Lilith Fair
It’s Saturday afternoon, and my wife has put on the Lilith Fair documentary. On one hand, it’s a big hot mug of warm nostalgia featuring beloved artists from my young adult years - Sarah McLauchlan, Lisa Loeb (huge crush), and Natalie Merchant, to name a few. And also, it has tapped into a well of grief. It makes me so sad I never got to experience this phenomenal sapphic gathering and its magical performances but it’s also about what it says about young-adult me.
Why wasn’t I there, and how did I miss out on this? It’s a bit weird actually, because, at the time, I was a true fan of some of these performers. And if you know me now without knowing my history, you’d probably be shocked I never went. I completely fit the demo. I’ve literally shared a stage with the Indigo Girls (as part of a chorus). If Lilith Fair reboot happened today, I’d be there in a heartbeat.
So what was going on with me back then?
In the Lilith fair era, approximately speaking, I was in my senior year of college. By then, I’d loosened myself from the grip of evangelical Christianity, thanks to a secular University of California education. But what had absolutely not budged inside 21-year-old me was the brainwash of compulsory heterosexuality. I’d been painfully aware of my own attraction to other women since adolescence, but actually dating women? Uh, no. Good girls don’t do that.
Around Lilith Fair time, I was in my first “real” relationship with a young man I’d met at school. My boyfriend was the first person I ever came out to… if you can call it that. It was more of an admission of a “problem.” It was a late-night confession through tears, saying I wished that I could fix this unfortunate flaw. (He was very kind about it. I don’t remember him even agreeing with my take, only that he comforted me.)
In my own narrative of my life, I’ve typically attributed my shame and closeting (and accompanying relationships I should never have been in) to a combination of religious dogma and social stigma. But religion was no longer a factor for me by the late 90s, at least not in the direct sense. But as for social stigma? I’ve told myself it was too hard to come out back then. This was the era when Ellen DeGeneres got cancelled for coming out. In my own life, I didn’t know anyone who was queer. I assumed friends would have thought I was weird, and that my roommates wouldn’t have wanted to live with me. I figured my parents might have disowned me or tried to send me to conversion therapy.
But really, it wasn’t just the fear of judgment and rejection for my sexual preferences. My failure to come out was also about living up to the gendered expectations of who I was supposed to be and become. There were requirements that had been assigned to me and that, in true good-girl fashion, I had internalized well: to be feminine-looking, thin (or as close as possible), pretty, pleasant and polite, and deferential to men and authority. I did my damndest to meet these standards, and internally flogged myself if I didn’t. I also was expected to become a wife (to a man, of course) and a mother. Yes, I should be educated, and a career was acceptable, as long as the career could be backburnered and accommodating to motherhood when needed. Coupling up with my boyfriend had “proven” I’d met some of those standards and was well on my way to meeting the others.
(Queer identity is not just about sex. This is what cis-het conservative folks don’t get, or are being willfully obtuse about, when they claim that introducing LGBTQ+ anything to kids is an introduction of sexuality. It isn’t about sex. It’s about diversity of identity, freedom of expression, and variety of priorities. It’s about letting children bloom into whatever varietal they were meant to be, rather than pushing them to be one of two options. But I digress.)
If you’d asked me at 21 if I was a feminist, I’d have said yes. I had ambitious, smart female friends and a fairly progressive boyfriend; I’d taken women’s studies and human sexuality classes. I was pro-choice. I had evolved well beyond my traditional, evangelical roots. But, at 21, I didn’t see myself as the Lilith Fair kind of feminist. Girl power and all that, but with makeup and slip dresses. Feminist, but make it MAC and male-gazey. I was a Spice Girls kind of feminist.
Or, was I? It was in these years that I cut my hair short for the first time. One winter, I decided to stop shaving my legs entirely, not really caring if my boyfriend cared. Parts of queer-me were pushing to be shown. But it would take a few more years before I truly embraced my attraction to women, and many more until I’d embrace the real, full me and come out as queer to everyone.
Watching the Lilith Fair documentary, I see a place where I fit right in, now that I have stripped away (most of) the trappings of compulsory heterosexuality and its accompanying requirements. And there is a bittersweet sadness in seeing that it was right there all along and I just didn’t show up. Queer and lesbian and feminist community did exist in the late 90s, and I just didn’t seek it out. I didn’t think I was allowed to find it. I’m not sure I knew how to find it.
There’s a common sentiment about not having regrets because life wouldn’t be what it is today if we changed the past. I sometimes tell my clients, just because this timeline has had some problems, there’s no guarantee that the alternate one would be better. The good things might be ruined or eliminated. As Doc Brown would say about trying to change the past, “The results could be disastrous!” For example, if I’d gone to Lilith Fair, maybe I’d have been hit by a bus that day. Anyway, you get the point. So, I am at peace with my timeline. I do love where I’ve landed and with whom I’ve landed. But I gotta say… Watching a mass of baby-tee and overalls-clad twentysomethings sway to Tracy Chapman and Jewel makes me, for a second, wish I could time-travel back to 1997 and talk to 21-year-old Tara about comp-het, dressing for the male gaze, and the freedom of nonconformity.
I took the long road to get here, but I’m so glad I’ve arrived. I live a life where women (inclusive) are centered and leg-shaving is optional. (Full glam is also still in the rotation, too.) I’m married to an amazing woman whom I met while singing together in a queer chorus - the one that performed with the Indigo Girls. My wife and I have performed countless times both as a duo and with friends, and have been to a zillion concerts together. So maybe I’ve found/created my own personal Lilith Fair experience. I just wish I could have found it a lot sooner.
I really resonate with the grief you express here at who you would have been socially, what events you would have gone to, what your friends and community would have looked like had you come out sooner. Yes, being queer is about so much more than sex.