Last week, I returned to the age-old question of what butches should wear to interviews.  In a short poll, I posed the following hypothetical:

Imagine helping a butch lesbian decide what to wear for an entry-level professional interview (e.g., lawyer, consultant, finance, manager, gov't, professor, etc.). She usually wears men's clothes, but identifies and presents as female, though people sometimes accidentally call her "sir." She tells you, "I know the employers are kind of conservative, though I also know things are slowly changing. I'm a solid candidate but not a shoe-in. What should I wear?

I gave six choices and asked how to advise our butch professional wannabe:
#1: Fit in first, THEN change the system. Wear what other women there wear: makeup, heels, whatever you have to.
#2: Be yourself, but show you're willing to play the game. Wear only the women's stuff you're most comfortable in--skip the makeup and heels!
#3: Wear a combo to help you fit in a little--e.g., a plain women's suit, collared shirt, men's shoes.
#4: You like men's clothes; wear a men's suit and shirt and shoes, but no tie or other uber-masculine gear that'd alienate you from your interviewers.
#5: Men's clothes, including a tie. If they don't want you, you don't want to work there. If you can't get a job in the industry, it's not for you!
#6: As long as you wear something nice, clean, etc., it doesn't matter. People judge you for who you are, not what you wear.

Here are the results:

As you can see, I also calculated the average age for each response.  For a small survey, these age differences don't matter much, and goodness knows this isn't anything close to a representative sample (of the population overall, of butches, or even of BW readers), but it's interesting to think about. 

A few numbers that caught my eye, and possible explanations:

• The very youngest group gave what we might think of as the most "conservative" answer--wear all women's clothes, but only clothes in which you can be comfortable.  This surprised me, but then I thought that perhaps younger folks haven't been out long enough, and thus feel like they have to fit in more.  Or perhaps they're more aware of new, androgynous clothing that's technically "women's."  Not sure.  I do suspect, though, that in the general (mostly straight) population, it would be the older folks who think answer #2 makes the most sense. Hm, maybe I should survey them and find out.
• None of you thought that going in "full drag" (lipstick, heels, etc.) was the best option, which made me smile.
• For the most part, the spread of ages was pretty even for each answer--except one.  Answer #6 (that people judge you for who you are, not what you wear) was mostly given by people at the ends of the age spectrum--those in their 20s and those in their 50s.  Almost no 30- or 40-somethings gave this answer.  Cynically, I thought: the younger ones are still naive, and the older ones care less about fashion.  But maybe I'm wrong about all of this!

And finally, here's a sampling of the write-in comments:

Thanks for these great thoughts.  If you're trying to figure out how to break into the profession you want without compromising who you are, you are certainly not alone.

1. If you inherited your father’s wild eyebrows and need a quick trim, brush your eyebrow hairs upward with a toothbrush, then trim them with a nail clipper.  (Make sure you know what you’re doing, though.  Get them trimmed by someone else once so you can see how it’s done.)
2. Windex kills ants.
   
3. Got some dinged-up wooden furniture?  For the smaller dings, rub a walnut over 'em.
4. When you travel, you can roll up your ties and put them in your shoes to prevent them from getting wrinkled.
5. My two-butch household doesn’t have an iron.  We take our clothes immediately out of the dryer and hang them up, but if we forget, we just put our clothes in the dryer with a wet towel for fast de-wrinkling.
6. Forget to squeegee for the last few months?  Get soap scum off the shower door with a dryer sheet.
7. Use a magnet to find nails and studs in your wall.
8. Tired of trying to find the tiny "R" and "L" on your earbuds?  Just color a little ring around the bottom of one of the buds with a Sharpie.
   
9. Never spend money on "chip clips" or bag clips.  Just use wooden clothespins instead--they're much cheaper.
   
10. If you like making iced coffee at home but dislike your coffee getting watered down as the ice melts, make ice cubes using cooled coffee and save them in your freezer.  Use those for your iced coffee instead.
    
11. Wash out an old sunscreen bottle (needs to be one with a wide opening) and use it to store your keys/wallet/phone at the beach or pool while you're in the water.  Safer than putting 'em in your shoe!
12. If your toaster slots are big enough for two pieces of bread, you can make grilled cheese by turning your toaster on its side and using it as a little oven.
13. Want to organize your dresser?  Tiny bottles (e.g., from baby food or single-serve plum wine containers) make terrific containers for quarters, chapsticks, and collar stays.  
14. Velcro is awesome for keeping things like remotes, phones, etc. in place so you won't lose them. 
    
15. Another great organizer: wooden cigar boxes for pens, pencils, paper clips, ticket stubs, etc.
16. Most eggs are good even 1-3 weeks past their expiration dates.  Want to know if an egg is still good?  Submerge it in a bowl of water.  If it floats, it’s rotten; if it sinks, it’s still good.
17. Use toothpaste to clean your headlights.
18. The easiest way to hang a bulletin board is to use a couple of nails and hammer it through the front, right into the wall.
19. If you don’t have a flathead screwdriver, a coin often works well to loosen a screw.
20. If you need a lint roller but don't have one handy, just wind some tape around your fingers (sticky side out) and use that instead.
    
21. Out of saran wrap?  Just put a plate on top of the bowl.  It will keep stuff just as fresh, plus then you can stack other things on top of it to make more room in the fridge.
22. Leaving a napkin on your seat (at a restaurant) or a coaster on your drink (at a bar) is the way to tell the waitstaff and other patrons that you'll be right back.
23. To give day-old rice a fresher texture, just sprinkle it with a little water before microwaving it.
24. Bored with the vanilla ice cream your partner favors?  Mix it with a spoonful of peanut butter for ice cream that tastes like Reeses Pieces.
25. If you mix a box of cake mix with a 12-oz diet soda, you can bake it just like that--no need to add oil or eggs or anything else.

Got any of your own life hacks to share?

A few weeks ago I wrote this article recounting my pseudo-gender-conforming job search.  Shortly thereafter, a butch superstar six or seven years ahead of me in my field reached out about the article, and we ended up having coffee and chatting about her experiences.  Not only was she even more awesome than I’d hoped, but she had interesting theories about butch clothing selection that are way too interesting not to share.

Said superstar proposed the following:

• There's a big divide around age 50 or so.  The divide isn't due to age, but to generation (that is, 45-year-olds will not suddenly change their minds in 5 years).  People, including lesbians, 50 and older tend to believe that butchy lesbians should wear gender conforming clothing (not heels and lipstick, but at least women’s suits and a pair of earrings).  By "should," I'm not talking about a moral imperative, but about a strategic decision.  People 50 and younger, on the other hand, think butchy lesbians should wear men's clothing, if they so desire, and believe that nothing bad is likely to come of it.
  
• People who are liable to discriminate against me because I look like a big ol' dyke won't be less likely to discriminate against me just because I've a small effort at gender conformity.
• If I "look like a lesbian" and I'm wearing men's clothing, I will at least be recognizable as a type—a butch dyke they can put in a particular box.  They'll like me or they won't, but at least they'll know where to file me.  If I'm wearing, say, a string of pearls but still "look like a [butch] lesbian," it's a little harder to stick me in a box, and the inability to stick others in boxes makes people uncomfortable. 
  

The bottom line is that Superstar says to go for a men's suit next time—at least, it worked for her.  So maybe I will.  Or maybe I'll go back and forth, since I like both men's and women's suits that are relatively gender-neutral in appearance (e.g., no cutesy buttons for women's suits, no mega-structured shoulders for men's suits).  But I do like wearing ties, which tend to look better with men's suits.  Superstar had no major opinion on ties, since she doesn't wear them herself, but since they are THE quintessential "men's" professional clothing item, maybe a tie would be more likely to be looked on unfavorably by prospective hirers.

What do you think about Superstar’s theories?  Let's unscientifically test one of them!  Click here to take a SUPER-quick 2-question quiz.  I'll post the results this weekend.