There’s a moment in a deleted scene from Miss Congeniality when Sandra Bullock’s character, a disheveled, mannish FBI agent who later has to go undercover as a beauty queen, is asked by her dad if she’s a lesbian. She guffaws with her trademark snort and says, “I wish.” I completely understood what she meant. Falling masculine of center as a woman who’s attracted to men was complicated. I didn’t feel free to dress in the boyish ways I wanted because I didn’t think any straight man would ever be attracted to me if I looked like that. Attraction or not, everyone would assume I was a lesbian.
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