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me and clothes
Feb. 9th, 2023 08:27 pmI've been thinking some more about my gender presentation of late. I mean, thinking about how I dress and present myself to the world is kind of medium-key on my mind all the time, but this year I'm trying to more deliberately work on figuring out what kind of wardrobe and styling makes me feel happy and comfortable with myself.
And I've been making great progress with that, and it's very exciting, when I look at myself in the mirror and go "YEAH!!!" instead of just being like "well I have no arguments with this outfit."
When I was in my late teens, I stopped wearing pants. Full stop. Skirts or dresses all the time, for every occasion, in every weather. And I kept this up for....dear lord I just did the math and I think it's 10 or 11 years of absolutely no pants, with a couple years on either side with majority-skirts but occasional pants. At my peak I had a collection of over 50 skirts, most of them real statement pieces. I did the skirt-wearing for a number of reasons, some of which I was able to articulate at the time and some of which I wasn't.
But I think that ultimately one important facet of it (which I absolutely did not understand at the time) was that if I wore something so distinctly female-associated as a skirt, was known for it in fact, then I could experiment with gender in other ways without being concerned I would be seen as rejecting my assigned gender. I was wearing a big ol' flag of femaleness on my bottom half at all times! So I was able to inch towards a more masc presentation in other ways without totally freaking out and shutting myself down. (I mean, I still freaked out. I have a dreamwidth post from 2016 about how scary and forbidden it felt to wear men's button-up shirts, and get a more masculine haircut. Even with my skirts! But I was able to make those forays, despite the difficulties.)
But as I grew in my confidence in wearing more masc clothing, the skirt-wearing eventually fell by the wayside. By 2019, I was wearing pants one day a week, on fridays, feeling daring at the pants-featuring outfits I put together. And then the pandemic began, and I spent multiple years being able to wear anything on my lower half and not have anyone outside my household see me, and never having to use public washrooms. And freed of having to worry about what opinion people would have of my gender, I found myself almost never wearing skirts anymore. My default became men's pants and men's shirts, and I only bothered pulling out a skirt with the thought that I really ought to make more use of my excellent skirt collection, which by this point had been pared down to only the very best skirts.
But with my new default of men's clothing, I kind of ended up wearing just any old thing. Especially in the first year or so of the pandemic, I did not want to venture out into shared public spaces, so going to stores to try on clothes was right out, and I just ordered a few things online to fill in the basics of what I needed, based on what fit me and looked respectable and wasn't too expensive.
These outfits didn't exactly spark joy, but they were easy enough to wear, and felt comfortable, both physically and genderwise. And eventually I realized that it no longer felt comfortable to put on a skirt.
(did I maybe cry a bit at the realization that it was time for me to pack away my skirts? look, obviously I did, they were a huge part of my identity for so long, and I still love them, even if they're not something I want to wear anymore!)
But one of the other big things my carefully curated collection of skirts did for me was that they allowed me to dress in ways that were dramatic and visually interesting and off-beat, they enabled me to make statements with my clothing, and standard-issue men's clothing is uhhhhhhh not that.
So I've been working, of late, to develop a coherent and consistent and more me-feeling style and way of dressing now that I don't wear skirts. It's a work in progress, not least because the kinds of clothes I want to wear are hard to find! There are some significant gaps in my wardrobe to be able to fully make the clothing statements I want to all the time. But already I'm making enormous strides.
And dressing myself is FUN again, the way it used to be in the heyday of when I most enjoyed wearing skirts! I think I've spent the last 5 years at least not having fun with my clothing, when I always used to love putting together outfits. I thought it was just a casualty of growing older, but NO, I just needed to figure out a new approach to clothing that would make me happy again!
I don't know whether my current gender presentation will be a long-term or permanent thing for me. I used to derive a great deal of genuine joy from my wonderful skirts, after all! And it's impossible for me to have feelings about clothes that are siloed from society. I exist in a society, and my sense of how people see me based on my clothes is an intrinsic part of the collection of feelings I have about the clothes I wear. At least, it is right now. Who knows what will happen in the future! But for now: I'm having fun.
And I've been making great progress with that, and it's very exciting, when I look at myself in the mirror and go "YEAH!!!" instead of just being like "well I have no arguments with this outfit."
When I was in my late teens, I stopped wearing pants. Full stop. Skirts or dresses all the time, for every occasion, in every weather. And I kept this up for....dear lord I just did the math and I think it's 10 or 11 years of absolutely no pants, with a couple years on either side with majority-skirts but occasional pants. At my peak I had a collection of over 50 skirts, most of them real statement pieces. I did the skirt-wearing for a number of reasons, some of which I was able to articulate at the time and some of which I wasn't.
But I think that ultimately one important facet of it (which I absolutely did not understand at the time) was that if I wore something so distinctly female-associated as a skirt, was known for it in fact, then I could experiment with gender in other ways without being concerned I would be seen as rejecting my assigned gender. I was wearing a big ol' flag of femaleness on my bottom half at all times! So I was able to inch towards a more masc presentation in other ways without totally freaking out and shutting myself down. (I mean, I still freaked out. I have a dreamwidth post from 2016 about how scary and forbidden it felt to wear men's button-up shirts, and get a more masculine haircut. Even with my skirts! But I was able to make those forays, despite the difficulties.)
But as I grew in my confidence in wearing more masc clothing, the skirt-wearing eventually fell by the wayside. By 2019, I was wearing pants one day a week, on fridays, feeling daring at the pants-featuring outfits I put together. And then the pandemic began, and I spent multiple years being able to wear anything on my lower half and not have anyone outside my household see me, and never having to use public washrooms. And freed of having to worry about what opinion people would have of my gender, I found myself almost never wearing skirts anymore. My default became men's pants and men's shirts, and I only bothered pulling out a skirt with the thought that I really ought to make more use of my excellent skirt collection, which by this point had been pared down to only the very best skirts.
But with my new default of men's clothing, I kind of ended up wearing just any old thing. Especially in the first year or so of the pandemic, I did not want to venture out into shared public spaces, so going to stores to try on clothes was right out, and I just ordered a few things online to fill in the basics of what I needed, based on what fit me and looked respectable and wasn't too expensive.
These outfits didn't exactly spark joy, but they were easy enough to wear, and felt comfortable, both physically and genderwise. And eventually I realized that it no longer felt comfortable to put on a skirt.
(did I maybe cry a bit at the realization that it was time for me to pack away my skirts? look, obviously I did, they were a huge part of my identity for so long, and I still love them, even if they're not something I want to wear anymore!)
But one of the other big things my carefully curated collection of skirts did for me was that they allowed me to dress in ways that were dramatic and visually interesting and off-beat, they enabled me to make statements with my clothing, and standard-issue men's clothing is uhhhhhhh not that.
So I've been working, of late, to develop a coherent and consistent and more me-feeling style and way of dressing now that I don't wear skirts. It's a work in progress, not least because the kinds of clothes I want to wear are hard to find! There are some significant gaps in my wardrobe to be able to fully make the clothing statements I want to all the time. But already I'm making enormous strides.
And dressing myself is FUN again, the way it used to be in the heyday of when I most enjoyed wearing skirts! I think I've spent the last 5 years at least not having fun with my clothing, when I always used to love putting together outfits. I thought it was just a casualty of growing older, but NO, I just needed to figure out a new approach to clothing that would make me happy again!
I don't know whether my current gender presentation will be a long-term or permanent thing for me. I used to derive a great deal of genuine joy from my wonderful skirts, after all! And it's impossible for me to have feelings about clothes that are siloed from society. I exist in a society, and my sense of how people see me based on my clothes is an intrinsic part of the collection of feelings I have about the clothes I wear. At least, it is right now. Who knows what will happen in the future! But for now: I'm having fun.
