# a question for lesbians - Something I've never understood... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 12, 2010, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890 "2010-06-12T05:20:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/21 "2010-06-13T08:39:52Z")
I always presumed that it was because women typically don’t care as much about the appearance of their mates, and the male style is generally more convenient. Makeup, long/fancy hair, dresses and so on are all inconvenient in various ways. So if your girlfriend doesn’t mind you dressing in a mannish aka convenient fashion, why not? It has been shown that homosexuals have brains that are masculinized/feminized in certain areas compared to the straight members of their gender. I do wonder if lesbians who prefer the “lipstick lesbian” types will prove to have more masculinized brains than lesbians who don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/22 "2010-06-13T08:49:45Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It has been shown that homosexuals have brains that are masculinized/feminized in certain areas compared to the straight members of their gender. I would argue that all people, straight or gay, are like this, e.g. men who like women with deep voices, women who like svelte men. But, the lesbian preference for butch women seems far too high. ---
**Author:** ![Rala](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@Rala](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rala)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/23 "2010-06-13T09:06:29Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > How many straight women do you know who don’t wear makeup, don’t color and style their hair, don’t wear nail polish, don’t wear “flattering” clothes, or force their feet into painful deforming shoes? _raises hand_ Except for the “flattering clothes” bit - though I do work from my own definition of “flattering”. ---
**Author:** ![ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9bcb4/32.png) [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/24 "2010-06-13T09:10:09Z")
Some people find androgyny sexy. ---
**Author:** ![ashenRiot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/65b543/32.png) [@ashenRiot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashenRiot)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/25 "2010-06-13T21:40:19Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > But, the lesbian preference for butch women seems far too high. I’m not sure where you live Super Hal, that you are seeing a predominance of butch lesbian couples. I’m a lesbian in South Florida and I can tell you from my own experience that the lesbians here range from total lipstick lesbians (hair, makeup, heels) to 100% butch (men’s clothes, tats, chains, short hair, etc.) but most just look like normal women. nice hair, stylish clothes, maybe a touch of makeup, etc… if they weren’t holding hands with a woman you would never know they were lesbians. Perhaps you and the OP just don’t notice the “normal” looking ones? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/26 "2010-06-13T22:40:01Z")
Given that many gay women do have somewhat more masculinized brains than heterosexual women it’s not a stretch to think that they are more comfortable identifying with a more masculine gender identity in the way they present themselves. This doesn’t mean they want to be men, or be just like men, it’s simply that their fashion sensibilities as gender identifiers are naturally convergent with those of men with whom they share a masculinized mindset. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/27 "2010-06-13T22:46:52Z")
As an aside I will note that some of the more butch looking heterosexual women I’ve dated are among the most emotional and feminine ladies I’ve ever known, and some of the dressier, overtly feminine presenting women were a lot “harder” and colder emotionally than many men I’ve known. Dress doesn’t always clue you to personality. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/28 "2010-06-13T22:51:45Z")
> [@ashenRiot](#): > > I’m not sure where you live Super Hal, that you are seeing a predominance of butch lesbian couples. I’m a lesbian in South Florida and I can tell you from my own experience that the lesbians here range from total lipstick lesbians (hair, makeup, heels) to 100% butch (men’s clothes, tats, chains, short hair, etc.) but most just look like normal women. nice hair, stylish clothes, maybe a touch of makeup, etc… if they weren’t holding hands with a woman you would never know they were lesbians. > > Perhaps you and the OP just don’t notice the “normal” looking ones? I only notice lesbians who make it explicit. I mean, at least holding hands or something. I didn’t know we were judging people just based on clothing preferences. I thought “butch” meant a lot more than just aesthetic preferences. I actually offer another reasoning for the style: The butch style seems to be nearly universally unattractive to men\*. I know one girl who is bi, but is choosing to focus on the female side. She suddenly started dressing in that style, to the point where, if you didn’t know her, you’d think she was male. \*Androgyny can be beautiful, but more in an aesthetic sense. Though I do think a small bit of androgyny can add to the attractiveness of a woman. ---
**Author:** ![ashenRiot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/65b543/32.png) [@ashenRiot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashenRiot)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2010, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/29 "2010-06-13T23:44:41Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I actually offer another reasoning for the style: The butch style seems to be nearly universally unattractive to men\*. So you think butch lesbians dress and/or act butch in order to be unattractive to men? Really?? Just so I can get a frame of reference, do you find Rachel Maddow to be butch? How bout Jodie Foster? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/30 "2010-06-14T00:53:04Z")
> [@ashenRiot](#): > > So you think butch lesbians dress and/or act butch in order to be unattractive to men? Really?? > > Just so I can get a frame of reference, do you find Rachel Maddow to be butch? How bout Jodie Foster? [Rachel Maddow](http://swandiver.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/rachel-maddow.jpg) - a femme butch if such a creature exists. She’s pretty (to me) but then I kind of like short hair. [Jodie Foster](http://www.morethings.com/fan/jodie_foster/photo_potpourri/glasses-jodie-foster-101.jpeg) Not so much. In googling images it’s very difficult to get a non-glammed or non-stock candid photo of her. I had to go through 5 pages before that one popped up. She must avoid the paparazzi. She’s more classically beautiful than Maddow but not as natural and pretty (to me). There’s something stiff and very reserved about ther. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/31 "2010-06-14T00:56:25Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > They’re the ones you notice as being lesbian. I think this is probably it. I had this conversation a few months ago. A woman I work with nudged me and looked at two others across the room. “They seem close. You’re friends with Alice, are she and Joe dating?” “Uh, I really don’t think so.” “Why not?” “Well, I’ve known Alice since college. She dated someone one from my dorm.” “So?” “I lived in an all-girls dorm, remember?” “Oh! I never would have guessed…!” Lesbians like Alice who look like the rest of us chicks blend in, and no one guesses until they see them with their girlfriends. ---
**Author:** ![Beerman1963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/2acd7d/32.png) [@Beerman1963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beerman1963)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/32 "2010-06-14T01:25:03Z")
From my admittedly very small sample(3 couples) that I knew socially,one couple was(were?) both pretty femme(makeup etc…) and to this hetero male quite attractive. One was very …neutral? maybe not really femme or butch I could not tell you if one was more dominant in the relationship and one had a really butch (short hair no makeup walked like a guy) and the other was pretty femme. Go figure. ---
**Author:** ![Mississippienne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/33 "2010-06-14T06:08:58Z")
A lesbian friend of mine has ranted before about how hard it is to find another ‘femmy’ lesbian (she’s tomboyish, but definitely not butch. More the type of girl who plays soccer and doesn’t wear a lot of makeup, not your stereotypical flannel-wearing butch lesbian). So I suppose even lesbians wonder this from time to time. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/34 "2010-06-14T08:56:18Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > Gay man here. > > Look at the straight women you know (and yes, I realize I’m generalizing). They are raised from a very early age to spend a lot of time and effort changing their appearance, to fit the mold that society has made for them. How many straight women do you know who don’t wear makeup, don’t color and style their hair, don’t wear nail polish, don’t wear “flattering” clothes, or force their feet into painful deforming shoes? Most of them do it… to the point where, if you don’t, you’re assumed to be a lesbian. A friend recently mentioned that she went to a wedding and someone, upon seeing her in full-party attire, exclaimed “oh, my! I thought you were a lesbian!” Short grey hair, unmarried at 42 and wears sensible clothing? It’s not that she can’t be bothered dressing up in case she runs into the love of her life at a traffic light when she works with little kids for eight hours a day and takes care of her sick mother for about 12 more, no. People just assume she’s a lesbian. We have other friends who are unmarried, 42yo, but wear makeup and dye their hair (we’ve gone from a class of 100 girls of which 95 were brunettes, to a class of 98 blondes, of which only 2 are natural), they’re assumed to be hetero and “unlucky with men”. Me? People apparently have problems deciding what to do with me, because I don’t wear makeup or dye my hair, but people who don’t know better may think my hair is dyed (I don’t dye it because I only have 3 grey hairs and that drives my sister-in-law and many of my old classmates up a wall… mwahahaha!), and it’s long… so am I a lesbian or not? They don’t ask me, of course, they ask my mother :rolleyes: So, what do people who don’t have my mother handy guess? I’m not about to start a poll at work. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/35 "2010-06-14T09:07:05Z")
Still no pics of feminine lesbians in controversial poses? I’m outta here! ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/36 "2010-06-14T10:26:57Z")
I don’t know how to recognise that someone may be a lesbian unless they are either (a) dressed butch or (b) with another woman and engaging in an ostentatious Public Display of Affection. Given that most people don’t engage in a PDA most of the time, it is simply inevitable that as a matter of (mis)perception it will always appear to me that the vast majority of lesbians are butch no matter how untrue that is. ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/37 "2010-06-14T11:29:49Z")
For the most part, most of my ex-girlfriends have been girly-girls and I would likely fall in the same category of long hair and feminine. I have dated all shapes and sizes. Out and about we are rarely assumed to be a couple, people think we are are hetero friends out for a girls’ night out without our husbands. If you go to Northern Ontario, however, you’ll probably assume all the women are lesbians, because so many of the rural women wear flannel, heavy boots and keep their hair short. They’re soccer moms in disguise. ---
**Author:** ![Serenata67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/serenata67/32/10646_2.png) [@Serenata67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Serenata67)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2010, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/38 "2010-06-14T12:03:04Z")
As a bisexual woman, I was always attracted to the “pretty” lesbians, the “lipstick” lesbians. I guess, since I swing both ways, if I wanted a man, I’d just go out and date a man. I’m also a bit of a tomboy, and, while I’m not short-haired and flannel wearing, I’m a little more butch looking than lipstick looking. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Fight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/90ced4/32.png) [@Cat\_Fight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Fight)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2010, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/39 "2010-06-15T03:48:35Z")
No wonder some men are so afraid of wearing pink or anything too ‘feminine.’ Once you’re dressed that way, you’ve basically switched sexes except for the plumbing! It’s natural to wonder why some people find other people attractive, but for some reason ‘ugly’ women (not to mention gay men) always bring up such a level of bafflement. I a used to be friends with a very boyish lesbian. Honestly could have passed for Justin Bieber. She was overwhelmed by supposedly straight girls who wanted to experiment. Different strokes. ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2010, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890/40 "2010-06-15T12:28:59Z")
From the other thread that made the quip about the “Facts of Life”, “If you were a lesbian, you liked Jo. If you were straight, you liked Blair.” I will have to say that in my own personal experience, there is some truth to that. I like strong, independent people in general. So an absolute essential element in any partner is that she must be a strong independent person. Jo was depicted as a street smart kid who could take care of herself. Blair was depicted as the fluffy, rich kid who was taken care of by her family’s wealth. Blair was a princess, while Jo was the dragon-killer. Some people prefer the more active persona. I would expect that some lesbians find the butch stereotype appealing for similar reasons, but it’s still ultimately an issue of personal taste. Some straight women like the muscular, tight t-shirt wearing, faux tanned boys from Jersey Shore. Others prefer the sensitive, reliable, geeky guy. It’s not that different, it’s just a matter of taste. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-question-for-lesbians-something-ive-never-understood/542890.md?page=3)