Unglamourous & Nonbinary
I grew up a cosplayer. Glamour and aesthetics as an art form have always been my happy place. But this strange pandemic era has found me exploring the absence of glamour, shadow glamour, the Unglamourous.
I would never wish to take someone elseโs joy from them. I totally understand why people were dressing up for their one outing to get groceries or even just for themselves at home. I used to do that in the Before Times. Now Iโm exploring a different way... the โdown and dirtyโ way, as Clarissa Pinkola Estรฉs (author of Women who Run with the Wolves) calls it.
To me, it feels like hibernation. It feels like saving my energy for all the glamour Iโll need โwhen this is overโ and โwhen we can go out againโ - which seems to be starting nowish.
Some of it relates to the concept of your โghost outfitโ - the outfit that you die in is the one you wear forever as a ghost - as many of us feeling like wraiths endlessly wandering the hallways of our own Bly Manor. Except mine is a two bedroom apartment and my ghost outfit is my favorite pajamas (like Annie Sawyer). Siri, play Every Day Is Exactly The Same by Nine Inch Nails. Some of it is the anthesis of the Magical Girl trope.
One of the reasons I loved Jennifer Connellyโs Sarah in Labyrinth is her โghost outfitโ is practical. Consisting of a loose fitting shirt, jeans, and sensible FLAT shoes. She doesnโt look like a princess except for the costume at the beginning (in Drag) and the ballroom scene (the male projection of what she should look like).
But I also carry a deep fondness in my heart for Sailor Uranus. All of the Sailor Scouts are โfemaleโ supposedly but this one pushes the boundary of binary...
the language of gender
My friend Angeliska and I have been in this reinvention journey into the non-binary. When they told me about their egg cracking, mine did too. It turns out, our femininity was mainly performative, drag, and it took removing the audience to see how deep that ran into our core beings.
"Please try to refrain from addressing me directly in messages as โHey lady!โ or โHey woman!โ or โHey girl!โ or โHey mama!โ because it makes me feel uncomfortable and itchy. Iโm still figuring all this (my gender identity) out, because none of these were options I really knew were available for me, until fairly recently. Even the words/descriptors that are close enough for me, arenโt really quite right yet. One of the most important things that Iโm learning is that I donโt owe anyone justification, or explanations. I donโt owe anyone androgyny. And thatโs still hard for me - because I spent my entire life being told that I owed everyone a certain, very constrictive, very boring version of femininity. "ย ย -- Angeliska Polacheck
I too feel itchy when people say those things to me. The color pink sends me into a gender dysphoria induced rage. Someone put pink in my hair recently (long story for another blog) and I could not even live with it for 24 hours.
On TikTok, thereโs something called a Themlin. Femlin but non-binary. A Femlin, lady-gremlin, is a gal who would be part of the (sassy, woke, feminist) Bimbo movement but is kinda too dirty... A bimbo but make it grunge. Itโs a lot, I know, but thatโs the shortest way to explain it.
Iโm leaning into this Themlin concept. A few months ago I was surprised to find I like jogger pants now. I realized when I wear them with a Henley tank it gives me a gender euphoria from wanting to be Sigourney Weaver in Alien or Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 when I was little. Side note: this tiktok explains why this character was my childhood nonbinary icon. Iโm also reverting to wearing bike shorts, something I did a lot as a kid. Basically rediscovering how I dressed when I was a feral woodland โtomboyโ child who was definitely definitely nonbinary but did not yet have language for it.
I have my clients to thank for this language. Over the last 3.5 years of owning my own salon, I have watched a few clients blossom as they realize they are trans or nonbinary and progress into their gender identity with gender-affirming clothes or hairstyles. The more I validated them, the more I realized I was validating myself, too.
While concept of my being nonbinary isnโt new, the awareness and language around it is new. For me personally, I did not realize that this also falls under the Transgender category umbrella.
performative feminity
My once bestie of 20 years, although more androgynous when we initially became friends, developed into a High Femme in our 20s and 30s. When we went out I often femmed up to be her counterpart because we liked wearing loosely corresponding outfits. I was always more goth, but in femme drag. It took me longer than her to get ready. When our relationship ended, I realized how much I was changing my aesthetic to meet her halfway, how much money I wasted on clothes I didnโt even feel comfortable in. I took longer to get ready because my gender-dysphoria was making me โitchyโ.
Like many Drag performers, the first time I presented as another gender was Halloween, as Wayne Campbell. No one at the party recognized me โwithout makeupโ and I found that concerning, as I knew it didnโt reflect how I thought of myself. I wore that costume all weekend and it was the first time in my life I could get ready in 15 minutes. I also felt more relaxed, less afraid, walking the streets late at night while presenting masculine.
In 2020-2021, taking a break from the glamourous beautician life has made me realize how much of my performative femininity was due to my career, too. Thereโs this unspoken rule that female-bodied people in the beauty industry have to be โbeautifulโ and โbeautifulโ equates to femme, makeup, hair done, etc. It used to take me 2 hours to get put together for work everyday. But a male stylist can throw on jeans and a tshirt and no makeup and be ready for work in 15 minutes. Fuck that, I want that to be acceptable for anyone. Glamour should always be a choice. It should be a treat, not the baseline by which you are considered professional. There are certainly successful female-bodied stylists who arenโt made-up and femme but itโs swimming upstream, not the status quo.
When I first started out, I had black hair just over my shoulders and nothing was shaved (I have a lot of hair so usually some is undercut). It was the hottest summer on record and I had a 2 hour bus journey to get to work every day so I was standing outside a lot. I didnโt want my hair to get sweaty so I wore it in Wednesday Addams braids as a protective hairstyle. My employer pulled me aside and told me I couldnโt do that every day. I didnโt argue, but to this day I still donโt understand why that isnโt professional. From then on I would have to wash my hair every day (because of the sweat) and would leave the house with clean, flat ironed hair that was doused in dry shampoo as a preventative measure. But it would become dirty by the time I got to work, because standing outside waiting for the bus adds sweat and literal road dirt being kicked up by the street. My hair didnโt grow any longer because it kept breaking off. (Shortly after that I quit shampoo and started using a cowash)
Itโs so much work that cishet men donโt even consider doing. Part of the way patriarchy keeps female-bodied people under the boot is by keeping us at a deficit of Time & Money. By simply being born in a female body, our existence costs more money. We have to pay for menstruation products, birth control, makeup, hair and other grooming maintenance. We are operating with fewer free hours in the day... many of us with families do the majority of child-rearing, showing up to work without makeup is considered unprofessional so we spend time doing that, sometimes we hang out at venue for longer so that a friend can leave with us, because our safety is constantly threatened simply by being outside while โfemaleโ.
Side note, I would be fine with the makeup requirement at work thing, if men had to do it too.. Make Men Wear Eyeliner Again. Requirements for EVERYBODY, or nobody. But to be considered worthy and valuable part of society, female-bodied people have to groom for hours, remove all of our body hair, do the majority of emotional labor in relationships if weโre dating men, are EXPECTED to want and enjoy children.
If you donโt do these things, you are considered invalid. Your value is defined by your beauty as an object, while remaining silent, and ability to bear and raise children. All of this leaves us too poor, distracted, and tired to REVOLT!
So in 2020, I decided Iโm done. Iโm dropping all the femininity that I learned as a form of daily drag directly connected to my value, and starting over at the base level. This will help me decide what aspects of outer femininity I truly choose to participate in. Of course, I am only talking about Femininity here since I am an AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) person. But the same goes for Masculinity. The value of AMAB people should not rely solely on their ability to embody things traditionally considered Masculine. Toxic Masculinity is an entirely different discussion, however it deserves an honorable mention here since Iโm talking about performative gender.
moving forward
The Zoom culture of the pandemic has helped others drop performative gender already. I know people who donโt wear bras for work anymore because they Work From Home. Itโs beautiful to see people awaken to their true priorities, what makes them contented and what is an unnecessary drain of their energy.
The lesson here is that life is too short to be living it for other people. I learned this a long time ago when I was a babygoth, but now it translates to gender norms and conscious acts of dismantling the white supremacist patriarchy.
We all have work to do. Something I am working on myself is deprogramming using the term โDudeโ in a gender-neutral way. Itโs really difficult for those of us who grew up in the 80s-90s. But the thing that changed my mind is when someone said something like โif it was truly gender-neutral then a hetero man would have no problem saying โI slept with this hot dude last nightโ โ ...touchรฉ. Something important to remember is cisgender people donโt get to tell the trans community what words are acceptable for people to use in reference to them. Using new pronouns for someone can be difficult because personally my mouth speaks before my brain fully processes awareness of it all... Like Touretteโs, you donโt mean anything by it but that doesn't negate the impact it has on other people. However, I know from experience on both sides of the situation that if you use the wrong pronoun and correct yourself, indicating that you are aware of the personโs gender identity and are making an effort, it shows you respect them. And thatโs all we want. Thatโs the part that makes us feel seen, even when you make a mistake.
I wanted to end on an esoteric note. In this post, my friend Jonah Welch muses on the NonBinary space being the โAlchemical Pointโ as in - the point of Transformation between two stationary states. They call it the Divine Androgyny. This is a microsummary, please go read the whole post and follow for more. Itโs a really good thing to think about if this blog resonated with you and youโre feeling called to this journey too.
Visibility is important, I want to thank everyone who helped me on this journey myself. There are so many of us out now (including 80% of Gen Z it seems) thanks to the global internet community coming together. It feels like the tide is actually turning and people are starting to get it... including a greater understanding of us ourselves. This is your gentle reminder to love yourself and your Divine Androgyny.
the fun stuff
Here is my โgaylistโ I listen to during Pride month and throughout the rest of the summer. Below are links for those curious to explore further.
Helpful Links:
Ally resources for cis people
Transgender Teen Survival Guide
The Genderbread Person
Trans Rosary Circle
Jeffery Marsh for everyday motivation & education
book: Jeffery Marsh - How to be You
Alok V Menon for everyday inspiration
Alok: How Fashion Designed the Gender Binary
TTSG Trans resources masterpost
Gender Expression โ Gender Identity
The Truth about Sailor Uranus
Singular โTheyโ is correct English
GC2B, personal favorite chest binders!
Iโm not your guy, Dude. Why language really does matter
Thanks for reading. I hope you felt included and seen. Happy exploring & Happy Pride Month!