April 16th, 2012
I am a trans* man in a dress.
I put this dress on this morning, thinking why the hell not,
After a quick look in the mirror, I squared my shoulders and
almost ran out the door before I lost the balls to wear a dress today.
It’s interesting, knowing I’m a man in a dress, while all
others see is some chick with short hair, a nose ring, and hairy pits.
It’s liberating in the most surprising of ways to know that
I am a man in a dress today, even if others know not.
It’s empowering and emboldening to wear a dress today. While
others wear dresses and think nothing of it, I am a man, wearing a dress. It
means something different to be a man and wear a dress. It means something even
more different to be a trans* man and wear a dress.
It means that I am acknowledging my identity of a man and
somehow lessening that identity by wearing a dress. Something so simple as a
piece of fabric apparently has the power to erase an entire identity.
I think about it quite differently. Being a man and wearing
a dress means that I am picking up my identity and molding it with my bare
hands rather than accepting the clean-cut, cookie cutter, mass-produced
identity typically forced upon people at birth.
