Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic delves into Allison Bechdel's difficult relationship not only with her father, but also with herself. She is embroiled in unanswered questions regarding both her sexuality and that of her father. The autobiography explores and details Bechdel's relationship with her father and how the suppression of her identity influenced her to explore and express her own. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Bechdel's identity suppression begins at a young age. Her father, Bruce, has an idea of ​​the family he wants and the role Allison must play. Whether or not she fits the computer vision her father has built, Allison must please him and fit the mold. “The butcher up to his neck,” as Allison calls him. Although Bechdel began portraying his father as a stereotypical gay man in the late '60s, '70s and '80s (tennis shoes, cut-off shorts and tank tops), he remembers rejecting his father's desire for longer hair long, wears dresses and overall appears more feminine. Sort of a power struggle, how Bechdel wants to express herself, but Bruce wants to dress her and the way she wishes she could express herself. This becomes evident throughout Bechdel's childhood, with Bruce constantly dressing up Allison and once even threatening to physically harm her if he sees her without the hair clip. However, the need to express each other's genders was not just Bruce trying to express his femininity through Allison, but Allison trying to express masculinity in herself to make up for the lack of that her father had. Allison states that “not only were we inverted, we were the inversion of each other. While I was trying to compensate for something unmanly in him... he was trying to express something feminine through me. One such example is what Bechdel refers to as the "reverence shared by her and her father for male beauty." Bechdel is flipping through a men's fashion magazine and notices a suit with a vest, suggesting that her father buy one. However, this wasn't something Allison actually wanted for her father, rather something she wanted for herself, just like her father wishes to have his velvet and pearls. One of the most crucial moments of the novel is Bechdel's first real meeting. with the representation and the moment she begins to identify with herself. Bechdel says he has been “lying for a long time, since I was four or five years old. It was at that age that she realized that instead of being traditionally a woman, she was much more like a butch woman. On a trip with her father to Philadelphia, they end up eating at a diner, where Bechdel claims they both saw "a very disturbing sight." A truck driver, dressed in stereotypical "butcher" clothing, enters the restaurant and four-year-old Allison is fascinated. She had no idea that women had men's haircuts or wore men's clothes, and she was entranced by the idea. His father, who also saw the spectacle, was horrified. He asks Allison if that's what she wants to look like, and although she says no, since her eyes are depicted as wide open, Allison obviously doesn't see a problem with the idea. The idea has sustained Allison over the years, but she goes on to say, as they get back into the hearse, that the same vision perhaps haunted her father. However, it is only at the beginning of her adulthood that Bechdel truly begins the transition to owning and expressing her own identity. It seems that just when Bechdel seems to discover the truth.