SnoopyFan–
Please don’t be offended if I say I cracked up at your post. It’s late, I’m on a ton of painkillers, and man, you cracked me up.
With that said!
My wife is very “wifey”. Rings exchanged, till-death-do-us-part, for better or worse or whenever you drive me to tossing you off of a cliff, etc.
Um, I don’t know how good or bad it is to be butch, per se. It’s just how some lesbians are. Some are more masculine and some more feminine. I think you find that in all sexualities and genders, though. There are some staunchly heterosexual women who are far butcher than me or my wife by a long shot. There are some men who are so feminine that I appear more manly than a Cro-Magnon. That said, butch and femme identities are a huge part of lesbian culture. You might want to take a look here and here for some very in-depth explanations and theoretical break-downs of the butch-femme aesthetic. Not by any means do all lesbians subscribe to the butch-femme politics of lesbian relationships–I don’t. I’m what would be described as a “tweener”–I’m between femme and butch. My wife could be described as a “soft butch”. There is very wide spectrum of lesbian identities, going all the way from “hard femme” (read lipstick, stocking, and dresses all the time) to “stone butch” (men’s clothing, traditional male occupations). I think a lot of it has to do with what your definition of gender is, and where the lines blur. I, for one, think gender lines blur very easily; where other people think the boundaries are rigid and not easily crossed.
Sure, there are butch-femme couples. There are also butch-butch couples, femme-femme couples, tweener-tweener couples, couples that choose no identifiable labels, and those who don’t fall into any of those categories.
As to why some women choose to be butch–it’s all about what makes you comfortable. Some women cannot be at ease in silk stocking and pearls no matter how much you paid them. Others find lipstick and weekly salon appointments a must.
I rekon I will look like a proper old dyke in about 15 years. Dressing up is one thing, then I go the whole hog, fix my hair, little bit of make up, nice shoes etc, but just hanging around? Screw that, jeans, tee and boots or runners. My wife (yeah, I use that term too, if for no other reason than that it would actually require legal process to split from her) thinks I am cute, and knows herself how much bloody hassle it is to be “girly” by societys standards, and is about the same as me in style.