Exploring Masculinity & Femininity

Your style can either be utilized to express or manipulated to impress. Express meaning it’s a medium through which you express yourself. Impress meaning you allow social norms, trends, peers, family or other factors, impress upon what you wear and how you present yourself. We can never expect to be fully expressive, that’s just not how life works, but we can use fashion as a medium to be expressive. I want to use the term fashion loosely in terms of exploring femininity and masculinity. Clothes do not equal gender, however when accompanied with a certain frame of being, clothing can truly transform the way we see ourselves inside and outside of the gender binary. 

With that being said, the style (or lack thereof) I held for the first 14 years of my life was impressed upon me from many different sources. Whether that be my mother commandeering my wardrobe choices, observations of my peers, or whatever styles are considered more “respectable.” Quarantine allowed me to explore new styles. At first this was just in terms of fashion choices. I reached for “unflattering” silhouettes, I didn’t realize it but I was exploring a more masculine side of fashion and without meaning to, the other aspects of my style raced to keep up. Makeup became optional, thick rings were a must, my hair was a nuisance as I yearned for a cut, and man-spreading became second nature. I still felt like myself but part of me had been abandoned. 

At the peak of this I tried on one of my friends pink dresses, it was poofy and billowy, what she’d call a “fairy princess dress.” When I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror I cried. Confused, not able to recognize myself, I realized how far I had gone. It wasn’t that I wasn’t attracted to masculinity in myself, I was just scared of embracing femininity because of an unidentifiable weakness I associated with it. I would rather spectate such displays of femininity instead of identifying with them. Since then I’ve been working to feel more comfortable in makeup, dresses, and all in all being perceived as feminine. The culmination of overcoming this barrier came when I bought a poofy pink dress of my own, wore it out, and still felt like me. 

Now I feel very comfortable being expressive with my femininity and masculinity through fashion. I think exploring not only this duality but what occurs when we are expressive outside of this duality is crucial to expressing yourself through fashion and in other creative realms. I don’t think we should shy away from new modes of expressing ourselves nor do I think we can truly know ourselves until we try something that either entices us or scares us.