“I want to understand me, I want to understand why I feel the way I feel what motivates my actions, it's obviously very important to be honest with yourself”
Ariel shares how the TV show Buffy the Vampire slayer, fan casts and fandoms helped her connect with queer identity
Chapter 1 |5 min read
I'm Ariel Simpson. I am 33 year old Texan who is incredibly good at hula hooping.the helpful thing is that not a lot of people, hula hoop and so I really get to define what incredibly good means. I mean, I can, I can just do a lot of tricks. I can do the Macarena while I hula hoop. I can spin in circles either way against the grain towards the grain. I'm pretty good hula hooping. Where did this skill come from? PE in elementary school. I was so bad at so many things. And then one day, it was hula hoop day, my day. Okay. And Garrett McLaughlin's day, but I think we both know I was a little bit better than Garrett McLaughlin.
Growing up, I was a big musical fan. I think there is something very androgynous about musicals, because everyone is wearing pretty elaborate costumes and wigs, and they're singing. And it's got a lot of feminine attributes. But obviously, there's a lot of men in musicals, and it's, it's just a space where some of those lines get blurred. And I don't know that I knew that something that was appealing to me about musicals. But I do think that was part of it. Part of my later love of drag, obviously. And I mean, you see a lot of the drag community in the queer community pulling things from like, Cabaret a lot. And just a lot of that gender mixing that for some reason was easier when you sing about it.
I was a big Rodgers and Hammerstein fan. So A Sound of Music, The King and I, Oklahoma±can we just have a moment for Oklahoma? Like a musical about cowboys. They're like dancing around and doing rope tricks. But there's a ballets sequence. There's a whole song, where one Calloway tries to convince a ranch hand to kill himself, and it's a comedic number, like, what kind of a fever dream is Oklahoma—Yeah, so big fan, Annie, My Fair Lady. I wouldn't watch old movies for a long time. But musicals were the exception.
I became an old movie junkie eventually. But my favorite queer space in media has arisen because of the joyous existence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And for many queer women that was a Willow and Tara and Buffy the Vampire Slayer moment. Not for me, I didn't really care about Willow and Tara at all. I really came into this as an adult woman listening to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer podcast, Buffering the Vampire Slayer, which is hosted by well began being hosted by two lesbian wives and then they divorced during the podcast. They still keep it up and just having that queer space of women, talking about media that mattered to them. And talking about what that meant to their queer identity formation was just very helpful for me.
“I want to understand why I feel the way I feel what motivates my actions”
Ariel
I think it's interesting that a lot of women later in life are describing themselves as bisexual, I think it's an interesting gender difference, I don't hear a lot of those conversations coming from my male friends. But I did have a similar conversation about sexual identity with a friend of mine, semi-recently. And it was just nice to talk how our experiences have overlapped and the part of yourself that's like, it doesn't really matter, especially like, once you have a partner, or once you've kind of like chosen a path in life. But again, when your operating system is about, I want to understand me, I want to understand why I feel the way I feel what motivates my actions, it's obviously very important to be honest with yourself about what those motivations are, and what those feelings are. And I'm always floored by the fact that after six years of psychological training, and I can't tell you how many years of therapy, I still find it hard to name my feelings and be like, Oh, I think that's fear. I think that is hurt. I think that is sad, like, these very basic skills you learn as a child, where you should, can be really hard to access as an adult. And I think that's part of why, especially in the bible belt in the south, it's a lot easier as a bi woman to just focus on the straight part.
I felt like being honest with myself was the main goal, you know, because I am married to a man. And so the the goal of having sex drive of having sexual attraction is to help you pair up or I mean, maybe not permanently, but at least temporarily. And so having a partner that I love and respect, I felt like my sexual attraction was really mostly just relevant to the conversations I was able to have with my husband and with my friends. And so to that extent, I'm happy that I had that, it makes me feel a lot more sense of belonging and queer spaces, but it also makes me feel a bit appropriative because as a woman who has mostly lived a straight life, I haven't had to go through much, which is kind of a defining characteristic of queer spaces is what we've had to go through, to get to this place and to have this space together. And so it can feel a little appropriative to have the benefits without really having any of the struggles. So in that regard, I do want to be honest about my story, but I want to do it in a way that's respectful and doesn't take up space of people who have actually fought pretty hard to get that space.
I mean, when I was, I guess an adolescent, the first inkling I had was, I would have dreams that were very romantic, and had like, I was a protagonist. I couldn't tell what gender I was in the dream, but the other person was a woman. And I rationalized this for a long time being like well, it's probably because I only know the female experience and so it would be so hard for me to picture a male responding in this romantic situation that was how I made sense of that but I also think that there's so much masculine in my personality like I'm aggressive I'm a go getter I'm you know pretty loud I take up a lot of space and I do think that that was an element in those dreams is that it was a space for me to have you know more of that masculine presence also that I'm by but you know, there's everything is so cloudy when your identity is still forming that eye again, it just takes me back to I love that this is a time when you can have more grace and be like I think this is me now but I'm not sure but stay tuned.
See More from Ariel
Chapter 2: A Regular Tightrope Walker
Ariel discusses balancing family dynamics with her queer identity and understanding how to navigate family differences
Chapter 3: Mirror, Mirror
Ariel talks about the importance of self-reflection and introspection to gain a better understanding of one’s self and inner feelings.