Tag Archives: fashion

I Speak Through My Clothes

Wolfgang Krodel – Adam and Eve

Everyone uses clothing to tell a story about themselves. We dress to communicate our identity, religion, gender, marital status, tribe or clan, sub-culture, profession, and/or social status. Some people dress to blend in and others dress to stand out. We expect that everyone will understand the meaning of our choices. Conversely, we expect to read others accurately.

Humans first started to wear clothing 170,000 years ago (warning: tied to the evolution of body lice). They made garments to protect themselves from the cold, the sun, rain, thorns, insects, and poison plants. The first evidence of ornamental clothing or jewelry is from 75,000 years ago. As humans developed better skills at farming, tanning, weaving, sewing, and metal working, they created more durable, comfortable, and decorative clothing. Clothing laws were not far behind.

The Bible has many rules about clothing. It prohibits women from wearing men’s clothing and men from wearing women’s clothing. There is a prohibition on wearing cloth woven from a mix of linen and wool. There are prohibitions on flaunting your wealth. There are modesty codes to prove piety and restrict sexuality. These rules are the Judeo-Christian origins of contemporary gender policing. Continue reading →

Taking Blue for Granted

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The Green Mosque – Bursa, Turkey

There are hues of blue that speak to me. Cobalt blue glass. Iznik tiles. Lapis lazuli and ultramarine. I have a small collection of blue trinkets from around the world.

Before I started nursery school I knew I preferred blue. It is as if part of my brain stopped developing at four years old, stuck in the binary at blue. I wanted navy blue sneakers, blue and white striped shirts, blue overalls, and a blue tricycle. I told everyone my favorite color was blue. I refused to wear pink.

Blue doesn’t have a gender. We assign gender to concepts and objects almost as much as we assign gender to people. I assign a gender to everything; some things get thrown on the girl’s pile. Discarded. It is a hard habit to stop. I wear a lot of blue. I still have a hard time with pink.

I imagine myself coming out of the womb clad in denim diapers, but I didn’t get my first pair of blue jeans until I was twelve. They were a compromise; bell bottoms from the Junior’s department. My next pair was Levi’s 505’s. The exact same style of jeans that my brother wore.

I wear blue jeans almost every day. I also have black jeans, corduroy jeans, and khaki jeans. All from the men’s aisle. I assign jeans a gender, male, and I want to be gendered male by association. Continue reading →

The Perpetual Search for the Perfect Shirt

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Bodhi, the Shiba Inu model from Menswear Dog.

Winter is over. I went through the winter wearing the same baggy button down shirts that I wore last year. I wanted to wait until after I had top surgery to shop for new ones. I’ve always worn loose shirts to hide my chest. I don’t have to do that anymore. I need a new magic shirt. A shirt that can transform a bad gender day into a rainbow unicorn.

I’m still an odd size. I went to Macy’s and tried on men’s and boy’s off the rack shirts. Some were too big, some were too small, and none were just right. And it looks like I’m going to have to get used to my nipples showing when I wear a T-shirt.

I used to try to shop in the women’s department. This was self-defeating because it is nearly impossible to find men’s clothing there. I had a lot of rules. No darts, no princess seams, no little breast pockets, no frills, no ruching, no loud colors, no 3/4 length sleeves, no decorative buttons, nothing cut on the bias, and no polyester. In other words, I wanted a man’s cotton shirt. Sometimes I’d luck out and find something from Ralph Lauren, or I’d order from LL Bean or Lands’ End. I rarely found what I wanted. The lack of choices pissed me off.

There were thousands of shirts, exactly what I wanted, in the men’s department. Just out of reach. I tried to talk myself out of them. They never fit. If I got the chest right, the shirt was too big around the neck, too tight around the hips, and too long in the sleeves and torso. Tucking it in and rolling up the sleeves helped, but no amount of tailoring was going to transform it into a magic shirt. Continue reading →

Every Shirt Tells a Story

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My favorite T-shirt, even though it does not fit.

My oldest piece of clothing is a heather blue wool sweater vest. It is over fifty years old and belonged to my Dad. I can’t wear it. My freshman year in college I washed it and threw it in the dryer. I didn’t know any better.

I can’t throw the vest away. I can’t fix it. It shares space in my closet with other articles of clothing that are symbolic. There is a beautiful striped men’s T-shirt from J. Crew that is about 20 years old. It never fit. I ordered it pre-internet, from a catalog, over the phone. I’ve hardly worn it. For many years it was too small, too tight across the bust and hips, and too long. Even when I tucked it in, it didn’t fit right or look right. I held onto it because I wanted to wear it.

I lost weight and now the T-shirt is too big and too long. It will always be the wrong cut. Twenty years ago guys wore their T-shirts baggy and tucked in. It was designed for someone who is six feet tall. Yet I can’t imagine throwing it away. It represents a hope I used to have. That a piece of clothing had the power to change my life, to transform me from a self-conscious butch lesbian into a handsome teen age boy. Continue reading →

Plaid Flannel

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It finally dropped below freezing in New York. That means layers. And flannel. I love winter. It takes the edge off my dysphoria.

The official start of my flannel season is the weekend after Labor Day. I take stock of my shirts. Which one needs a button, which ones are so scruffy that they should only be worn for chores, and which ones should go into the rag box. One of the sad things about flannel is that it doesn’t last forever. Continue reading →

No More Excuses

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L’shana tova. May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

For Rosh Hashanah, I am resolving to stop making excuses for my behavior and tell the truth. I spent a lot of years lying outright, and then I spent a lot of years avoiding and omitting details. This is a list of excuses that I have used. I have actually said all of these things during the past year. Each is true, but not the truth. You can figure it out. Continue reading →

A Boy and Her Dog

Traversing the Border between Butch and Transgender