Fun Home

Alison Bechdel focuses on the theme of sexual confusion and coping with it within a family and society.  The father in the family is always shown as a very feminine man who had a strong interest in gardening and decorating the house.  He was also very concerned with his own appearance regarding his clothes and his appearance at public functions.  He would mask his true identity by making it seem as though he were just a regular father with a wife and family.  In reality, the father was not entirely sure of his sexuality but found himself attracted to men his whole life.  There had been signs of his double life ever since Alison was a child, but she was unaware of it until she was around 20 years old.  He was especially interested in teenage men and would hire them as baby sitters or landscapers in order to try and hit on them.  He would even go on trips to visit with young men while his wife knew what he was up to the whole time.  Alison's father was very distant from her during her childhood, possibly due to him being unhappy with not being able to be himself because he thought society would not accept him.  He would use Alison to help him decorate or clean the house but other than that he did not pay much attention to his children.  When he died his family all agree that it was a suicide, and it was most likely because he could not deal with being someone else in order to be accepted.  Before he died he and Alison had a connection where they both talked about their homosexuality.  He admitted being afraid of not being accepted by saying to Alison, "There've been a few times I thought I might have preferred to take a stand.  But I never really considered it when I was young."  This shows how at one point he had thought about coming out but instead decided that he would not be accepted for who he was.  From a young age, Alison became interested in very masculine things and acted almost like a boy.  Her father would try and force her to dress more like a girl should but she never really liked dressing like a girl.  I think he did this because he used to dress up like a woman when he was young and did not want his daughter to be like him.  When she went to college she discovered that she was a lesbian.  She told her parents and neither of them severely disapproved, and her dad even said, "At least your human, we should all experiment."  He basically accepted this fact and they even bonded because they had something so big in common.  Although it was not long before her father died when she found out he was gay, they talked to each other more in that period of time than they had in their lives.  They finally seemed to bond and understood each other more than anyone else.