Chicago as Butch
A friend of mine was at an event yesterday morning where Tony Kushner accepted a literary award from the Chicago Tribune. She said it was great, if early, and that Kushner was both funny and serious at the event. She mentioned a specific line, though, about how Kushner feels when his work succeeds in Chicago: “As a kind of effete, foofy New Yorker, I always got a special degree of satisfaction and accomplishment when anything that I’ve done succeeds in butch Chicago.”
Which got me asking myself, is Chicago butch?
Initially, my reaction was, “No, of course not!” But the more I think about it, the more I sort of love the idea.
Chicago is a Midwestern city (as much as we sometimes pretend that we’re not) which means it’s much more polite than those east coast-ers. Because of Mayor Daley’s reign, it’s an obsessively clean city with great trash pickup and beautiful public parks, beaches, and lakefront trails. It likes buildings that are big and shiny, and it loves showing them off. (The last time I was at the Sears Tower, the animated video guide in the elevator said, “The Sears Tower is the tallest building in North America, and one of the tallest in the world. Supposedly there’s some taller building in Malaysia, but we don’t worry about them.” Except obviously we do worry about them.)
Without making too many assumptions or stereotypes about what ‘butch means, or reading too deeply into this metaphor, I think all of those personality traits do a good job fitting my understanding of ‘butch.’
Any thoughts?
PS – I feel I should note that the friend who went to hear Kushner speak – and who agrees Chicago is butch – is from Manhattan, and consistently described Chicago as a “Star Wars city” because it’s “so big, so shiny, so clean, and so empty.”
Themocracy
Ha! That’s hilarious. I haven’t been to Chicago since I was prepubescent, so I can’t evaluate the statements as they apply to the city. But I’m not going to complain about stereotyped as clean and polite, and I do like to show off my various shiny possessions, though I’d like to think I avoid the trap of, er, comparing sizes.
Does Chicago carry your luggage?
This made me laugh. There is definitely no love lost between myself and O’Hare… But my idea of Chicago, as a personality, is very much about the lakefront and the Loop.
“City of Broad Shoulders?”
I think of midwestern sensibilities as rather classically butch, myself. And Chicago’s heyday was during the apex of brilliantined hair and perfect tuxes, so.
I might argue that Chicago’s heyday isn’t over, but only because I’m obliged to do so…