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I’m 16, and I'm friends with a large group of straight men. I've never shied away from expressing myself and my emotions the way I want to, so I know my persona is, for the most part, respected by my peers. But my appearance is an entirely different problem. Raised Christian, ethnically Jewish, living in a small town, and undeniably queer, my conscience is overrun by a million opinions that don’t belong to me. As I get dressed for the day, sorting through all the pop fashion trends I am still trying to figure out how to style, I can't help but criticize my clothing choices whenever I find an outfit I might like. I just bought these jeans but they're my sisters and the pre-made tears go a little too far up my thigh. This is my all-time favorite shirt, but it slims down my shoulders and my friends compliment me more when my arms look big. I love these shoes but the girls in my class are the only other ones who agree. A queer in a mind-numbingly heterosexual world.
At 17 it begins. My guy friends and I aren't as close anymore, and I've been slowly consuming more media produced by those I have much more in common with. I learn codes and ways to be me while still resting in the comfort of having the ability to blend in around those who don't know their meaning. I learn codes that tell people who also know them that I'm one of them, and we can connect on that basis. All-the-while Im also learning ways to improve upon my own style. By 18 I'm in fashion school, with years of growing experience under my belt. However, an issue arises once I get to University. Those little codes I learned, the key implications in my style that tell people who I am, everyone else has now learned them as well.
TikTok, as powerful a tool as it has been for my generation, has in itself a 50/50 divide between helpful and catastrophic to a normal way of life. For me, it showed me I was in fact not the only queer person within 100 miles of me, it showed me designer collections, it showed me “Get Ready With Me"'s with men that dressed like me (the gay ones), it showed me how to hone in on my interests. The downside is it showed everyone else the same things, and soon enough, “fashion” became a trend in and of itself. It wasn't one specific item or collection, a model, or a new line, it was the idea surrounding fashion, and everyone clamoring to be seen as being a part of it.
In my own experiences, fashion made me who I am. It took me from the awkward, prepubescent, skinny jeans and a pink bomber jacket, to a year year-old 3rd-year fashion student who writes articles about queer symbolism hidden within stolen fashion trends.
I say this because, such as myself, there are thousands of little gay boys and girls and anything and everything in between who spent years finding themselves. Who knew who they were but not how to show it? And for so many of them, fashion was that vice, that one thing they were missing that says you're happy, sad, angsty, or undeniably queer. Fashion, especially in smaller communities, is a voice of its own. We saw objective examples of this in the 60s - 90s, one earring in the right ear meant you were signaling to other gay people that you were gay in a time in which pearl necklaces weren't quite as acceptable. Handkerchiefs were also in abundance for the community at this time. Colors meant certain things, kinky, vanilla, all the typical gay 80s cliches, and which pocket you chose to hang the handkerchief from meant something as well. Today, these codes are much less strict, and more a test of the observer's gaydar.
However, a less common fact about the codes prominent in the late 1900s was that, after a few decades, too many other people began wearing earrings only in one ear, or handkerchiefs out of their back pockets. The colors were also stolen, but by a much more malicious group who I'm sure gay people had no problem not being associated with, thus letting them have them. And the same is happening now.
The fashion industry is overexposed. Social discourse has created an atmosphere in the industry that has made fashion one of the most idealized aspects of wealth, stability, and appearance. Archive fashion is highly prioritized, and dressing “outside of the box” has, in its own right, become the new norm. It is not at all uncommon to happen upon a video online in which men will encourage “dressing gay” to appear to have a good fashion sense, but like most things, these men aren't dressing for themselves, they're dressing for what will get them the most attention.
There's a specific narrative that has been occurring for years, in which women are forced to repeatedly establish that what they wear and how they present is not at all associated with what they think men will want to see them in. This is not at all the case for men's fashion. Men have no shame in their low antics, and thus proudly announce that what they're doing, in more than just fashion, is based solely on what women have told them they want (they draw the line at actually respecting them though). This new era of “dressing gay” is perfectly encapsulated by these two trends; “you don't have style unless you look 50% homeless and 50% gay” and “Me with my bike, patchwork tattoos, mullet, doc martins, and dad mustache”. We are currently in a moment in
time in which certain communities are actively dressing against their own instinct, dressing for opinions and approval rather than self-identification or expression, as is the way for everyone else.
I preface this article the way I did to paint a picture. A gay man, experiencing circumstantial shame for appearing the way he does, actively trying to dull it down to blend in more with his surroundings, finally finding himself when he moves away and begins coming into his own. A straight man, driven by the idea of success and validation, attempts to masquerade as someone built into a queer-presenting space, solely to appear to be someone he openly admits he is not. This is but one example of how, not just fashion, but art as a subject loses its significance over time. We see it in Music with artists like MGK and GAYLE producing the same song over and over again. We see it in Modern Art where installations of blank white canvases take over spots of giant Renaissance paintings. We see it in Fashion where decades of designers, seamstresses, pattern makers, and board directors contribute years of their lives to effectively get ignored in favor of a Neo-Nazi wearing the same pair of over-sized rainboots I got hand-me-downed from my sister when I was eight.
Taken from Vinnie Hacker's Instagram
Fashion in queer spaces goes hand in hand. Ballroom culture overlaps in many ways with the runway, leaving an implicit connection between the two. As a result, the way they dress strongly correlates with who they actually are, and I believe it's especially prominent now, in a time in which any and all communities can be observed and noted upon and almost any time. This is why there's questions arise about a larger group of people dressing the way we used to dress to see each other. Further, this isn't at all a new theme in fashion. All subcultures of fashion have their distinct ways of expressing that they are part of the community. Skater and punk culture is an amazing example of this. On one hand, there's the idea of being a "poser", that almost fearmongers people away from their exclusive forms of expression, but these two groups are also easily distinguishable from others, and what's more, easy to distinguish when one is, in fact, a poser. The same thing is what's being said now. Queer spaces use symbols to signify their uniformity to one another, in whatever shape that may come. And when that information gets into the hands of those who would only use it for themselves, essentially appropriating the community these symbols represent, it forces us to look for new ways to communize so that the people who threaten us are no longer in our safe spaces.
What fashion means to me is the fight. The fight to express yourself, both internally and externally, grows from someone scared to be seen as who you are to becoming someone unashamed. To me, fashion means individuality. The ability to shape and transform and change your perception of yourself by the colors and patterns and cuts of the garments you adorn your body with. And to me, style is not something someone should replicate. You shouldn't see someone else and say “I wanna dress like that” You should ask “How would I dress if I was that”. Style and fashion for so many people are who they are, as rich as that is coming from someone currently wearing bright blue Adidas and a Duke University hoodie, it's something that allows communities to speak without speaking, share without sharing, and make their bodies match their minds. And by taking those communities and mimicking them, trying to dress in a way that is objectively not true, you strip that expression away.
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