The Influences on Bruce and Bruce’s Influences on Alison

In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home it is apparent how profoundly her parents influenced the way that she understood and portrayed herself. A lot of Bechdel’s understanding of herself derived from her father posthumously. One particular similarity that Bechdel and her father, Bruce, shared was their coming into their sexuality during college. Alison, at the age of 19, labeled herself as a lesbian and understood her own sexuality. The pictures that she found of her father wearing a women’s bathing suit when he was in college did not strike her as being a fraternity prank. Instead she saw says “He’s wearing a women’s bathing suit. A fraternity prank? But the pose he strikes is not mincing or silly at all. He’s lissome, elegant” (Bechdel, 120). When she and her father are at a diner, they see a butch truck driver who Alison immediately identifies with, though she hides this fact from her father. He asks her if she wants to look like the truck driver, to which Alison immediately replies “no”, because she could not answer him honestly. Bruce passed down to Alison his own struggle with identity, forcing her to feel like she should reject part of herself so as to conform to heteronormative society. Kate Bornstein’s piece Gender Outlaw also discusses this rejection of identity as a way to avoid criticism, scrutiny, or worse. She says that to stay safe, one must bury themselves deep within the closet. Bruce does this more or not successfully, but in doing so he shows his daughter to do the same. Whatever the case, Bruce’s influence on Alison had such a profound effect on her even into her adulthood. She chose to write a memoir and centralize the plot on her relationship with her parents, and more specifically on her relationship with her father.