The Joy in Queer Fashion & Style
Being queer for me was the experience of mixing all the things I thought belonged apart together.
I asked Tracy recently if my knee-high compression socks were gay.
"Yep, they're very gay because YOU ARE SO VERY GAY," they exclaimed.
I respond like I usually do when they get loud for dramatic effect; I squeal and act like I'm shocked, jumping up and down before grabbing them in a tight hold so we can laugh with me together.
These moments happen regularly because I still wonder if my performance sends the right signals.
For a long time, the way I dressed gave me a license to deny my identity. For every supposition about my queer, I had a heel or skirt to clothe me in silence. For every desire to butch up my femme, I had a new MAC shade to test and a fresh powder to press.
BOTH/AND were not a part of my vocabulary, and therefore I could not hold space for any shade of gray; it was one way or another, all or nothing, steering myself to stay in lanes that didn't serve me and kept me strategically in the closet.
These rigid binary dynamics tumbling in my head were constructed for me, not by me. I was a result of the culture at large, which started designating a color to gender in the 1940s. I wasn't born this way; I was molded.
When I eventually came out, the joy I felt had little to do with sex. Being queer for me was the experience of mixing all the things I thought belonged apart together. I had long hair and liked it. I used to think that I had to have short hair for me to be a real lesbian.
"What if I am a lesbian with long hair?" I thought. My wardrobe became the equivalent of compound words; I put incredible things that stood just fine on their own together with others, so they created a heaven of hybrids.
I wore sweats with heels sometimes, tank tops and skirts others. I liked trucker's hats with my overalls and adorable wedge sandals. I always wore lipstick; the redder, the better, whether I ran or rested.
The contradictions I once saw suddenly made sense. These pieces were better together, not apart; they functioned alongside each other, not in spite. It was the perfect way to be queer, a quilt on the canvas of my body.
Queer resistance is woven into the very fabric of the fashion industry.
Our queer family has taken what is given and made it ours. We did this head-to-toe, underwear, and outerwear. These were statements meant to see; these were messages intended to survive.
Fashion is how we find our family; it is how I found myself.