'I continued using the girls' bathroom and checking the female box on questionnaires.

And when girls were bad.they were really bad.' In order to cope with this, Bechdel abandoned the female identity forced upon her namely, she began carrying a pocket knife, cut her hair short, and began to spit occasionally. Growing up as a child in the 60s, she became aware that 'boys, even when they were bad, were good. Soon she came to a realization: all of the figures she had drawn were males. In this semi-autobiographical work, she states, 'I spent the better part of my childhood holed up in makeshift offices that I would construct around the house, drawing under a high-intensity lamp, refining my technique on reams and reams of typing paper.'īechdel would draw figure after figure with no regard to the necessity of a background. The evolution of her drawings can be found in The Indelible Alison Bechdel: Confessions, Comix, and Miscellaneous Dykes to Watch Out For (1998).

Her father was a funeral home director, and he used another nearby house in town as the funeral home, which Bechdel and her brothers aptly, yet ironically, named 'Fun Home.' Her mother was an actress and taught English literature at their local high school, just as her father did.īechdel began drawing at the age of three, and she still has the drawings to prove it. She also spent much of her time with her brothers, one older and one younger, helping her father, an antiques collector, by gathering antiques to restore their 4,000-square-foot, Gothic Revival mansion to its original 1880s form. Bechdel rejected stereotypical 'girl' behavior by keeping her hair short and playing among boys. Less than ten miles away, Beech Creek, Pennsylvania, was her home for most of her childhood. On September 10, 1960, Alison Bechdel was born to Bruce and Helen Bechdel in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.

Alison bechdel to the lighthouse