Hi there, good evening and welcome to post number 4 of my week of anniversary posts. Friday is quite often the day I share an outfit post with you. Over the year I have showcased my style and it has and is to this day eclectic, but it can also be troublesome…
I make no bones about the fact that I dress the way I want and don't give a purple carrot what gender it claims to be. I wear clothes from both genders and dress in a way that I want to, regardless of what I am 'supposed' to wear. There are so many debates about gender in the media and so much of it focuses on outward projections- not how you act but how you look.
It is a well known and accepted truth that gender is on a sliding scale, and there is not a fixed point for all. Thus, dressing should be on a sliding scale too. However, that doesn’t stop the general public resolutely sticking to 2 defined genders. It rears its ugly head in certain places that make life for me and others difficult.
Toilets are usually gendered, we all understand this, simple. However public toilets cause so many problems. Quite often I am stared at, other men enter the room, see me, then check the sign on the door and then stare at me. It is not uncommon to be asked to leave toilets, abusive comments made and more. You would think that this only happens in very mainstream places, but oh honey you'd be wrong. Even at the most progressive of places like Graduate Fashion Week it happened.
It comes down to the fact that I may not look the most masculine, so that means I don’t fit the norm and therefore must be subjected to intolerance. Every time it happens it feels like a slap in the face from 'normal' society, saying that I should try and blend in.
I do have days where I feel really uncomfortable, and insecure. In certain places I don't wear certain things because it will trigger responses from people on the street, but why should I do that. I am only dressing in the way that makes me happy, expresses who I am, and I am bloody fabulous. I'm not going to apologise for that anymore.
Quite honestly the way some people dress offends me, and I could dress them down in public with a retort that would have them shaking in their ugly heteronormative boots- but I don't. That's because I choose to fight with love, and not with the same contempt people treat me with.
So honey wear whatever you want, be whoever you want and live your god-damn truth.
Shot By Rachel Pechey
Shop My Look:
Top: New Look
Trousers: Old, Similar
Shoes: Birkenstock
Sunglasses: Gucci