16:21, 22/11/2007

Wham bam thank you Ma'amhattan

I've just got back from a few days in New York. I love the city. I used to say it's the place cities want to be when they grow up. There's a hauteur, a grandiosity and an arrogance about it, and its architecture, its people, its culture and its planning never cease to impress me.

Many of the cultural touchpoints that influence me hail from there - the CBGBs punk years - Patti Smith, Blondie, Ramones, The Dolls, Television and the Voidoids; Warhol's rule over the city's art scene and the silver heyday of his Factory years which gave birth to the Velvet Underground; the coming of electronica with Alan Vega and Suicide and the subsequent mutation into rap and hip hop. New Yorkers say that the heart has been ripped out of the city by years of ultra conservative mayoralty but as a dumb tourist, I'm still in awe of the place and will always enjoy visiting it.

For the record, the highlights included a day spent in the beautiful Prospect Park area of Brooklyn, followed by a night in the magnificent Bowery Ballroom watching our friends Electric 6 play a great show. A trip to the Guggenheim to see a retrospective of the conceptual artist and funny man Richard Prince's work, some spectacular meals including a to-die-for brunch in Freeman's (no longer The Lower East Side's best kept secret, sadly) and some highly intense shopping compressed into the second half of our stay. My personal tally, aside from gifts and Jennie's shopping list included a rather natty pink and grey check hoody from Forever 21, leather gloves from Club Monaco, pink / black stripe Converse Chuck T high tops and a fantastic military jacket by Nicole Farhi, reduced from $500 to $150 at the brilliant but exhausting discount fashion emporium, Century 21. Oh and a funny hat.

But I didn't come here to bore you with the minutiae of my holiday (although I've probably already done that) and you can see all the photos as I post them in this photoset.

No, I wanted to write about a puzzling series of events that ran like a rather wonky backbone though our stay.

It started on the first day - we were mooching around SoHo and went into Bloomingdales to get some make-up. (I should explain that I'm with my partner, who's a bona fide lady, while I'm in my usual lank rock boy look which you're no doubt familiar with from my flickr stream, especially the Deathline photos)

So we're striding into the back of the makeup floor when we're greeted from behind by a cheery "can I help you, ladies?"

We turn around with a smile and there's a funny double take when she spots the actual gender composition of the couple she's addressing and a good humoured apology. We buy what we need and leave.

I think nothing of this. After all, I do probably present quite an androgynous profile from the rear - it's just funny.

The next incident occurs as I'm leaving Century 21 two days later. I'd been standing for a while by the Cortlandt Street exit watching people leave the store. A fair few of them had been setting off the security alarm as they left and had had to have their bags searched by the tough looking Latina security guard - there was clearly a malfunction somewhere as none of them were obviously shoplifting.

Anyway, it came my turn to leave, and sure enough, the alarm went off on my shopping bag too.

"Ma'am! May I see your shopping bag please?"

I stood confusedly looking round for the woman the security guard was addressing.

"Ma'am, your bag!"

It was me of course. I handed over the bag and she examined it, nodded and looked up at me.

"Have a nice day ma'am."

I was propelled out of the shop into the drizzle outside.

Thing is, this time, not only was I face to face with her when she addressed me, she made the mistake three times and she and I had been standing near each other for minutes beforehand exchanging occasional looks.

It happened twice again that day, once while we were buying fruit at Wholefoods Market on Union Square and a shelf-stacking woman politely asked me to move, again using the "ma'am" epithet. And again a little later when the waitress at Fanelli's Cafe on Prince Street addressed us as "ladies" when serving us.

The next morning a builder wolf-whistled me from a building site on Lafayette Street. I'm not kidding. I was the only one on the street all round.

Then I was "ma'am"-ed twice by different shop assistants at JFK airport on the way home.

Perhaps there's an epidemic of myopia on Manhattan...

OK, I'm not going to go so far as to say I'm upset by this sequence of events. However, I do feel extremely unsettled by it.

When I was a child, I was often mistaken for a girl and I took a childish pleasure in these affirmations of my own gender unease. But those childish times are behind me and all I felt when being mistook in New York was a vague discomfort.

A discomfort pervasive enough to grow into a blog post.

Sure, it seems somewhat paradoxical for someone who has a penchant for trying to create an illusory femininity about themselves to feel disquieted by these fleeting and probably trivial errors of gender perception. I also don't deny that I present a somewhat androgynous look in my day to day life.

Maybe it's that I felt so uncomfortable when confronted by the effects of my own ambiguity in real life that makes me feel such dislocation? After all, when I'm out and about in full "Miss K" mode, I've never felt like this.

So probably, I'm just disturbed by the fact that I feel disturbed by these events. How odd.

How grown up to feel regret that I'm no longer as unconventional as I think I am.

Mid-life crisis anyone?

Andi posted a very resonant perspective over at Genderfork recently which I recommend you read (both the post and the whole blog).

And for reference, this is generally how I was looking, as shot in our hotel room in NYC:

Wham Bam thank you Ma'amhattan
Wham Bam thank you Ma'amhattan

What a miserable old fart. Well, in my defence I did have a filthy cold the whole time I was over there.

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