7/18/22

I lied I've done nothing.

I would like to start by apologizing for this being the first week I've not written on Saturday and posted on Sunday, however I have a good excuse; I was actually not home for the first time all summer! I went to the beach with my family, which honestly was not terrible, but mostly because I'm refusing to allow myself to be negative about it, I was super excited to be at the beach, I wanted to be out of the house, I love the ocean, I love boardwalks and Chickees and Pete's crab fries, so what is there I could possibly complain about anyways. Well Ill tell you. It was unfortunately with my family. And its not necessarily that I dislike every member of my family, or that they did anything to ruin the little vacation, but as I sat on the beach, fingering the sand and reading my silly little Ottessa Moshfeigh novel, I couldn't help but think about all the people Id rather be with. I really do love my family, and I will never (publicly) say otherwise, but I'm a firm believer in prioritizing -mentally- the family I build, rather than the one I was born into. At the end of the day, I don't feel very emotionally connected to any blood-relative other than my mom, and as much as I really do have a lot of love for all of them, we just don't have a lot in common. I find it counterproductive for my mental health to stress any further about why my dad doesn't like me or why my sister and I don't get along, rather I would like to invest my energy into the people I know have my happiness and peace in mind and theirs in mine. I spent a lot of that two day trip thinking about how I almost feel like I waste memories on them. How many events have I spent pondering why things in my family are always so tense, when I could be enjoying the environment significantly more had I spent the time with people who don't use the F slur and make me feel like a burden for having emotions I cant quite put into words. How different would this beach trip have been had I been with the family I've spent years building, rather than with the ones who are on vastly different paths than I am? And this isn't to say I'm not grateful for everything they've done for me, but its no secret my very large family has some very large issues, issues that I've spent 17 years trying to solve and blaming myself for, when that energy could so better be spent on working on myself for myself instead of for people who don't even really like who I am. 

This is the stuff I've spent the last three months thinking about, and I really do think its quite sad, from others perspective at least. I know how important family should be, and I know a lot of people have the mindset of blood truly being thicker than water, but I simply disagree. I do agree that family is important, and I don't think I ever want to live in a world where I don't talk to or see my family semi-regularly, but I also believe in protecting my health, mental and physical, and at this very point in my life, I would like to explore healthier options for the people I surround myself with. I don't think my family consists of bad people, just that we've all lived very very different lives, and the differences in  each have shaped us into very different people that have a lot of trouble seeing each other eye to eye. I try not to blame anyone for it, and see the situation for what it is; a family consisting of people who have very little in common with one another, and as much as I do love them, I have no desire to be friends with any of them. And I think that's where a lot of the issues stem from. We all expect so much from our relationships. A lot of people love people for who they want them to be, not for who they really are in their core, and I don't think I'm one of those people. Not that I'm this all knowing meta-human who can always see people for who they are, but at a certain point, you have to give up seeing what you want or what you used to have, and just see the relationship for what it is; very different people who are simply too separate in their identities to have anything remotely mentally stimulating to talk about. 

Anyways this summer has been spent thinking about my relationships with people and how they affect me. I spent my middle school and prior years living in a mostly happy family, there weren't many issues I thought too deeply on or noticed being abnormal apart from my parents divorce which is pretty common anyways. High school however was a very different story, in which I spent a lot of time struggling to find my role in the family. Why did I feel so separated from everyone else? I think a lot of it can be summed up by being a teenage with a lot of new and confusing thoughts, but the circumstances of my life and literal DNA matured me quickly, so not much was new beyond being overly emotional of things I could have kept a more level head about had I been in a different mental space. But I think something that really isn't talked enough about in terms of growing up is how being queer can affect literally everything. In a lot of situations I felt like a hush subject, nobody asked me the questions they asked my sister or knew much about my life beyond what they could see, and as a 15 year old that's a very alienating feeling. So seemingly right off the bat my growth in the family setting felt extra foreign to the normal abnormality everyone else felt at the time. What didn't help was that I didn't exactly hide my identity well. I was never apologetic for the way I expressed myself, but I just figured nobody thought anything of it. They would all just assume I was a new generation who did things differently then they were all accustomed to. I was very wrong, I just didn't know they had questions. My family was never one to touch on uncomfortable subjects, so rather than building a relationship to which they could be apart of my life, they focused on talking amongst themselves trying to figure it out without my knowledge. Long story short my sister found out when I was 12 via looking through the Instagram DMs on my iPod touch, who then told my parents, I confided in my aunt about it who then told my entire extended family, and many year in between in which I had to convince my parents I was "normal" while trying to figure out why I wasn't, before finally coming to terms with it and discovering everyone else had come to the same conclusion without ever talking to me directly about it. All this to say I spent many years trying to do figure myself out, without letting anyone else know, then all of a sudden everyone knows and now I don't know what I'm allowed to talk about because we never had the conversation. This is going somewhere I promise. Now I'm 18, deciding where to go to school and what on Earth I would like to effectively spend the rest of my life doing, before settling on fashion in Arizona. Finally time to explore myself without the restrictions of family or forced friendships tampering with what I find. Now, here I am, 19 years old going into my sophomore year, writing a blog about god knows what just trying to feel like I'm doing something with the amount of energy I've invested into what I want to be.

I bring all this up, family, mental growth, alienating feelings, queerness, change, etc., because it all ties into fashion. Into my brand and the aesthetic I associate with. I feel like I've talked a lot on this page about the things I find interesting, and the things I experience on a day-to-day basis, but haven't really talked about how it all happened. How I, just like everyone else, can be put into a group of like-minded individuals and have common ground on certain topics with most of them. I'm not going to act like I planned all this out, as if I had a mindmap of topics to discuss before settling on the secret topic I had been building up to the whole time, but I knew I was going to talk about this stuff at some point anyways so why not know when it seems like it makes sense. These subjects of self-exploration and identity leading to 'discovery' are things so prevalent in the fashion design industry however, that I do think its important for these things about me to be said, if no other reason than I haven't gone to therapy in almost a year and I miss that woman every waking second. Queerness and femininity are too things I hold very near to my heart, I have experiences with both that have made me who I am and especially impacted the fashion I find most interesting and want to make. 

With that in mind I want to talk about the most talked about men's runway show, being John Galliano's Fall/Winter 2004 collection. The looks seemed to take inspiration from a combination of sportswear, 1950s-60s formal suits, with themes ranging from 50s mafia films to old westers. The most famous looks were the ones that seemed to take inspiration from boxing attire, with SFX makeup to make the models look bloodied and beaten, as well as standard tank-tops, boxers, and tracksuits.  Galliano used lots of denim, fur, and leather, but most notable were the repeated usage of newsprint-themes patterns with Galliano's logo printed all over the pieces. I wont claim to know what I'm talking about, but I will say what I liked. I don't know how the collection came across then, but it does have a lot of homo-erotic undertones. Models grabbing crotches, legs and stomachs exposed, deep-cut v lines exposing hairy chests and and oiled up abdomens, not to mention lots of booty-cut shorts and cropped tops, the whole collection seemed to be a take on feminizing the most masculine appearing genres of men; athletes, cowboys, and gangsters, genres that all had very prevalent influences on cinema in the mid to late 1900's. Galliano took cowboy boots and cow print leather coats and put them on a model in a jockstrap and drag makeup. I love this show for that reason alone, let alone the fact that he did it in a way that didn't seem tacky or cheap. Galliano took themes literally everybody knows and made it gay, but in a way that combined both the masculine, and feminine attributes of the theme. And that's why I brought up this show. Whatever reasons John Galliano had to create this collection, it comes off as a hurrah to men in the fashion industry, displaying that fashion doesn't need to be so easily defined as something gay men or feminine men are into, but as something constantly changing in the eyes of the beholder. Maybe someone's homophobic ass grandpa could see that collection and think it simply was cowboys, boxers, and gangsters being represented, but someone's twink of a grandson could see it and think "slay". And personally I think that's beautiful.

Ok I'm done. I've not made enough jokes in this post and its getting exhausting so I'm gonna call it a day. Thank you to whoever read this far, I know only people I know have been reading consistently so nobody but me was stressed about being a few days behind schedule, but I'm so terribly sorry it will most likely happen again. Also I wanted to say that in the first two days of my depop being open I sold four items so thank you to the people who bough, please continue to buy I still have a lot of stuff I want to get rid of that will most likely be taken down when I move and I know I have cute shit on there that some of you motherfuckers could want so don't be a bitch, that $20 you've been saving should be mine. My depop is "christianreidcloset" the link is in my references page as will be the pictures from the John Galliano show I was talking about. Love you all very much, thank you for reading if you did, Ill talk to you Sunday.

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