't do something because I was a girl. And I think I owe that to my paternal grandmother. But it was a shock to me when I was talking to my classmates in high school that your parents actually told you that you know, these are girly, girly, like things or things that women are not supposed to think about or wish for. I mean, it's a very stereotypical view of the Japanese society. But it was true to some extent, especially with the small business owners more than professional families. But even then, most of the mothers are stay at home or work part time, but there aren't many professions that women can stay after they get to a certain age or they get married and have families. So it was mostly teachers, nurses, very few office workers, or professional. So that was sort of the environment I was in and I was also not happy with the way everything is weighed the same. You could be really good at one subject, and equally suck on another subject. And that will bring your whole average down instead of you know, you sort of developing what you're good at. And sort of keeping up with what you're not so good at but passing, and still be able to go to a place where what you're good at, and what reflects your curiosity and desire to fulfill. Like, everything has to be sort of average downwards, to where you're not good at. And I had this whole image of the United States being different, that you can actually develop your own personal sort of strength. So, and also, like sort of gave me a way out of being ordinary, you know, going to New York. And then everyone is like, woah you're �going to New York. So it just, you know, automatically, you did, I didn't have to do anything, just by the virtue of my father being transferred, I'm somebody special, which was a nice feeling as an average kid. So that brings us to 1986. Spring of 1986. So we waited until my sister graduated from junior high school, got here in April. Not a good idea because academic is about to end and then nobody wanted to put us into uh, into school. Because they were about to, it was about the time now in New York State, and I don't know how familiar you are with the New York state education system, but they have a regions exam. And it, all the teachers are concerned about getting anybody passing the exam And because we didn't speak English all that well. And because some of the bilingual students are their star students, they didn't want their students, their star students sort of being distracted by babysitting basically. So I started school in Long Island in the ESL classes, most of the subjects except math, because math, you know, you don't need language. And the math teacher in that class I really hated, [unintelligible] because she thought I was going to drag her star student down. After we take the exam, for me, it was like high school entrance exam, I thought it was a joke. I didn't think it was 11th graders. So once they saw the score, just, you know, complete turnaround. You know, teachers, teachers look at me, and math was my worst subject. AZ You're worst subject? Okay. FI So it was, it was an interesting experience. But for a few years after that, because of my limitation in understanding spoken English, everybody treated me like I was five years old. That was the vocabulary and the range of expression that I had. So it's not easy being a teenager in Long Island around that time. But on top of that, there was the struggle of having a 17 year old �brain stuck behind the vocabulary of five year old. Yeah, so my high school days are pretty much confined to hanging out with other kids from ESL. But the other kids in ESL classes from all over the world, which was great, in one way. But at the same time, there's definitely a divide between what we would call the regular class students and the ESL students. And gradually you move on to, you move over as your English gets a little better. And also, you start to take classes. And for us, most of the Japanese kids, we are really well trained to read and write. And, you know, we take homework seriously, we try to keep up. So in terms of trying to get up to speed in being able to participate in regular classes, wasn't that big a deal, like, we just need a little bit of time to get used to it. And spend extra time between classes or at home to try to do as much preparation as possible so that we'll be prepared to go into class. And even if we don't understand what the teacher is telling us, we've read the textbook. So we know what to, you know, we have a little bit of comfort level in trying to figure out what the teacher is saying, as opposed to the teacher teaching us history. It's more like we try, us trying to figure out what we read in the history book, and where the teacher is in explaining that to us. So in the, the book knowledge, and you look up the dictionaries and you tried to get that in your head before going to class. AZ It's a lot of work. FI Yeah, but you know, that's the only way, that's, that's what schooling is. So it was more you know, trying to bring your English up to the level where you understood spoken English and listening at the level of your understanding of the written English. So, by the time I graduated, I was taking most classes in regular class with ninth graders, 10th graders, not necessarily twelth graders. But but at the same time, I still spent a lot of time in this one sort of class that was dedicated to ESL students and their volunteers helping them with �homework. So I think I picked up more Spanish language than you know, English in this time, and now it's fun. And it was also an interesting experience seeing people from very different backgrounds and very different expectations about what a 17 year old is supposed to be and how much responsibility you have, either because you're in immigrant, and you're the one who has to take care of a lot of things for them, you know, for your parents. Then some of the roles that sort of, that happens because you are the one who understands English the most. Even if my English is limited, it's much better than my mother's. So you know, anything that goes wrong, I have to call and trying to figure out what the right people to call, is this an emergency or is this a normal thing? Or you know, if you have parents teacher conference, I have to interpret what the teacher is saying to my parents and then interpret backwards with my limited English. So a lot of the relationship between parents being the guide and protective influence versus children being sort of shielded from dealing with all the everyday things, it reverses at that point. And you sort of become the grown up, you sort of become the public face of the family. So that was, that was interesting, too. So that was sort of a transitional period where my language skill was very, very limited. But at the same time, I had to make the most of it. And I couldn't really shy away from it, because that was my responsibility for the entire family. Because I mean, my father was using English somewhat at work. But he wasn't there, most of the time he was at work. So I have to get the driver's license quickly so we can go grocery shopping, instead of waiting for weekend. Or just to you know, drive people around. So a lot of things, housekeeping, things that I had to learn to try to do it quicker. And it was different from what I was used to. It's not that I didn't do that at all in Tokyo when I was growing up, but it was a lot easier for kids to do. I could get around on bicycles anywhere. Whereas here, especially so at first, you have to have a car to get around. �AZ Yeah. So where in Long Island did you move to? FI Fort Washington. AZ Okay, I lived out on the North Fork, But it was not quite suburban. FI Yeah, well, the reason why my parents, my father picked Fort Washington was because it's at the end of that Long Island Railroad he used to commute. So he learned that when he was younger that because of the community, Tokyo is notorious for being packed and very uncomfortable, he always wanted to find a place at the end of the line, and he would stand, and get a seat, like, you know, like half an hour earlier, let a couple of trains pass and you can get a seat and take that in, all the way through, and you thought it was going to be a thing here. So pick the thing. And also the fact that they had a very good ESL program. So looking back, it was a beautiful place, but not having a way to get around was very very difficult. So I spent a lot of time taking the train to come into the city, you know, go into The Village. And you know, how life was in The Village was so different from how it was in like the malls in Long Island. AZ Yeah. FI That's, you know, that's what I did. And then I went to school in the city. So I moved out of the house, I lived in a dorm. AZ �College? FI Yeah. I went to Barnard for four years. So that was the first time living away from home, and also living 24 hours in English, which was very very stressful. By the time I graduated high school, I was fairly competent at school, because of the fact that you can actually prepare for school, right? You know what to expect. And you can interact with the teachers within the classroom. Social life was different. But you know, you could get by feeling that you understand what's going on with living in a dorm, most of the interaction, most of the critical interaction is outside of the classroom. And really just learning how to explain things like real day to day, in a way, whereas if you're tired, the different kinds of tiredness or just, it's a lot more about explaining how you feel than a subject matter that you know what you don't. And that was a very different experience. At the first it was very, very stressful, that I didn't have a break from that. The fortunate thing is that Columbia had an amazing Japanese English Library. So I spend a lot of time in the library reading the books that I like, but at the same time, that's sort of like a little bit of space I have, because of the fact that I have spent, it takes a lot longer for me to digest textbooks than my classmates, so it was really nice to be living in a dorm so that you can spend, really spend a lot of hours studying, preparing for it, spend time in the library. But at the same time, just not having that sort of break in coming home and being comfortable in my own language was difficult for six months. AZ Yeah. FI But then also you make new friendships, you gain different friends. The first year, all my friends were children of immigrants. They're the first generation Americans or they immigrated when they were very, very small. So it was �fortunate that they understand the fact that your limitation on language doesn't necessarily mean that you're stupid, which is a big, big, big help, in terms of communicating because they never talk down to you. They may repeat themselves, but they'll never like talk down to you and slow it down, like you're talking to a child because they understand that's not the case. I mean, some people did do that, thinking that's helpful and it is in a way. But it's also at the same time very, very insulting. But I couldn't say that at the time, because I could tell that the person on the other side meant well. And it's much later in my life that I learned the expression, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And when I heard that I'm like, I know exactly what that means. So, so I spent four years at Barnard and spent also six months in London, in my journey. I really liked school, I really liked college. But at the same time, I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay in the United States after I graduated. That was around the time when Japan was doing very, very, very well, economically. And there were a lot of opportunities for students returning from overseas being bilingual. I had a very hard time understanding Americans. AZ Americans? FI And I realized now that it's not the Americans in general, but it's northerners, people in the North urban, people who seems very nice, very friendly, but they don't really mean it. AZ So you mean you have trouble understanding them? FI In terms of the social distance, not necessarily the language itself. And I always would sort of attribute it to like, well, maybe I didn't understand what what the person was saying. I misunderstood what the person was saying. But I didn't relate [inaudible]. And no, it's that's just the way they are. They say things they don't mean. And I had a lot of that in college in social situations, especially the barrier part. So even though my language skill was getting �better, and I began to understand a lot more about my surroundings, I wasn't quite comfortable. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to live in the United States. At the same time, I didn't know I wanted to go back to Japan yet. I knew it was much better than I expected at the time, in terms of the opportunities that you have, and also the professional chances for women in general. At that time, it seems to be so much with economic boom that they actually the first time in the history they had equal employment opportunity legislation encouraging employers to hire or give equal opportunities men and women. There was no enforcement, there was no quote, there was no measurement of achievement or compliance with that. The law is symbolic, but because of the economic reality of companies looking for well educated workers, it was actually happening. So I knew that that was a possibility that I could actually find a professional opportunities in get real job and that I could stay and expect, you know, being expected to stay not just, you know, work for a couple of years and, you know, get married and move on. But at the same time, I felt like, well, I spent a few years here. I sort of know, New York in the United States. But when I go back, I'll probably lose a lot of what I learn, probably lose my language skills. And I didn't feel like I gained something solid enough to take back and not lose all the things that I worked so hard for. So I wasn't I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do after I graduate. So in my third year of school, I decided, well, maybe there's another way. Maybe it doesn't have to be Japan or the US. So did some research and found that there is some kind of, it's not an official program, but at least the reciprocal agreement that the bond that will recognize the credit from the University of London. AZ okay, yes. FI So I decided to go to the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London for six months. The reason why did that for the springtime is that British system is similar to what, Japan copied the British system, so they have the trimester. If you go in Spain, you get to do second trimester and the third. So I figured you get more out of spending a semester away by taking two instead of going in the fall was just the first time. Also at the time I really was into British music and culture. Well, not food, but you know, fashion everything. �AZ Yeah. FI Okay, I'm gonna go to London. So I spent six months in London, thinking that the school life is similar there. So first, I live on campus housing, there was no such thing. There was no campus, I saw there was only one building. There was more like the NYU back in the day. Well, even here now, like you have different schools. University in London have like different schools, but over all around downtown, some of the more mainstream colleges, like King's College, I think had a dorm nearby. But SOAS didn't have anything. They had a whole bunch of flats in North London, about 45 minutes on the tube. That's when, at I first I looked for a room share and you know, posted in a student's office and went on on a few places. And honestly, this is not working, way too many creepy people. And it wasn't nearly a room, share. It was just like the corner, you know, one side of the flat you have it [inaudible] on the floor. And then like, that's your room and let's say 500 quid a month [inaudible]. So I wanted to keep it to the same level as like what my father was paying for the dorm here, which was expensive, too, but didn't want to cost him any more than he was spending already. So, so North London is where I spent six months among a whole bunch of students from Middle East. That was my first time I actually got to talk to somebody from Lebanon, Kuwait. And a lot of Arabs living in, coming from Africa, actually. Some of them actually lived in Africa. Yeah, I think there are some Syrians, mostly Lebanese and Kuwaitis that I met and an American who wanted to go to Africa, but they were the place he was going to go to just adapted into a civil Civil War, so he couldn't go so he decided to come to London because he already took time off from school. He couldn't go back. An Antiguan American, I don't know why he was–he wasn't in the same school, but he was friends with the American kid. A South African born Indian living in, coming from a suburb of London. A whole bunch happened so I met a lot of Asians there, Asians in London at the time were South Asia and I'm East Asian but we were more Orientals than Asians. AZ What year is it? �FI The 90s. Early 90s. And that's what I learned when I went to SOAS. I realized like the why SOAS was next to the School of Tropical Disease. It's a school for Colonial bureaucrats and administrators. So you go study the language at SOAS, so you learn in African, East Asian, all the the colonial footprints that the British Empire had. At SOAS you go to School of Tropical Disease to get immunized and then you're off. Yeah, we were like nifty school of Tropical Disease. AZ Interesting. FI It was fun. It was interesting. But so you definitely saw the legacy of colonialism there that a lot of the students there were from former colonies, and also Middle East where [inaudible] gets educated outside of their own countries. Yeah, Dutch guys, and then also the European Union, they didn't charge tuition, if you're with the European Union, that they have list, you didn't have to pay tuition for universities. So I mean, they love foreign students, because that's where they got, they get to charge tuition. So there are a lot of language students from Asia, particularly from Japan, just come to the London School. A lot of Americans on study abroad program. Well, not a lot at SOAS but a few, and people from all over. So it was interesting living with South Asians, and especially Middle Eastern friends, because that's the time of the first Gulf War. I was there when it started, it was very, very interesting, watching it on TV, on British television, among the Arabs talking about a very, very different perspective, and take on what's happening, or what it means. And that was my first experience for war as well. That was the first, Imean, I grew up in postwar Japan. And we're like, no army, no weapon, we don't engage. And we are not allowed to engage in that. And we don't want to live with the mistake of the World War II. So even though in Britain, you know, they had the Falklands, so they this sort of have modern conflict. For me, it was a first experience of knowing that somebody that I know may actually go to war. And, but I knew so little that I actually call back to my friend's home and say, are you going to be drafted do you have to go to war? Because that was the �image that I had. And once you know, country engages in the war, you get drafted and you go to war, but no, it's a volunteer army, that doesn't happen until they get really desperate. So, you know, like college age kids, I thought, like, there'll be the prime candidate to get shipped off. But that didn't happen. So it was really good to see that, especially, you know, looking at what's happening now and how it gets broadcasted here. The whole controversy with the friendly fire now is the first Gulf War most of the British casualties were killed by the Americans. And also it was very, very tense going to school, because we had a very large concentration of Middle Eastern students. So we used to joke about it, we should just start, we were joking and we would say, like we should go to a really expensive restaurant, you know, eat whatever we want. Leave a big, you know, duffel bag on the seat and just run away. Say no, we're all extremely students and trying to save money. Yes, really good [inaudible]. So, you know, we had enough sense to talk about it, but at the same time was a very tense time on campus with all the newscasts that descended and tried to ask opinions of the Arabs on what's going on. And so I really actually did like living in London. AZ You did? FI Even though I didn't like living in North London and having to take the two, three songs into the city. But culturally speaking, I had a much better, easier time understanding the social distance of the English than the Americans. Even though I didn't understand a lot of the words that they were saying a lot of the accent that they had, I understood what they meant, versus what is the distance between, it's very, very similar to what I grew up with. AZ Can you describe that difference? FI For Japanese, what we say and what we mean are two separate things and there's an understanding of that, depending on the context, depending on the relationship, depending on the situation, we say certain things, but you need �to read between the lines. There's a conventional expression and understanding of the personal distance, that you may extend something to somebody, but depending on your relationship with that person, the other person would understand that if it's a real invitation, or if that person is being polite to you. AZ So it's very nuanced? FI Yea, yeah, and it's a lot more. The conversation had a lot to do, a lot more to do with the relationship with each other. It's never, and also sort of social hierarchy. So the politeness of, I think the politeness of it, the degree of politeness that the British or the I should say English displayed to each other, in the context that I understood was a lot more similar. So, the relationship between teachers and students, it was a lot, the distance between the two, I feel a lot more comfortable in the, in the UK university system than in the United States, where there are still professors pretend to be your peers. I was uncomfortable with that. I mean, there's definitely power relationships, but they try not to acknowledge that a lot of the times in the United States. Especially with older people, younger people, older people try to, they try too hard to be cool. In the US, they try so really hard to be young or understanding of the youth. Whereas in Britain, there's no pretense like, if you are of certain age, you're supposed to behave a certain way. And that's okay, that's, you know, that's not a reflection of you not being cool. So I think that yeah, I think the value of the definition and the value that you place on a certain characteristic isn't in definition, based on social standings, age, all these other attributes, I had an easier time understanding. It's not that I liked it or not, I mean, it's very structured. And sometimes it prepared me it makes it difficult for real friendship to develop, if your understanding is so different. But also at the same time, if it does happen, it makes it more meaningful. Which has been my experience with some of my friends back home who are of my father's generation. But it was just was easier distance. And there was less disappointment in terms of what the other person extend to you versus what you understood the closeness be or the friendliness. So I really liked living there, and I wanted to stay there longer, but I wasn't sure of the job aspect. But �graduate school definitely, like I was thinking that's a possibility. And because of the fact that, SOAS especially, emphasize a lot more of getting a language to the native level before you move on to graduate study. To me, it was it was a must, you have to be able to leave things in primary language, and do research in primary source to do your undergraduate thesis. AZ Undergraduate? FI Yes. So I was sitting in the class, undergraduate class, reading modern Japanese from 1890s, which is a very difficult Japanese for us natives, we had one too, but I was sitting there discussing what, or reading untranslated work, so it was easier for me. AZ Right. FI [inaudible] but in that was the expectation. So in the US, I could take Japanese language classes, but everybody discussing the work that I'm familiar with, reading it in English and discussing in English. So I mean, discussing in English was fine, but just the fact of having to read it in English and looking at weird translations was different. So, so I came back with the sort of sense of okay, maybe that was the place culturally speaking, except for the fact that it was very hard for, I mean, it was really hard for anybody to get a job in the UK at the time. But that's a really no, I mean, I can go on for that was my first like, 20 years of my life and I can go for the next 17 years, but you might want to skip ahead or? AZ Let's move on to your sexuality. FI Okay. �AZ You identify as– FI Lesbian. AZ Lesbian. Tell me about when you came out. Actually, go back to when you knew. FI I always knew actually, I always knew when I was growing up. But in Japan, teenage homosexuality for girls was sort of almost expected, you know, you sort of practice, you wanted a real thing. So everybody joked about it everybody knew girls used to give me you know, flowers or not flowers, but even make me lunch, make me things. On Valentine's Day in Japan, it's a big commercial conspiracy. But the candy companies came up with this idea and came up with some legend somewhere in Europe that that's the day the girls can actually get to convince the boys what they feel, how they feel about it, unlike, you know the girls are supposed to wait and not really be forthcoming. That's one day of the year, you can be in, you know, in charge of expressing your opinions. And it was universally understood that I'm going to be on the receiving, I'm going to be on the receiving end on that day instead of giving. But I always knew, but I always knew I was much after the girls, but it was, but it was different from sexuality, because the idea of sexuality was very much a grown up thing. So the part about the sort of orientation part of your emotional attachment, like your attraction was fairly clear. But that didn't get connected to the actual sexuality part of it at a much, much, much later. AZ By you or by your culture? FI By me, I think. I mean, like some of the girls, I think it's a lot different now. Things change so much, and a lot more young people know about sex and sexuality much younger. But when I was growing up, I don't think we really �talked about it in junior high school. I mean like, we talked about dating, like, you know, having crushes on boys and things like that. But it was more like, well I want to, you know, like spend time with them, get close to them, hold hands with them, to that extent. I think kissing came into play maybe in high school, but it was still like whoa, big deal, then. Because even though we didn't call it school, the boys worlds and girls world was segregated. It was sort of implicit. And also, like crossing over got so much backlash from your group and got a reputation that's like, oh you really like boys kind of thing. So even in the co-ed school, that was the context. So a lot of the girls who had the practice one with the girls that they did, like, a close relationship and in girls was a lot more explicit on Valentine's, and then that was completely acceptable. AZ Was it talked about? FI Yeah, everybody knew, I mean, like parent's kids. You know, my straight friends who went to Catholic High School, she had long hair very feminine, but she got letters, candies from underclass girls all the time. Yeah most likely the younger students may be having a crush on upper class, not men, but upperclassmen in girls, schools, talked about, written about, practiced. And I think for grownups point of view, it was sort of a safe thing, because precisely because it didn't involve sexuality, or they assumed that it did. It was sort of like emotional relationship without the threat of sexuality. And I don't know, I didn't go to girl school so I don't know to what extent there was actually sexuality involved. But a lot of the grownups think that it's sort of like healthy development in terms of having curiosity about forming a relationship, but it's safe. So it was funny, like when I was in junior high school, trying to find, you know, think about which high school to go to all my friends, like, don't go to girl school, don't go girls school, so then you get the taste of it, you will never get out of it! It was a worse than understanding that if I were putting in a situation, that would be that I'll feel very comfortable in that situation. I'll never come back to sort of graduate in that phase and in, you know, behave like a girl. So, in that sense, I always knew and I think people knew and even sort of my parents and my relatives always talked about, I have a younger sister, two �and a half years ago. I was the oldest grandchildren, grandchild on either side, but everybody's expectation was my sister's gonna get married first. And I'm going to be a working woman. And also the fact that that the way I dressed and the fact that I always wanted to do things that people associated with boys or I can I could compete with them. I was very competitive. I'm because I could compete with them. And also, in terms of leadership in class, the class president, or the student government, like the roles that I play was always sort of like a leadership role. And maybe they sort of didn't give me a hard time about, which I think is kind of unusual. And I think it has to do with the fact that we were in a new community. And we also got very young, eager teachers because of the fact that it was very new development, and it was very [inaudible]. It wasn't connected by public transportation yet. It was a planned community so they worked on the town first, and then they put the label after we got enough density to sustain the, the legal plan. So a lot of the times, young teachers stayed out of school who wanted to come to Tokyo and stay in Tokyo take the exam for the prefecture. Their first assignment tend to be in remote places, like in islands or us. We got a lot of great teachers coming in, who are not necessarily super experienced, but they had a lot of great ideas and they weren't really caught up in conventions and traditions. So I never thought, it's usually like when you look at any kind of literature, which is comic books. In co-ed situations, it's usually the class leader is the boy and the vice chair, whatever the title is, will be the girl. Wasn't the case, when I was allowed, everybody sort of understood that I'm the leader and whoever is going to be the second you know, you elect like one male, one female to the position, and then it's almost expected that the boys will be number one, they got the segment that didn't have. Yeah, so I was used to that. And I think that was part of the reason why girls are looking at me as sort of pseudo-boy kind of role. Then it's the same thing from girl's perspective, it's a safe alternative to actually being, you know, engaged in trying to build relationships with boys. Because you don't get to use that, as you know, not as love but like as a boy crazy or you don't get the kind of scrutiny you'll get from your parents if you're hanging out with boys. So anyway, I think so in terms of I knew I knew early and people knew me and but I think the expectation was I'll grow up at some point. And it talks of since this is about style and fashion. So in terms of how I dress when I was younger, I did like wearing pants and jeans and t-shirt. I mean, I dressed up I did like �wearing like pants and jeans and T shirt. I mean, I dressed up in the formal occasions, my father was in the apparel industry. So you know, we would always get the best suit for the graduation. But in terms of everyday wear, I think I was fairly aware, early on that the girls had to show [inaudible], like, you know, there was a very strict expectation about what girls aren’t allowed to do. And I wasn't happy with that. So I thought the way to be taken seriously, the way to be equal was to behave like boys. I don't think necessarily, I wanted to be boys, I was just pissed off that I couldn't, you know, be on the same level as them in the eyes of the grown ups. Or like anybody, you know, my peers or my upperclassmen. So I think I was fairly consciously trying to destroy the expectation every chance I got. And I also learned that that's possible. I think, once you prove to them that you can do it. You know, I mean, they'll call you names, but they'll call you names and, but you can earn certain respect that way, and, you know, wearing girls clothes and was sort of not conducive to the activities that that I like doing. And you know, running around beating up all the boys showing that you know who’s the boss. But when you get to junior high school, at least in my district, you have to wear school uniform. And I agonised over like, asking my parents for boys uniform. But I didn't even get picked on like, right away by the upperclassmen. So I'm like, Okay, I don't want to sign up. Sorry. When's the last time the girls uniform and, you know, people made fun of me for wearing skirt and like, not interested in skirt. But, you know, you get used to the uniform that sort of made me a little bit self conscious. It's not that I didn't like dressing in skirts. I mean, I mean, any formal occasion when my father brings home the brand new three piece suit with like nice pleated skirt, I loved it. So it's not that I didn’t like dressing, but I think I was sort of aware of the fact that ,if you dress like a girl, people make fun of you. Because they're not used to seeing you once they sort of have an image of you as a particular type of person, then. And a lot of the boys tease me like, you know, you behave like a boy. So it sort of does sort of stuck with me. So whether I liked it or not, it's one of the things that people tease you about, if you were deviate from what you would expect of you. So, Junior High High School, even though wore uniform to school, on �weekends, it's pretty much back to you know jeans and T shirt. Then when I came here, and I also always had like, hair, kind of short, never grew my hair long. So when I first came here, one of the things that was really liberating was nobody has any expectation of me other than the fact that I'm Japanese. And I didn't speak English, all that well. Later on, I realised that you know, the whole Japanese female thing and what you have to deal with, but at that time, the language thing was a lot bigger. AZ What do you mean Japanese female thing? FI You don't understand how many people stop me on the street, like I lived in Japan it’s great. It's mostly former servicemen. AZ Ohlike men hitting on you? FI Not necessarily hitting on you they are friendly. But you know, you have certain expectations of Japanese women being submissive, docile, provide, you know, really takes care of their man kind of thing. AZ Okay. FI Which is. And also, there's a whole image of Asian women in American popular culture, dating back way back, there was a great documentary on PBS on the spirit image of in Asian women being juggling lady versus the what’s that Madame Butterfly, because those are two iconic images. And sometimes men have a fantasy of having both be the same person. So you �know, you may look very innocent and pure and quiet in a circus. But once you get to that point, you're a freak, and you have all kinds of amazing sexual abilities. And I learned that lesbians have the same stereotype. Yeah that we have some kind of special techniques. But yeah, that's much later. So at that time, I was sort of completely free to reinvent myself in a way. I mean, it was hard, not being able to articulate what you were thinking about what you observed and what you meant to express. But at the same time, that sort of took the edge off of how people saw me like, you know, I was always very vocal. I was always the there’s this thing in Japanese schools that when you graduate, or when you move on to a different way, you actually come up with like a little booklet, to sort of commemorate your classmates or your experience. And, you know, we were brought in, like in the [inaudible], you know, the most successful all the things that you do. Yep, it's a similar AZ Superlatives. FI Yeah, so that was the fastest Monday class. We didn't need it the most popular like, we had like all kinds of things like, I’d always be the toughest. Boys and girls one on top is number one, and also the one who speaks so fast. I'll be the fastest speaker. So you know the way sort of my mind worked and the way I articulated myself, tend to give people a very strong impression of maybe not I'm feminine, but at the same time, it's a very sort of outspoken personality that people don't necessarily associate with virtual femininity. It wasn't ideal for characteristic for women. So the fact that I couldn't speak all that well, and I didn't speak much, and the fact that I'm in a completely foreign environment where people people dress different you know people their hair different. High school kids wore makeup, which could be a cause for dismissal back in the days in Japan not anymore, but you know, when I was growing up, just curling your hair or perming your hair, there was a cause for �suspension.Actually, nobody said anything if I wore a dress. Now, they said, Oh, that's a nice dress, or, you know, where did you get it? But they didn't make fun of me for that. So I was like, wait a minute, it's like, you know, I can try different things and not necessarily have to deal with people's image of me. And also the fact that when I came here, I couldn't find a hairdresser that I could trust or I couldn't explain to them what I needed done. AZ Yeah. FI My mother's best friend at the hairdresser's I've never had anybody else cut my hair. So come here, white folks in [Long Island?] don't know what to do with my asian hair, I wanted it short, but it always comes up awful. So I decided like, Okay, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna go through the trauma was sitting in a you know in a beauty parlour, like, praying that they don’t mess it up. So, I started growing my hair out in high school, and I kept it long. So I looked you know, very, very different, and nobody really made fun of me for growing my hair, or getting perm more. So that was interesting. In terms of my own idea of gender image. I always thought like, I was a boyish girl. And I was comfortable with it, but then I started to question it's like, was I doing it because like, to behave like a girl was disadvantageous to what I wanted to do. Is it something that people taught me to do versus like what I really felt comfortable doing? So I sort of went and lived in that body for a while, which was kind of nice and which was kind of fun. And I realised like I’m much more feminine than I thought I was, and I'm much more comfortable being feminine. I'm less embarrassed about dressing like a girl and it's actually kind of fun. I never really went so far as to put on the makeup my mother traumatise me when the first time I put on lipstick my mother was like you look like a drag queen. Thank you mother I mean you know I picked up the lipstick my mother my grandmother had yeah that was my mistake. But so she kept me in check �about like, you know, what's suitable for me versus like so you know, I never really after and I'm like okay, I'm not putting on any makeup. Most of my college years I looked quite girly, I'm not girly girl but you know, wore more skinny jeans and skirt, but I didn't make much of wearing a dress or really girls clothing [inaudible]. And then at the time, I thought I could be bisexual as well no, I think I wasn't even thinking about sexuality in terms of my attraction to girls I mean you know i i definitely pay more attention to women and how pretty they are or I will look in there or like the who appealed to me. But at the same time it's almost like it was like the other way around. That it's a practice for me that I thought like I could actually date boys. So and I did have a chance a few times. � https://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/files/original/d4214a3b4d105a48431f87334ec1bc76.mp3 88cedfbf9f315c815aa54e21348e1e8b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource History of New York Lesbian Style Oral History Project, 2007 Description An account of the resource The History of New York Lesbian Style collection is an oral history project created by Alaina Zulli in 2007. Zulli was a NYU graduate student studying fashion history at the time and was working with the oral history collection as a student employee at Tamiment Library. This motivated her to document changes in New York City’s Lesbian culture as expressed in fashion through the personal accounts of women who identify as a lesbian. This collection includes four audio recordings of interviews conducted by Zulli, digitized from CD-R by students at Pratt Institute’s Library and Information Science Program. The original materials are held in off-site storage by the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Transcriptions were made by Amelia Leventhal, Marissa Moxley, and Sophia Santaniello. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The information available on this site, including any text, data, artwork, video, audio, images or graphics may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Entities other than the Lesbian Herstory Archive may own copyright of the material. Material from the website may be used for non-profit or educational purposes. However, if copies are printed or displayed, copyright notice must be included. Except as provided above, you may not reproduce, republish, post, transmit or distribute any material from this website in any physical or digital form without the permission of the copyright owner. For information regarding any further use of the materials contained on this site, please contact the <a href="https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/">Lesbian Herstory Archives</a>. Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Lesbian Style Project Ichikawa Disc 1 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. History of New York Lesbian Style Title A name given to the resource Lesbian Style Project: Fumio Ichikawa (Disc 1) Description An account of the resource Alaina Zulli interviews Fumio Ichikawa, part one. First she reflects on her experiences across her childhood and adolescence; she grew up in a small town in Kanagawa outside of Tokyo, and recounts her experience of class and gender in Japan. She also describes her difficulties adjusting to the culture and language in America as a young adult after her family moved to New York when she was 17 years old. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Contact LHA at </span><a href="mailto:dyv.lha@gmail.com"><span style="font-weight: 400;">dyv.lha@gmail.com</span></a></p> <p><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND</span></a></p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 6/4/07 Extent The size or duration of the resource. PT1H6M37S Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mpeg Medium The material or physical carrier of the resource. CD-R PBCore PBCore is a metadata standard for audiovisual media developed by the public broadcasting community. See http://www.pbcore.org/documentation/ Interviewer The person(s) conducting the interview. (For personal names use "LastName, FirstName MiddleName, Suffix"). Alaina Zulli Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. (For personal names use "LastName, FirstName MiddleName, Suffix"). Fumio Ichikawa Childhood Coming Out Cross-Cultural Perspectives Fumio Ichikawa Gender Roles History Interviews Japanese Lesbians https://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/files/original/bc29edc032ba4662291eb5056aeef576.mp3 cdeb1f163fd91e963c92950682cd230a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource History of New York Lesbian Style Oral History Project, 2007 Description An account of the resource The History of New York Lesbian Style collection is an oral history project created by Alaina Zulli in 2007. Zulli was a NYU graduate student studying fashion history at the time and was working with the oral history collection as a student employee at Tamiment Library. This motivated her to document changes in New York City’s Lesbian culture as expressed in fashion through the personal accounts of women who identify as a lesbian. This collection includes four audio recordings of interviews conducted by Zulli, digitized from CD-R by students at Pratt Institute’s Library and Information Science Program. The original materials are held in off-site storage by the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Transcriptions were made by Amelia Leventhal, Marissa Moxley, and Sophia Santaniello. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The information available on this site, including any text, data, artwork, video, audio, images or graphics may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Entities other than the Lesbian Herstory Archive may own copyright of the material. Material from the website may be used for non-profit or educational purposes. However, if copies are printed or displayed, copyright notice must be included. Except as provided above, you may not reproduce, republish, post, transmit or distribute any material from this website in any physical or digital form without the permission of the copyright owner. For information regarding any further use of the materials contained on this site, please contact the <a href="https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/">Lesbian Herstory Archives</a>. Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Lesbian Style Project Ichikawa Disc 2 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. History of New York Lesbian Style Title A name given to the resource Lesbian Style Project: Fumio Ichikawa (Disc 2) Description An account of the resource Alaina Zulli interviews Fumio Ichikawa, part two. She reflects on her experiences of xenophobia and colonialism, particularly in the context of the six month university exchange program that she spent in London. Then, she reflects on how she came to understand her lesbian identity, the tensions between Japanese cultural norms and gendered expectations and her identity as a lesbian, and how her identity is reflected in her style. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Contact LHA at </span><a href="mailto:dyv.lha@gmail.com"><span style="font-weight: 400;">dyv.lha@gmail.com</span></a></p> <p><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND</span></a></p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 6/4/07 Extent The size or duration of the resource. PT18M29S Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mpeg Medium The material or physical carrier of the resource. CD-R PBCore PBCore is a metadata standard for audiovisual media developed by the public broadcasting community. See http://www.pbcore.org/documentation/ Interviewer The person(s) conducting the interview. (For personal names use "LastName, FirstName MiddleName, Suffix"). Alaina Zulli Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. (For personal names use "LastName, FirstName MiddleName, Suffix"). Fumio Ichikawa Childhood Coming Out Fumio Ichikawa Gender Roles History Interviews Japan https://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/files/original/246b3841ada65edfd64515d21d25440e.pdf c9440db6a16c50d540e6277980c28eff PDF Text Text Alaina Zulli Okay, this is an interview with Maria Maria Gorkhover. On May 30 2007, interviewed by Alaina Zulli, we are in Bobst Library at NYU, in New York City. Okay, Maria, let's start with your background where you grew up your age and a little bit about your family. Maria Gorkhover So I grew up in Uzbekistan, which is one of the former Soviet republics. Now it's an independent country. And I lived there until I was 10 years old. My family, standard Jewish family, meaning, you know, everybody's Jewish into the nth generation, like pure read. I have one brother, who is 17. And I have another brother, who is for my, when my parents came here, like in about three years after they got here, they divorced. I was like, 13 at the time. And then my mom was married to a guy who was not Jewish, and they had a baby. And that baby is my, is my second brother, who is right now four. My dad, he also remarried, but there's no kids from that marriage. And then they got divorced. And right now he's not married, but you know, he is in a relationship. And I, when we came, I lived with both parents, obviously. Then, after my parents were divorced, I lived with my mom for many, many years. And then about, I think two years ago, something like that. I moved with my dad because he lives in Brooklyn, and it's closer for me to commute to school much closer. And I also like living with him better. So let's see. Anything else? AZ What did your parents do? MG My parents are both computer programmers. My dad, well, my dad used to be a computer programmer, but in America, he had a bit of difficulty in that department. And right now he's trying to be a teacher, like a teacher of high school mathematics. He's finishing his master's program, so you can be �certified. My mom continued to be a computer programmer. And she works right now at Duane Reade. Like, you know, in the corporate office and stuff. AZ Okay. So, let's jump ahead to your sexuality. Tell me about how you knew you were lesbian, when you came out, the whole story? MG Okay, the question presents itself, how graphic do we need to get? So I always knew that I liked girls. And I never, so how did I know that I liked them? Because I had really graphic fantasies about them. And that is before I you know, I saw any kind of pornography or anything of the sort before we had internet and before I you know, had Cinemax or anything of the sort, like I had really kind of graphic fantasies. Nothing like that towards guys. Like, really nothing. So from, I'd say, well, I'd say age eleven. I started having these fantasies, and then like, then I didn't know what the hell what that meant, actually. And by somehow around age fifteen. And I was like, well, let's see, it's pretty clear that I like girls like a lot. But I actually don't mind guys, because I didn't find them distasteful or anything like that. So I was like, You know what, I am bi, because I didn't want to say that I'm lesbian and, you know, cut out the potential of marriage and men and pleasing my parents and as important out of my life altogether. So I thought that, well, I thought in my mind that I was bi until actually recently, it's about a year – no, a year ago, about six months ago, a little bit more, when I figured out through, like, I guess, recent, through sexual experiences that I had at that time that No, I was not, in fact, bi I mean, not minding guys actually doesn't mean that you are attracted to them. So I mean, I mean, if that's your definition of bi, it's not mine. Right, so. So then I like identified myself as basically gay as such, although between that time when I was 23, and the time when I was 15. I always knew that I like girls like far, far more than guys. So I thought that I was bi, just really more much more towards girls. But now it's like it's, you know, like, there's no point of me �being with guys because if, I am just like not attracted to them. I can take it, but why bother? Let's see. Let's see. Let's see. Anything else? AZ Well, um coming out how was it for you with your family? MG Oh, that's that's a drama story and of itself rather. So the first time that I came out was to my mom when I was 15 years old. And it was this big. Like hysteric scene, like I was crying and I had like, hysterics and such and hyperventilating and stuff. Uh. Why I was coming out at that specific time? Because there was this girl that I loved or I thought I loved and I wanted to be in a relationship with her. And even though the smart thing to do would have been to, you know, keep hush hush about it, and save everybody the trouble, being the excruciatingly honest person that I am meaning I can't keep any secrets from my parents, right? I- You know, I, I went to confessional with my mom and the priest. And she was like, Oh, it's a phase, you know, you shouldn't do this. And basically, she told me that, if I do start a relationship with a girl, she'll be very disappointed with me. She will withdraw from me, and she doesn't know what kind of parent- daughter relationship we'll be able to have. Which was kind of like a death sentence. So, I mean, because my mom was basically like, my God at that time, like her approval was my main goal in life and my main cause of happiness in life, and lack thereof, my main cause of misery in life. So, I was like, That's it. Like, I like, I, even though I - No, I did love this girl, I didn't want to be with her. I simply could not do it, even behind my mom's back. Because I would be, let's say, like, you know, making out with her. And then with that going on, you'd be like, What would my mom think of me? If she knew I was doing this? Right. So at that time, I was like, I really, really wanted to �make myself straight. How did I do that? I kind of I started going out with guys basically. Right. Any, like random guys. Like, you know what, I don't mind them, so let's stick to that. Right. And I tried to like force myself to not look at girls – tried being the operative word, obviously. So and, like, a few days later. Like, I just could not stand the thought of my mom being disappointed in me and ashamed of me, basically. And withdrawing from me. I told her mom, you are right, this is a phase and I am in fact straight and so on and so on. Okay, so I thought, you know, the situation was taken care of, so I will make myself straight. Or rather, I will just ignore girls altogether, you know. Cause seeing as I was like well I can just go with guys for the rest of my life, why should that be a problem? You know. So fast forward to let's see, I think it was about 19 years old? Right. Then, was it 19 years old? No, it was not 19 years old. It was well, 20, it was actually 21 years old. Right. I actually, like began a relationship with this girl, like in secrecy at age eighteen, because I don't know I've calmed down or something. And I was like, You know what? I mean, like, I'm not going to kill myself over it. But like, I'm not going to tell my mom because I just could not live with her disappointmented, like, presence, right? But at like by age 21, it really begin to kind of weigh down upon me that I could not really, you know, be with girls and have her know about it. And, like, basically, there was this conflict with this girl. Okay, you know, we actually, we had a very strange on again, off again, open relationship where we're basically best friends and occasionally had sex. So it was not a relationship like as such, like not in the sense that most people understand that. Right. And I always knew that I would have like other relationships, other romantic relationships besides her. And she also knew that that she was like, cool with it. Right? We were just kind of each other's support system. Up until the time when we were both I don't know, ready to go find somebody else or �something like that. Basically, best friends who just turned out to be gay both so you know, why not have sex? So by age 21, there was this conflict in me. On the one hand, I couldn't I was like, okay, um, well, I'm bi, so I can be with guys all the time, but that would mean that I'm gonna be continuously suppressing my urge towards girls, which was very strong, and it was growing stronger, like every day. On the other hand, I could not tell my mom any of this because either she'll be disappointed in me. She'll be like, okay, Maria continue to suppress it or something like that. Or she'll be like, "No, Maria, you're already 21 years old. You're an adult. You can go do whatever you want. You can go sleep with girls," but inside she'll be very, very disappointed and ashamed. She'll just not say it, but she'll think that and she'll feel it. And I didn't want that. So the question was, like, suppress myself, for the sake of my mom's approval, not suppress myself, face her disappointment. Either way, not a pleasant solution. So, after a lot of, you know, mental anguish that we Jews are known for. True, right? So, I, I took my mom, I made an appointment with a shrink in the city, an American shrink, right? And I went to the shrink with my mom, like, I dragged her to it, because I was like, "Mom I need to tell you something." And after, and, it was like this big, big dramatic thing once again, in that shrinks office, right? Because, like, I started crying again, and hyperventilating and stuff like that. And I even had to go outside to like, calm myself down and whatever. And then I came back, and I was like, Mama, I love you. And I don't want to disappoint you, like your approval means everything to me. But I like girls, and I can't fight it anymore. You know, add all the tears and all that and all that stuff. And I wanted to do it in front of a shrink, who has a PHD. So the shrink can immediately tell my mom, no, it's not a phase. And no, you know, it's not like an abnormal thing, or whatever it is. So we can have the professional opinion in �the consultation, like right there. Right? So if I tell my mom, it's not a phase, it's like who the hell am I? I'm no doctor? But if this PhD of psychology tells her? It's an entirely different thing. She took it like much calmer, actually. Right? And so you know, and I asked the shrink, like, is this a phase? Like, can you tell my mom, is it a phase or not? She's like, "No, it's not a phase." And I'm like, "Mom, I'm 21 years old. It's like, how can it be a phase by now if I've been experiencing this since 11, 12, something like that." Right? She took it. And she, at that time, she kind of, she calmed down about it. And she believed me fully. Like she believed that, you know, that is indeed the situation. There's nothing you can do about it really, and right and stuff. And I guess, it also helps the fact that I told her I was bi, because I thought I was bi at the time. So she's like, well, she likes girls. Let her experiment with girls, sleep around, but you know, she's still gonna get married to a guy. And actually I told her as much I'm like, "Yeah, I'm gonna sleep around with girls, party. And then I'm gonna get married to a guy because I want to have a family," and so on and so on. She's like, okay, you know, that's, that's not a problem. I mean, it's unfortunate. That's not the best situation, but you know, we can deal with it. She's still gonna give me grandkids. Yeah. So then, it was like, Okay, this you know, this is a much better situation for me nice and calm. But then it was pressing upon me to confess to my dad, which I did. After you know, a little bit of Dutch courage. AZ Some drinking? MG Yes. So, because I was like, You know what, I'm not gonna hyperventilate, I'm not gonna cry. And I'm not gonna go into hysterics again. I'll be calm, even if it's chemically induced. So, like, yeah, that was, that was really interesting. Like, �he's sitting on the couch. Right. Watching soccer. I'm like, Papa, I want to talk to you. Like, okay, talk to me. I'm like, Papa turn off the tv. I'm gonna talk to you. He muted the soccer. Papa, look at me, I want to talk to you. It's important. He's like, I'm listening. I'm listening. Like, okay. So I'm like, Papa, like girls. He's like, I know. Like, what? How do you know this? Like, your mom told me when you were 15? Yeah, my mom actually, like, as soon as I told her, way back when, she called up my dad and she told him. And it's amazing that he's actually very calm about it. Like, it's not like he doesn't think it's a big source of bother. Especially seeing as at that time, I thought I was bi and my mom thought I was bi. So my mom was like, yeah, she likes girls, but she also likes guys. So my dad is like, okay, that's fine. You know, you know, as long as she likes, guys, it's not a problem. Right? So but, at the present moment, my mom has, you know, gotten used to it like it's not like a big deal for her really. And it's my dad, he was, he was actually a lot less, a lot less having problems with than my mom, like very much so. I-like he was like, he doesn't really care, like, who do I sleep with or something like that. As long as I make a family and stuff. So it was fine. Like it became like very calm and stuff. But then I realized about, basically in November of 2006, after having like sexual experiences with both girls and guys, like one after the other pretty soon, you know, like concentrated. Like that, you know what, guys don't do anything for me, not really. And, you know, it's girls that do. So I guess I must be gay then, like, fully, you know, which was not such a big switch because, like, I don't know, 80% towards girls and 100% towards girls? So not such a big switch. So right now, I do identify as gay, because my, because you know, of my experiences. And my, how do I say this? Like, pretty, pretty kind of concrete definition. Sorry, concrete evidence that I don't like guys. And I do like girls. Yeah, and I'm not going to say what because that would, that would be, you know, the graphic part. So, let's see. That's about it. So I mean, did I cover everything that you want me to? �AZ Yeah. Right. Okay, so, let's go back to let's, let's go back to when you first started thinking about girls. Did, did you think that about gender, about yourself in any gender or how you dressed? MG Well, I always, I never thought of myself as a guy. Like, I always knew I was female. But I always dressed in very loose clothing and either unisex or even guys clothing. But it was not because like I wanted to be butch, it's because I thought I was kind of fat. Like I had, like a, like relatively big stomach. And I wanted to hide that fat. And I was really like, uncomfortable with my body, like a lot of body issues. And because of that, right? It's just that I suppose if other girls are uncomfortable with their bodies, and they wear loose clothing, they will usually be wearing feminine loose clothing, whereas I wore just like T shirts and sweatshirts and something that a guy would wear with no problem. Right? Why? Because I just felt more comfortable in those kind of clothing. So that has been my style since basically, day one, like loose clothing that, that is either unisex or when guys pants and guys, not guys shirts but like sweatshirts, right and T shirts. And that style it was how do I say this? It was not, it was not determined by my orientation. But at the same time, if I were straight, like as such, and I wanted to attract the attention of guys, then I probably would be wearing more feminine clothes and tighter clothes, even on my stomach because I would be like you know, you know, why not? That's like show something, instead of showing nothing. But seeing as I was really into girls and I didn't care much about guys, I was not interested in attracting their attention. So it was not important for me to wear tight clothes that would attract their attention and for me to like appear on their radar as potential you know, dating candidates you know? �AZ Yeah, so as your self conception as a lesbian as it evolved, did your let's see, how can I say this. Did your style change at all? Did you feel? MG Yes. Okay. My style like in high school was influenced by several factors. First of all the fact that my parents didn't have a lot of money and I also didn't want to take a lot of their money so I bought crap basically, like cheap crap that looked bad. Brand name was something that happens for other people. So cheap jeans from Kmart, guys jeans, like cheap sweatshirts for like five bucks, things like that. So I look like a badly dressed guy basically. Right so, so that, and I mean I could have bought cheap women, cheap girls clothes, you know from things like pretty girl or you know, any, you know, like really cheap, cheap, like, what's it called, even Kmart, cheap girls clothes. But I didn't feel comfortable like showing my body. So my style in high school was that cheap unisex clothes. Then when I went to college, I started working and I started making some money. And I started dressing a little bit better. Like also unisex clothes because I was just used to that style and then because I still thought of myself as kind of always not attractive, and unattractive. But more stylish mens clothes, like men's jeans from Express for example, as opposed to Kmart or Old Navy, like more brand name, you know, like nicer shirts instead of just crap. Right? Still kind of loose and still something that a guy could wear also, but just nicer, nicer looking and better fitting. Right. Ah, and that style continued to about. Well, basically, up until now, and as I continued throughout college, I worked more, you know, as I made more money. And I started just asking my mom for money to buy more brand new things, like nicer things, but I still stuck to unisex slash male clothes mostly, or at least kind of loose female clothes. Right, like nothing tight, nothing that shows up anything. If you look at me in regular clothes, it would be like, okay, the only way you can tell I'm female is you know, possibly boobs �and above the neck, you know. And you know, the shirt could be female, but it would be loose female. The pants, you know, male pants. So the quality of my clothes improved, and the fit and the style improved. But the overall, overall kind of approach has remained the same. And right now, I have lost some weight recently. So now I feel like I could wear like tight feminine clothes and look appropriate in them and stuff, appropriate means good. But I just don't choose to because first of all, I'm so used to wearing loose clothes, that I'm just comfortable in things that are losing and not tight fitting. And second of all, I don't feel like having my ass for display, you know, to all and sundry, it's just I don't know, like, I prefer this kind of approach, especially the school that I go to, which is City College. It's a, it's mostly there's a lot of like Hispanics and blacks, there. And the neighborhood itself is Spanish. And for a white girl tall, white girl, tall, skinny white girl in tight clothes to be walking around in Spanish Harlem, late at night, in tight clothes. Ahhh, no, not happening. So like, like, I don't want to attract that kind of attention, because they are, in that neighborhood, and that setting in my college specifically, it's very easy for me, like, you know, just by virtue of being exotic for them, to attract that kind of attention and I don't want that. Also, I feel like I get more respect, if I wear nice clothes, clothes that are like brand new, and you see they fit nice and stuff, but they're loose. Because in our society, women are evaluated on their appearance first and everything else second. So if my appearance, you know, my shape is taken out of the equation, then it ceases to be a components available of evaluation for me. And when people, when I meet new people, they see me, okay, female, but they don't check out you know, the assets and so on. And they don't make their judgment based on that, they make their judgment based on their actual interaction with me in whatever capacity that occurs. So, in that mirror, I feel like, I could represent myself not as a set of, you know, the stuff but as �like a whole person, and males would be evaluating me as a whole person, which is what I want. And females also because girls also judge other girls by their appearance, not in the sense oh, I want to like do her, but in the sense, you know, comparing to themselves, I guess. So, in that- So I think that I'm definitely going to stick to this like loose but now brand name and nice looking stuff. Because for me, it was also in my chosen profession of engineer, there's not a lot of women. And obviously. So and I feel like if you don't know, if you present yourself like in any sexual manner to guys, then they will immediately see you like a something of an object more or less, not entirely but to some degree, yes. And I don't want to be seen as an object. Like at all, even like 1%. That's just not, at least not let's say by just some random guys. You know, I mean, obviously, I want my girlfriend to want me but not just some random guy in the street. AZ So do, you said that that you dress, or that you don't dress to please the male gaze? Is there any sense in your clothing or how you dress and pleasing the female gaze? MG I have no idea what pleases the female gaze. Well, I mean, okay, I know what pleases me, but that's the same thing that pleases guys. So it's not, so it's not like anything different, but I don't really know. I mean, my objective is not to impress somebody with you know the beauty of my abs. But, like, you know, to look presentable, clean cut, matching, like wearing quality clothes instead of junk. It's like somebody, you know, that seems like smart and worthy of respect. And I, and I think that, you know, my general clothes, they accomplish that. And also like, lately, it's clothing has ceased to have very much importance for me honestly, I do have feminine clothes, and I do wear them when I go out and stuff. Like when I go into a club, I dress appropriately. Of �course, like short skirts, tight shit, the whole nine yards. But that's because the setting demands it. You know, when you go to a restaurant, you know, I would also wear like a dress and stuff like that. But in general, in general, like I don't think I dress to please the female gaze. I don't try to please, the female gaze means you're like looking for a girlfriend, which I'm not because I have one. And when I didn't have one, I don't know. Like, it didn't occur to me that if I dress like sexy, I would attract girls as well as guys, so it just doesn't work. I don't know if that's the case. So no, not really, I don't think so. I dress to please me most importantly, and in a manner that is in accordance with the setting that I'm in. Meaning business casual, when it's necessary, to college, I can wear whatever I wants, but you know, I wear like, like nice, like, sort of brand name stuff. To a restaurant, I would wear something appropriate, and so on and so on. So my objective in terms of dressing is not to look sexy and not to look hot. And I mean, looking attractive, yes, but attractiveness in the sense that, you know, I look put together. And my appearance is fitting the setting, and it's considered normal and appropriate. And it's like, yeah, that girl dresses nicely, like nothing special. But you know, not that. AZ So this is maybe a little repetitive. But do you consciously use any signs in the way you dress? Or maybe even the way you walk, or talk, to let other people know that you're gay? Is that all important to you? MG Letting other people know is not important to me, per se. Because to me, because that has never I mean, while that is a big part of my identity, I've never been, let's say political about it. Like, you know, I've never been an activist or anything of the sort. Like if people asked me, I would say girlfriend and so on, but I don't but I don't you know, have like rainbow flags on my bed �or something. But on the other hand, my attitude, meaning the way I walk the way I talk, the way I sit, like on a subway. Like if somebody like in the family looks at me, they'll be like, yeah, she's probably gay. Yeah, because I really don't have act that feminine. Like really. So, but on the other hand, if somebody who looks at me who is not really straight and who doesn't have much experience with gay people, they will, they will not really think gay, they will be like no no, ithat girl is kind of I don't know nerdy or she's like kind of eccentric or something like that. But they will not think gay, the reason they will not think gay is because my hair is long. If my hair was short everybody will think I'm a total dyke obviously because, for short when I say I don't mean short as yours, I mean really really short because yours as you know still. Yes. No, no, no, no short as in boy short Yeah, like that. Yes, I did have that experience. I used to have like here like this long. This long. I'm showing like two inches. AZ And um, did it, did people perceive and? MG Yeah like people mistook me for a guy like so. But actually, when I had my hair that short, I dress really feminine to compensate so nobody would mistake me for a guy because if I dress like the way I usually did with that short hair it would be Sir, Sir, Sir all the time. But yeah, like, like one of my friends. She, she, she figured out I was gay like, long before I told her because like, she knows a lot of gay people and stuff like that. And if you want to know in any, any sort of way, either you're friends with gay people, or you are yourself gay. You definitely suspect like as soon as you look at me. AZ Right. So I'm interested in that you, you bought men's clothing, since you were very young you said. Did you ever have the sense that that was transgressive? �MG Because for me it was not. It was not like clothing was not really divided into, like allowed women's clothes and disallowed mens clothes, it was like, Okay, I'm not going to wear men's women's pants for the only reason that they are too tight for my fat ass. And what is like, what jeans would be fitting for me, meaning what jeans would be loose enough that they would like not show anything men's jeans, if there was a line of women's clothes that was, well, first of all, cheap, and second of all loose, I will get those, that will not be a problem. In fact, I would prefer them because, you know, made for women, they would fit better. And with mens schools, there were a lot of issues with comfort and the crotch being too low with that and stuff like that, like because of the cut. And it's been, what's my objective was not to, to present myself as gay or to present myself as Butch or to I don't know, rebel or anything like that. It was simply that is that was the only option of loose pants available to me, or just who that is available to women period, that women's pants are tight, like straight up, or at least in my estimation, that is the style currently. And that was the style when I was younger. And if I don't like the style, then what else must they turn to? I guess I was turning to I don't know, straight leg men's pants or something like that. Which is what I did. AZ Okay let’s see. Um, just looking around, you’re in New York city, so you see women all the time and do you, you probably evaluate them and try to guess, that’s one of my favorite games. Um, is there a style that seems lesbian to you? Like an iconic style? MG Well, if a woman looks really butch, then very likely she is lesbian right. And you know, well not only looking butch because you can have like, like some 45 year old lady with really short hair from the midwest who is you know, maybe �kind of fat, so she’s wearing mens clothes because that’s the only thing that will fit. And she’s married with three kids. I don’t mean like that. I mean, I mean, like looks butch and acts butch and like kind of young and stuff. Obviously, then that would be to me, not an iconic lesbian style because butches are I think a minority if we take the lesbian population as a whole, they’re like one minority of many other subdivisions. But, that is a distinguishably lesbian. Because, any other style is like straight women wear it also. So it’s not like you can be like, that is uniquely gay, besides the butch. AZ Okay….I guess that’s it, that’s all I have. Is there anything else you want to, anything else you want to bring up? MG Hm, I’m probably not like the best interview subject, because my experiences are not shaped by my orientation as much as a bunch of other things like body issues and self esteem and socialization and blah blah blah. Uh, so, hm, hopefully, I mean, ui don’t know if I’ll be a very accurate, how do I say this, like, representative of the general population as a whole. Add to it the fact that I like, am an immigrant with an immigrant mentality. So it’s, so you know, so, I hope that you can find some American born lesbians who would like, with normal social development and normal friendships and normal everything. Whose clothing experiences were in fact shaped a lot by their orientation. AZ This is actually one of my questions, is how much really do lesbians care how visible they are? MG Uh, well I cannot speak for all of them. And, okay, it’s like, it works the same way as straight people. There’s a spectrum, obviously. On the one hand you �have the activists, you know, who march in the Dyke March and rainbow flags all over the place and so on. Obviously they care very much about visibility. On the other hand, you have just regular people who don’t really care very much. Right, or, who cannot be very open about it because of their job or something like that. Right and obviously you have people who are entirely in the closet. So, I don’t know if you can say as whole. Obviously, all lesbians would like to see more lesbians being visible, like on TV or something like that. Like, that’s what’s up. But, themselves being visible? Mmm, I think that uh, only a minority is actively concerned with being visible I guess, like the ones with a more activist mentality. Uh, I don’t have that activist mentality. I don’t mind it, but I’m not going to go around Spanish Harlem with like a rainbow flag because that’s just asking for trouble. My friend got into trouble like, doing that, even though she keeps doing that. Yeah, so, you know what? I can add one more thing. I can, if you, if you don’t mind. I can tell you what I think about the way lesbians dress as compared to the way straight women dress? AZ Please. MG Right. Uh, well, for lesbians’ appearance, like their physical appearance. Is definitely less important in my opinion than it is for straight women. Because straight women are ought to get men, who are very visual and for whom the physical, visual appearance is the make it or break it point, at least initially. So they’re like, you know, we need to look nice, we need to bring everything to the table and so on and so on. Uh, for lesbians, seeing as they’re trying to get women, and women are not so visual, it’s more of a like, they make their choice like in partner and fuckbuddy and whatever it is, based on the interaction they have with that person and so on. There, the appearance becomes less important. So, lesbians, they would, they would probably wear, probably looser clothing or uh, less mainstream clothing, like more punk style �or something like that. Uh, or more, you know, just not be as tremendously concerned about presenting their assets, continuously to the entire world. Because of the, their kind of target market, as it were. AZ And just the innate, uh… the innate way that women… MG Yeah, like that’s why gay guys are so appearance oriented, right, because their target market it guys who are appearance oriented. So, you know, if you wanna, if you want to like market yourself successfully to them, then you have to uh, look good. And probably that's why straight guys are, can let themselves go, you know and wear crap and have beer bellies and so on, because they know women will not be evaluating them based on whether they have a six pack or not, but based on what they say and what they do and how much money they make, and so on and so on. AZ Okay, very good. Thank you. � https://herstories.prattinfoschool.nyc/omeka/files/original/7f879f599dd03334b803bab3f53fc842.mp3 b8cf5f5e1e6219bd650262988ab32ff1 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource History of New York Lesbian Style Oral History Project, 2007 Description An account of the resource The History of New York Lesbian Style collection is an oral history project created by Alaina Zulli in 2007. Zulli was a NYU graduate student studying fashion history at the time and was working with the oral history collection as a student employee at Tamiment Library. This motivated her to document changes in New York City’s Lesbian culture as expressed in fashion through the personal accounts of women who identify as a lesbian. This collection includes four audio recordings of interviews conducted by Zulli, digitized from CD-R by students at Pratt Institute’s Library and Information Science Program. The original materials are held in off-site storage by the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Transcriptions were made by Amelia Leventhal, Marissa Moxley, and Sophia Santaniello. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The information available on this site, including any text, data, artwork, video, audio, images or graphics may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. Entities other than the Lesbian Herstory Archive may own copyright of the material. Material from the website may be used for non-profit or educational purposes. However, if copies are printed or displayed, copyright notice must be included. Except as provided above, you may not reproduce, republish, post, transmit or distribute any material from this website in any physical or digital form without the permission of the copyright owner. For information regarding any further use of the materials contained on this site, please contact the <a href="https://lesbianherstoryarchives.org/">Lesbian Herstory Archives</a>. Sound A resource whose content is primarily intended to be rendered as audio. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Alternative Title An alternative name for the resource. The distinction between titles and alternative titles is application-specific. Lesbian Style Project Gorkhover Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. History of New York Lesbian Style Title A name given to the resource Lesbian Style Project: Mariya Gorkhover Description An account of the resource Alaina Zulli interviews Mariya Gorkhover. They discuss her family, coming out to her parents, how her style has evolved with her sexuality, how she believes she is perceived, and how she would like to be perceived (based upon her looks). Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Contact LHA at </span><a href="mailto:dyv.lha@gmail.com"><span style="font-weight: 400;">dyv.lha@gmail.com</span></a></p> <p><a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND</span></a></p> Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 5/30/07 Extent The size or duration of the resource. PT37M27S Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mpeg Medium The material or physical carrier of the resource. CD-R PBCore PBCore is a metadata standard for audiovisual media developed by the public broadcasting community. See http://www.pbcore.org/documentation/ Interviewer The person(s) conducting the interview. (For personal names use "LastName, FirstName MiddleName, Suffix"). Alaina Zulli Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. (For personal names use "LastName, FirstName MiddleName, Suffix"). Maria Gorkhover Coming Out Fashion Lesbian Youth Sexuality