but funnily enough, i also have a spiral tattoo on my upper arm. it’s also an ancient symbol, connected to goddess/female symbology.

I know a few other femme friends who have a heart tattoo with a fancy “F” in the middle, signifying to them their femme identity.

now that i think about it more, i like the idea of getting the spiral tattoo on the inside of my same wrist that has the blue star. totally gay.

(p.s. found you via Sugarbutch, who i found via a friend)

Initially, I’d wanted to get a corresponding blue star on the other wrist, to mark the dichotomy of butch/femme and to honor the historical significance of the stars in our community. The more I thought about it, though, the more I decided that I didn’t want to tattoo something about “butch” on my body, because that’s not really my identity. I still want something on the other wrist, though, to balance the star. I love the idea of this spiral.

I have this book called the Dictionary of Symbols, and I looked up a basic spiral shape to see what it says about the meaning of spiral shapes..

“The clockwise spiral (starting from the middle) is strongly associated with water, power, independent movement, and out-going migrations of tribes…and also [was] an old symbol for ‘potential power’ in Tibet…The Vikings used it with the meaning ‘independent movement’ (against the sun, waves, and wind when necessary), and eventually ‘return’…The mirror image [counter clockwise]…was used in the earliest Chinese ideography with the probable meaning ‘return’ or ‘homecoming.’ The Hopi Indians seem to have given it the same meaning. It is also similar to a hieroglyph representing Egypt, i.e., that country one ‘returns to,’ the ‘homeland.’ It is also found pained on the walls of houses in Tibet, and has perhaps the meaning ‘home’ the place one returns to.”

I don’t know about you, but all of that really resonates with how I conceptualize “femme”! I’m totally down with this tattoo.

I don’t know about a shark (and DEFINITELY NOT a pink shark or with bows…double ew for me!), but I do like that better than a high heel. It’s important that we realize that not all Femmes are the traditional “feminine” – that’s why we’re Femmes! I hate pink, bows, frills, and rarely, if ever, wear heels. But I’m a Femme none the less!

I think “FEMME” is a little too much for me, since I do want to go kind of with the Butch historical idea of a secret sign.

Let me know what you decide on!