Tits and Tats - Michigan Womyn's Music Festival

We arrived at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival after fourteen hours of driving to a long line of vehicles on a dusty dirt road. The line crept forward steadily, and the two hours we waited seemed more like twenty minutes. Excitement was in the air. Many friendly women wearing orange vests, who all said the same thing, greeted us with “Welcome home!” At first this phrase puzzled us, but we soon knew exactly what they meant.

The Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival feels like home, because as women, and as lesbians, we are automatically second-class citizens. At MichFest, we are no longer a minority. It’s normal here to be a dyke and to hate George Bush. It’s not unique to be a vegetarian and proud feminists are everywhere you look.

It feels like home because you don’t have to pretend about anything. You can just be yourself. You could go topless without shoes, and nobody cared. You didn’t have to look around first before you kissed your girlfriend or held her hand. It is simply okay to be a woman, whatever that means for you. There are women here wearing lipstick, women with a buzz cut and facial hair, and women in tutus with combat boots.

We saw women arriving at the food line an all states of dress, from fully clothed in layers of practicality, cargo shorts, jackets and sneakers, varying all the way to women standing in the lunch line totally nude. Because of all the nudity, we saw an incredible array of beautiful tattoos. Every other woman you would see was topless, and most had tattoos. (Is it part of the lesbian code that you must have a tattoo? If you don’t have any, are you banned from the club?)

There were all kinds of lesbians: butches, femmes, androgynous, and some who were obviously taking T. All ages were equally represented. Retired women, middle aged, students, mothers, and lots of little girls. A range of abilities was seen. Women in wheelchairs, deaf women, blind women. We met women from other countries as well. We even met a few straight women.