How do you classify a newsletter about gender and madelines?
641.092 / 306.768 / 641.5944
Just a few examples of how I might classify my tinyletter this week. Lots of times, Dewey just doesn't cut it.
I am a rule-bound person. I am conflicted about this. Even as I know, rationally, intellectually, that Most Rules Aren't So Great, I love them. I love to find rules, construct rules, learn rules (this is why I'm a baker). As an adult, I read advice columns, hoping that the rules in them will help me live a better, more decent life, and I am a novice cataloger, the ruleiest of all jobs. I know, of course, that actually the catalog Has A Lot of Problems, but the part of me that loves rules doesn't care.
I play city building games, I have for years. Not all the time, but enough. I always get hung up when it comes to issues like crime, because city building games think that more police = less crime, and they don't have options for free healthcare, and social workers for everyone. Oh well. I just love the part where you can plan one way streets, and regulate the flow of traffic. I love when you can make the rules work for you. In my quest to build a utopian city (my game cities are always utopian), the traffic rules are rational, the grid is beautiful, and there is a park every two blocks.
As a teenager I cherished self help books. Not contemporary self help books, those never held any appeal. No, I developed a love for Amy Vanderbilt, and other midcentury books about how to be a good teenager, or how to throw a party, or how to be a good woman. I was fascinated, especially, by those last ones—this is what all my self-help books were really about (as far as I have found, they did not publish equivalent books for men, go figure). In high school I got a book that had been my grandmother's called Glorify Yourself. This book promised to teach me one thing that I could not seem to learn: how to be a woman. I read this book cover to cover, and I was obsessed with it, I carried it with me to school, I showed it to my friends. I tried to do the exercises in the book, tried holding my head the right way, walking the right way, I tried wearing corrective makeup, and following the rules about accessories.
Here is a page from Glorify Yourself
As a teen, I needed this book, and I needed the other etiquette books, because I could not seem to grasp what womanhood was. I still do not. As a teen unaware that it was even possible to not be a woman, womanhood seemed to be a thing that I could learn, that I could teach myself, that I could make feel less alien, if I only followed the rules. I was convinced that even if I couldn't make the idea of "woman" fit, I could at least present such an ostentatious form of "ladylike" that no one, including myself, would have any questions.
It didn't work.
These books, instead of helping me how I thought they would, taught me camp, in a way that John Waters never did. As a young trans person, trying to replicate the womanhood of the silver screen divas of the 1930s was high camp. I remember spending weeks practicing turning my head the way the book told you to. Everyone told me how frightening I looked, but I swear to you, I was following the directions!
This experience, of trying and failing to replicate an outdated, and inauthentic version of womanhood, might seem like evidence that I was trying the wrong thing. Perhaps some of you read this and think "if you hadn't tried this bizarro version of womanhood it would have made sense! No woman is like that!"
And indeed, perhaps no woman is like that. I know, of course, that womanhood is no one concrete thing, but certainly, to be a woman, you must feel that you are one, that seems like the fundamental thing that makes one a woman. To me, that high camp version of womanhood was just as understandable as all the others: each felt like it did not fit me, so I might as well make a go at the one that was the most outrageous. It did not stick.
I still am not a woman, I don't think I will ever be one. I hope that this doesn't upset you, because you, yes you, whoever you are, I want us to be friends.
I am not a woman, I am a genderqueer person who has made a lot of efforts at being a woman, at doing womanhood, but I am not one. I am not confused, I am actually very certain.
Now, in honor of my love of rules, I am torn, should I share with you a recipe for a supremely rule-bound food? Or should I strike off on my own, try something different? I think people have an idea that trans people are rebels, are rule-breakers, and so, maybe, I can't be trans because I'm very conventional. But I am trans, and also a fairly staid person, who likes following the rules that seem good, and critically examining (and then perhaps disregarding) the ones that don't work.
For the recipe this week: I think I'll take the rules. Here is a recipe for madeleines, a rule-driven food if there ever was one. When I was researching how to make the best madeleines I found a number of discussions about how actually the only pans that could be used to make good madeleines were the blue iron or something, a type of pan that is only sold in France. We got a thin stainless steel or tin pan. It is NOT nonstick. Do not get a nonstick pan, do not get a silicone pan! Get one without any coating, because part of what gives a madeleine its distinctive outer coat is the paste of butter and flour that you will line the tin with.
Grapefruit Honey Madeleines
(Adapted from Ottolenghi's Saffron, Orange, and Honey Madeleines)
6 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon (that's 90 grams) unsalted butter, plus more, melted, for brushing
2 teaspoons honey
2 large eggs
⅓ cup plus 1 teaspoon (75 g) sugar
2 teaspoon finely grated grapefruit zest (I think it's about the zest of one grapefruit)
1 teaspoon baking powder
⅛ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon plus 1½ teaspoons all-purpose flour, plus more for the pans
Glaze
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
smidge of honey
Grapefruit juice (enough)
Heat 6 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp. butter, 2 tsp. honey, in a small saucepan over low heat until butter is melted. Let cool to room temperature.
Add eggs, sugar, and grapefruit zest to food processor and process until smooth and combined.
Sift baking powder, salt, and ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon plus 1½ teaspoons flour into a small bowl, then add to egg mixture. Pulse a few times just to combine. Add honey mixture. Process once more, then pour batter into a small bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and chill a minimum 1 hour (more is good, the weird thing about madeleines is that the longer they chill the better their rise is. IDK, the first time I made madeleines they chilled for just about a single hour and had a very small hump in the middle, these chilled for two hours and had a nice pronounced hump, which is the sign of a Good Madeleine).
Preheat oven to 400°. If using metal madeleine pans, brush molds with a paste made of melted butter and flour (if it's good enough for Julia Child it's good enough for us!). If you don't have madeline pans you could probably do these in the bottom of a muffin tin and that would also be good. Spoon a heaping teaspoon of batter into each mold; it should rise two-thirds of the way up the sides of the molds. If you only have 1 madeleine pan, chill remaining batter (you'll need to wash and dry pan before greasing and flouring again). Bake madeleines until beginning to brown around the edges and they spring back when tapped lightly in the center, 9–10 minutes. Remove pan from oven and let sit 1 minute before releasing madeleines. The best way to do this, with a metal pan, is to go around the edges of each with a small knife or offset spatula (to make sure they aren't stuck), then tap edge of pan on the counter until they fall out. Transfer cakes to a wire rack to cool. Mix confectioners sugar and grapefruit juice in a bowl until smooth if you have a bit of extra zest, add it! Brush lightly over shell-patterned side of one madeleine. Do Ahead: Madeleines can be made 1 day ahead. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.
I found that these were still good two days after I made them, but they did get a bit sticky on the outside, so they certainly are not ideal after the wait.
If you find yourself perturbed by the recipe, email me, I'm happy to talk you through it, however if you find yourself bothered by my gender I would invite you to examine why you are so bothered, and to look inside yourself and fix that, because it's not a me problem.