North Campus, University of Washington

This interview took place a few weeks ago, but I’ve only just been able to recover the recording. Thanks to Michelle for sharing her time and thoughts, and for allowing me to continue the theme of featuring folks whose names start with “M.”

What kinds of words and labels — if any — do you use to identify yourself?

I guess there’s, in terms of gender and sexuality there’s straight, cisgender female. Race is…a little more…I don’t want to say complicated, but I do feel like I take on a different…different words according to the context. According to the situation I could be a woman of colour, or I could be Asian American, or Chinese American. So that’s the race part. Able-bodied for the most part and middle class. So I guess that covers it.

What are the distinctions for you between those categories? What kinds of situations would you use each of those in?

It really depends on the scale of common struggle, if you will. For example, saying I’m Chinese American would imply complicity in the Asian American and woman of colour groups. So “woman of colour” I think allows me to identify with issues that not only just pertain to me as someone who’s Asian or Chinese, but things that I share in common with other women of colour. For example, the fact that I’ll look through a fashion magazine or turn on the television, and it’s not very likely that I’ll see someone of my skin colour being represented. And for me, you know, it’s an Asian thing. It’s like, I don’t see someone who’s Asian, I don’t see someone who’s Chinese on there. But it’s something that other women of colour, whether they’re Black, Hispanic, Asian American, it’s something that they face as well.

[Description: A waist-up photo of Michelle, a somewhat pale Asian woman with straight dark hair that falls just below her ears. She is wearing a light tan blazer, black vest, white shirt, and a floral-patterned tie, as well as oval-shaped glasses. Behind her is an unpainted wooden fence with long branches climbing across the top.]

Thanks to Foster for submitting this piece and writing up the description for the photo! The tags are from his original post.

yellowbeesteward:

When J. Bee at sassyfrasscircus asked me to contribute to a fashion blog, I was pretty psyched. Of course I would want to help run a fashion blog! and then…the dread hit me.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I love fashion, but lately I’ve been having a fashion crisis of sorts. This isn’t the kind of fashion crisis that involves massive regret over past purchases or one of those realizations that everything I own is actually really, super ugly. It’s not like that.
 
In the past, I experienced fashion as a (perceived and identified) femme lady. These days I’m doing it as a femme guy. As an able-bodied, thin, femme-woman presenting person, fashion was relatively easy. Clothes were made to fit my body and I was never forced to think really critically about my femme identity on a daily basis. Don’t get me wrong, I did think about it and was constantly conflicted about my experience as a genderqueer femme guy who presented as a femme lady. But through my daily lived experience, I can’t say my identity was cause for much conflict. No one every questioned my femininity when they perceived me as a lady; folks were comfortable with me as far as the way I dressed goes. Femininity is socially acceptable (although denigrated and devalued), but only when its packaged a certain way and on certain people. For perceived-as-masculine people, the expression of femininity can carry with it a set of restricting assumptions, suspicion, and violence. I’ve always been aware of this societal bullshit, but for the first time in my life I’ve had to navigate my femme identity as a guy and doing so has created a sort of unfamiliar love-hate relationship with fashion.
 
All of the sudden, I had begun to experience a strange sense of shame in regards to my femme fashion preference. These assumptions, the resistance to my identity from others has a strange way of hitting me all at once sometimes. Don’t get me wrong. I am proud of my femme guyhood and I strive to find new ways to express it daily. I refuse to make compromises— I refuse to stop wearing my favorite green “women’s” peacoat or my fly purple “lady’s” skinny jeans. And in a world where femininity on a guy is something wholly undesired, I manage to enjoy and relish in my daily defiance of the masculinity I’m expected to exude. Sometimes, I feel an unfamiliar shame that conflicts with the pride I’ve always had, this insane pressure that can make me want to go home and change right then and there.  I’m working hard to overcome that shame, and to embrace and play up my femmeness. This presents a challenge: In what ways can I continue to embrace my femininity though men’s clothes, and womens clothes when I want to, in ways that make me feel comfortable on a daily basis?

-Foster

[Description: Foster standing in a room with a checkered floor and tiled walls. He is wearing a green pea coat with black skinny jeans, some black combat style boots, and a long gray, cream and black patterned scarf. He is standing with his hands in his coat pockets]

New interview coming up sometime in the next day or so!

In the meantime, enjoy this picture of a rather stylish Totoro submitted by Ran.

[Description: A stuffed Totoro doll (a rotund rabbit/cat creature with dinnerplate eyes and a wide grin) wearing a plaid skirt that’s much too big for it.]

Thanks to Melissa for volunteering for this interview. I hope to feature many more pieces like this in the near future!

What kinds of words or labels would you use to identify yourself, if any?

To identify myself? Genderqueer is probably the big one, queer and genderqueer parallel to one another. Autistic. Asperger’s diagnosis so that kind of plays into it too. Female, but I’ve kind of pulled away from that lately, so maybe not so much anymore. I guess white, kinda sorta white, whitish. Lower-middle class, if we’re going for class perspective.

[Description: Melissa stands against a wall next to a city sidewalk with trees and cars, around dusk — the streetlights are on but the sky is still somewhat light. Melissa is wearing a black polo shirt with yellow stripes running along the collar, black slacks, dark shoes, glasses, a thin bracelet, and a diamond patterned beanie.]

So you said that lately you’re kind of moving away from that female identifier?

I guess I shouldn’t really say “lately,” it’s been probably six, seven years now since I was using female exclusively. I went through this kind of a trans period where I thought that female was just totally completely wrong, had always been wrong, and then realized that maybe wasn’t the whole picture either and kind of fell somewhere in the middle, and it’s been sort of tipping back from one side to the other ever since. This theme in my life, I’m always kind of in the middle of something. Neither male nor female really are 100% suitable at this point.

I was wondering if you think that your clothing affects the way that people perceive you.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Some of that depends on the clothing and some depends on the environment. I tend to get more, especially when my hair doesn’t look like it does now, right now it’s way too long. I’m used to having it a lot shorter than it is. If I’m going to get he or him, it’s going to be at work because everyone’s wearing the same thing. It’s a polo that kind of looks crappy on everybody. If I’m in an environment where there’s lots of other queer people around, it’s more likely that I’ll be read as either genderqueer or genderfluid than out in those public spaces.

You mentioned that at work that you’re seen as masculine or male.

Every once in a while from behind. The boobs are hard to hide. Not to say that I haven’t tried, but it’s hard at work. When my hair is shorter, I’ll get the “hey sir” every once in a while from behind, but then I’ll turn around and they’ll freak out and get all embarrassed.

I wonder if the kind of workplace you’re in, kind of a tech store, if people assume?

I would expect that that’s probably part of it too. You have 150 employees and we have about 18 women, and I’m one of the only ones that’s not a cashier. There’s a very strict divide between the sales end of it and the more operational end.

So if you’re buying clothes or going through your closet, is there a method to that?

Is there a method? Gender is going to be the most important part. I don’t do pink, don’t do skirts. I try to avoid being read as, I guess I can’t say avoid being read as feminine, but avoid being read at the least as non-queer feminine for as long as possible. This is where the autism comes into it too, because there’s a lot of things that I can’t wear because of sensory issues. So, if the pants are too tight, or if they have too many buttons, or if there’s stuff up around the neck, that’s all stuff that’s automatically, certain fabrics I can’t really tolerate, so it always ends up being some variation on the theme of slacks or jeans and a shirt that’s not super tight. Usually black, kind of covers over the boobs a little bit.

Have you heard of any designers or any labels that took this sort of thing into account?

Not a whole lot, to be honest. I know that there are things in the works. Are you familiar with Genderfork? I know that the people behind Genderfork are trying to open a thrift store in San Francisco that’s like all gender-neutral and genderqueer clothing. But that’s really the only murmuring that I’ve heard.

Nothing on ability.

Not at all. Definitely nothing on ability. Ability is always the piece that’s kind of…race, class and gender. Race, class, and gender, sexuality. It’s always kind of, I mean there’s a lot of pieces that are left out, but that’s one of the most prominent ones that tends to be on the wayside.

So when you’re deciding what to wear, you want to avoid the perception that you’re an unambiguously straight woman. Is that a challenge, avoiding that?

Again, it kind of comes down to where you are. But in a lot of instances, yeah. Especially with kind of the social circles that I tend to populate.

Going back to something from earlier, you said you saw a big difference in other people’s perceptions when your hair is shorter or longer?

It’s all about environment. At work I’ve definitely seen a difference when it’s longer compared to when it’s shorter in terms of how people relate to me. At home not at all. I’m not necessarily more likely to be read as male when my hair’s shorter, but I’m more likely to be read as queer when my hair’s shorter. One thing I’ve gotten a lot of at work lately is, when I started working there, everybody was under the impression that I was a lesbian. And, I mean, at the time that was how I identified. And then I started dating a boy, and there was this big outcry over, “oh, you’re not gay after all! Oh, I guess she’s not queer anymore! Going to have to take your card now.” And I’m almost afraid to let it get long now, because it’s one more thing that’s separating me.

It’s like you have to work to cultivate it.

Yeah. And if you’re, I think the word bisexual is really the word that’s in vogue right now, if you’re somewhere between straight and gay, then the problem doubles. Because then the gays don’t read you as gay either. This guy at work, very gay, very very very gay, like Adam Lambert gay, goes, “so who’s that boy you were with?” And I say, “oh, he’s my boyfriend.” And he goes, “oh!” And he says, “well I’ll be taking your gay card back now, if that’s okay with you.” And now every time I mention to him that I was at a queer bar the night before, or I was going to a queer event on campus, he goes “what are you doing there, you’re not queer. You have a boyfriend!” It’s just, you know. It has it’s own challenges.

Here comes the first written post to appear in this space — many thanks to wildunicornherd for submitting this piece on class, queerness, and “dapperness.”

I’m working a closing shift on Saturday night. The coffeeshop closes at ten; if we’re lucky we get out by a quarter after. This night there was a last-minute rush and by the time the shift supervisor and I get everything done it’s nearly 10:30.

“Are you almost ready to go?” she yells as I’m in the bathroom doing the quickest half-Windsor knot I can manage. I straighten my tie, adjust my collar, throw my coat on, and we head out. By the time I get downtown to the queer dance party it’s quarter to midnight, but the party’s just getting started. I elbow my way up to the bar, suddenly realizing that my shirt smells like coffee from sitting in the locker in the back all day, and order a Steam Whistle. A dyke friend down at the other end spots the tie and gives me a thumbs-up.

It’s those couple of days before payday when I’m flat broke. I don’t have money for food, let alone TTC tokens, so I’m walking an hour across town to a counselling appointment. I waited nearly half a year to make it to the top of the waiting list for queer-friendly, sliding-scale therapy. I hope the nice receptionist is in, he’ll let me pay for this week’s session next week, when I have money.

As I hurry along Queen Street West I eye a lovely pair of brogues in an upscale shoe store window; they’re $100. A stylish blazer, a steal at $65. A suit—well, I guess “if you have to ask…”

I submit a photo of myself to a queer fashion photoblog. The blazer was $8 at the local Salvation Army and the sleeves are a tad too long, but it makes me feel like a million bucks.

What is “dapperness” all about? I think a big part of it is idealizing a type of masculinity, the “dandy” if you like. It’s a very retro aesthetic—no coincidence dapper got trendy now that everyone’s watching Mad Men—and a very classed aesthetic, and I haven’t seen anyone talking about the class bit. Dapper is preppy, upscale, hip, and precise. It’s upper-middle-class. It’s not just about masculinity. It’s well-to-do masculinity.

Don’t get me wrong; I love the dapper aesthetic. If I could wear bowties and brogues every day I probably would. But dapper, for me, is cosplay. It’s upper-middle-class cosplay, while a whole lot of dapper queers out there are the real thing.

Low-income fashion dilemmas—well, first, let me say that fashion is the furthest thing from my mind. I want clothes. I need a microwave, and a toaster, and a couch, and chairs, and paint. I need to seriously think about what I’m going to do long-term because for the foreseeable future I’m going to be on EI and OW and that means my maximum income is going to be $585 a month. I’ll be lucky if I can afford food. As the protest sign in my counsellor’s office says, “COULD YOU SURVIVE ON $585?” (I have an awesome counsellor.)

Considering that, it seems frivolous beyond belief to so much as think about stylish clothes, or indeed anything beyond mere survival. Because, don’t you know, poor people aren’t supposed to want nice things. If other queers, queers who lived with their parents all through undergrad and are now grad students who are gonna get tenure in 40 years, can dress up nice and go to parties, why can’t I, a queer who worked in minimum-wage food service and is now on welfare and hopes to get on disability?

So there’s this unresolved tension between dapper as dress code, conspicuous consumption, middle class queer shibboleth (this is why I stopped going to kink events, by the way—it’s not about sex, it’s about dropping ridiculous amounts of money on clothes and gear)—and dapper as defiance, as refusal to conform to what middle-class people think low-income people should look like, should prioritize. Post-dapper? Sure, why the hell not…

Lynette, Friday afternoon at the office.

Big thanks to Lynette for volunteering to be the first person to appear on the site!

[Description: Lynette, a pale woman with dark blonde hair, stands smiling with her arms on her hips in front of a white wall. She is wearing narrow oval-shaped glasses, dangling earrings, a white shirt with sleeves that end just below her elbows, a studded belt with a large circular buckle, a dark brown skirt, and tall brown boots.]

Hi there everyone, and welcome to Style/Critical!

This blog takes as its starting point the idea that style is both personal and political. Our bodies and identities affect our ability to access different styles and the likelihood that we will see representations of folks like ourselves in the media.

To that end, this blog is about celebrating a diversity of styles beyond the representations we are generally exposed to in popular culture, as well as opening up critical conversations about how our identities and experiences shape and are shaped by the styles we adopt and call our own. Content will vary from photo posts to interviews to essays and reflections from contributors. If you’d like to submit something, use the “submit” button at the top of the page.