fashion
As clear as I was about my sexuality, I was just as unclear about how I wanted to look and what felt good.
Fashion is a language that expresses survival, rebellion, freedom, visibility and invisibility, identity, representation and inclusion.
For many people, fashion serves as a vehicle for expressing their unique identities, their political beliefs, and their sexual orientation.
None of these characters is perfect but in their imperfections we can learn more about body positivity, gender sensitivity, privilege, consent, unconscious and implicit bias, sexuality, masculinity, their intersections with class, religion, race, age, and more.
In tailoring the way we present ourselves to the world – be it as fashionista, frump or an artful fusion of the two – we think we are the ones making a choice about how we express our gender and sexuality along with other markers of our identity.
Why must others judge her appearance and grace
When true beauty is not confined to a face?
In a world obsessed with the outer shell,
She knows in her heart inner beauty dwells.
For women like me, there is an enormous lack of options in addition to the market that relegates us to a corner of ‘plus-size brands’
Clothes for me are our first line of defence. They are also our first act of providing relief.
I’ve essentially thought of movement as a kind of freedom, but one that has the capacity to destabilise you in some way. My most creative moments are when I’m not moving, when I am in fact rooted and still.
I find that my own clothes are all just pieces of a larger archive I’m slowly constructing: an archive of the women I love, a half-hearted attempt at mimicking what I love.
How could I be trans if I didn’t tick off all the correct checkboxes demanded by politics, law, society and even the transgender community itself?
There’s always another way of presenting a look, attire, accessories and bodies; of presenting the way we feel about ourselves and our sexuality, of presenting an acceptance of diversity.
While women’s colleges are certainly a step ahead of other institutions in creating spaces of liberation and encouraging freedom of choice, this rare advantage must expand itself onto the landscape of our entire country.