I am starting to feel limited as a writer by my gender. I figured I should probably start this [what is sure to be a long and rambling] essay with that blanket statement. I honestly am not sure that I can achieve success in the type of writing that interests me with my name and gender proceeding me.
This is not a hypothetical situation, or an excuse to stop chasing success and succumb to the fear and self-doubt that exists within me. Every time I’ve performed a show in the Fringe, I have at least one person say to me something like “it’s so nice to come see your shows and not another one-woman show,” or, conversely, ask why I don’t talk about “women’s stuff.” I asked someone one time what they meant, because obviously what I do is a “one-woman show” simply because I perform by myself and I am, you know, a woman. Their answer was “well, you know, body issues, bad relationships, or bad childhoods. You talk about things everyone cares about.”
Their answer troubled me, mainly because I knew exactly what they were going to say. If you look at my work, I have talked about body issues (my surgeries and my struggles with Graves Disease). I talk about dating and my relationships, although mainly in passing or cloaked in metaphor because I am, after all, an introverted prude and feel that there are things that are very private. I can’t talk about a bad childhood, because frankly I didn’t have one. And, again, anything that could be construed as an issue from my past would once again be cloaked in theory or in metaphor. Because there are things that are private.
It’s the same in music. When I meet new people and conversation gets around to me telling stories about being on the road with a band for a few years, more often than not their reaction is, “oh, are you a singer?”
Good lord, no.
And when I tell them, “no, I’m a sax player,” the usual response is either “oh, it’s an all-girl band?” or “oh, really?”
The on the road experience was no different. I can’t count the number of times audience members told me, “wow, you’re Lisa Simpson!” or “a female sax player. Never seen that before,” or “you’re pretty good for a woman.”
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