forthwritten

I've been reading littlebutfierce's musings on clothes and it's made me think. Last year quarridors and I went on a genderqueer shopping adventure which was enlightening to say the least (it was interesting seeing who was allowed in which changing room given we were trying on more or less identical clothes).

Mine is an awkward body. I am not skinny but I am relatively slim. I have a medical history of delayed bone growth which, combined with my ethnic background, means I am short for this country (and this time period – I am often the only one who doesn't have to watch their head in castles).

Buying clothes has always been fraught. There are shops where the smallest adult women's clothes size they have is far too big for me. Petite clothing is often very gendered – while it can be thoughtfully cut, it often highlights smallness and delicacy. My shoulders are sometimes too broad for them and shirts can be too tight around my upper arms – I'm not even that muscular so it bothers me how thin the clothes designers must think women are. Trousers are horrendous – I've never owned a pair that haven't been too long and women's trousers always, always have weird flappy bits at my hips.

Anyway, it's generally been a miserable experience and I've only gone shopping under extreme levels of duress and responded with similarly extreme levels of sulking. Usually my tolerance for clothes shopping is 30 minutes max and then my unfortunate companion(s) leave(s) me in a coffee or bookshop for several hours.

However, in the past eighteen months or so, I've discovered that the boys' section is much better than it has been – full of shirts and fine-knit jumpers and corduroy, even some formal suits and link cuff shirts (which I love because then I can wear cufflinks). For what feels like the first time, I am making proper decisions rather than those based on what's bearable and which fits me. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, I think I'm better dressed because of it.

I've always been fussy about how garments feel against my skin – I can't wear stuff that's made out of scratchy material or has uncomfortable stitching at the cuffs or collar - and I've always favoured natural fibres over synthetic. It turns out that I really like button-down shirts. I like crisp cotton and flannel and brushed cotton. I like playing with and contrasting textures, like a soft jumper with my fake leather jacket. I like muted colours with some richness to them – black, blue, green, grey, brown – but often wear these with something brighter like a scarf or gloves. I like clean lines and practical, functional design. I don't like fussiness or over decoration. I like details, like brightly coloured socks or a belt.

At a conference this summer I actually got compliments on my clothes – one of my friends said I looked like "a cool academic" in my cords and jacket and docs and studded belt. I think I'm okay with being a cool academic?

What it also highlights is how arbitrary this all is. Mine is a genderqueer body because I am a genderqueer person, but it's also a body that stubbornly refuses women's trousers and instead the best fitting trousers I have are from men's departments. Today I am a wearing an age 12 shirt and men's 28 waist trousers and a size 8 jumper. I am finding out more and more that clothing based on women's sizes and children's ages and even inches can be drastically different between, and even within, shops. There are other things too; I bought some new work trousers recently, there were chinos in both the women and men's sections, they cost exactly the same, and yet the men's trousers were made of thicker fabric.

And ultimately, all of this only makes me want to mess things up and refuse to conform to whatever someone says I should wear, whether this means by opaque sizing or advertising or glares. I will wear what fits me and what I feel good in, and I don't give a damn what section of the shop it came from.

Links
http://qwear.tumblr.com/
http://www.dapperq.com
http://artoftransliness.tumblr.com/

And some general ethical/sustainable clothing stuff
http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/
http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/tags/fashion+sustainability/
http://thegoodcloset.tumblr.com/
http://www.overdressedthebook.com/where-to-shop/

RAID array seems to have degraded AGAIN which is rather frustrating. I won't have time to sort it out until later, so will have to do regular backups to my external. Annoying annoying annoying. I wish I was a better computer geek so I could decide whether to go with Ubuntu and wine or some variety of Windows. Unfortunately I can't switch fully over to Linux as I need to run Wordsmith and I don't want to think what OOo might do to my thesis as it gets a) incredibly long and b) sent between my supervisor and me with annotations, notes etc.

Just finished reading Nobody Passes. It's a collection of personal essays exploring identity in terms of who you are, who you are not and who other people think you are. I liked the intersectionality aspect of it - there were people talking about how their POC identity interacts with their sexuality but also discussing how a genderqueer identity is problematic, how their queer identity is ignored when they're with their transgendered partner, how their disability and queer identities are intertwined, the difficult and conflicting narratives of different (South) Asian identities. Every essay contained something new - a different perspective, a different way of thinking about familiar things, and sometimes things that I've been privileged enough to never have considered before.
The last essay in the collection rankled me because it seemed to be talking about something very different; after the lucid, eloquent discussions of identity and labels and the significance of claiming or rejecting or being seem to claim or reject these labels, it seemed a bit odd to have a straight man who'd been involved with the kink community arguing that rather than defining a "politics based on pleasure and solidarity" as queer, it would be better to leave this space undefined so as to let people across sexualities "revel in a different kind of space to play" instead of them seeking to pass or creating new words and identities.

I admit that I dislike the term "play" and its implication that this is all a game, and especially after essays that discuss the dangers and difficulties and seriousness of intersectional or marginal identities. Of course identity can be playful e.g. genderfuck but to my mind, it seems that being playful about identity is a privilege. I'm also hesitant to define queerness as "pleasure and solidarity"; again, perhaps only in my mind, it seems connected to being a misfit and questioning or rejecting norms.

Anyway, packing time. Stop sniggering at the back, I mean in the dull, sorting-out-notes-and-filling-boxes sense rather than any other.