The Masked Fairy Godmother

Or what my icon collage is about.  A reflection from my Masters in Humanities portfolio.

Figure 1 Masked Me
 Reflection on Masked Me and Deconstruction of my performativity as a feministfrom a post-modernist perspective: Do WHAT?

From the first, I probably should have recognized that I would have to deal with my feminine side, but I didn't get it until I began to search for the thread that pulled all these bits together. The self portrait was just a fun project, but I realized in doing this portfolio how much baggage I had brought with me to Pacifica.

I have images of Ua Zit,  Medusa, Baubo-Isis, Ninhursag, and Dzonukwa; my totems of snake and jaguar; and details of art from Frieda Kahlo, Georgia O'Keefe, and Emily Carr. I even lucked up and found a rubber stamp with my initials in Celtic scrolls, which I made into a tattoo.

The title of the paper refers to a paper I wrote in the eighties while getting a few more graduate hours so that I could teach in college about the nature of language changes, with the emphasis on long, semi-meaningless words that tend to obfuscate rather than clarify. The paper however, did help me to clear up some long standing delusions about how angry and misguided I have been through much of my life.

I  have seen that my second-wave femininity and the anger that drives is no longer serves me, or my sisters for that matter. I have seen a lot of pain both from the crossing of gender boundaries and from staying behind the picket lines. Behind my mask, I can be afraid or cry or even laugh because I have all my protective totems, goddesses and role models around me. But going into the dark, as Inanna discovers, requires taking off all the accoutrements and standing naked before oneself. The Clay Gate requires me to face the fact that I am female, that I am not "a gay man in a woman's body" but a relatively normal woman, and that it is a gift for me to be so. I would like to move from acceptance of that gift to  celebration, and being with the women and Barry of the Jags has allowed me to grow in that direction. Perhaps I won't be so afraid to look at my own face.

Figure 2 Me - Original glamour shot image