Positive Ease @positiveease - Tumblr Blog

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This is how it works when you buy menswear. You buy the colors and patterns you love. Everything goes together like magic. Boom, you're well dressed. Plus, you feel good about yourself. Shirt: Olive tattersall from Orvis. Tie: Christian Dior from Goodwill. Tie... Fob? Dangle? From the Dad.

Stone Butch Blues

Have just downloaded this classic--which I’ve never read before--from http://www.lesliefeinberg.net/

Awed by the immediate power of Leslie Feinberg’s novel. I remember this era, but time has dulled the memories of fear, shame, guilt, the myriad affronts to human dignity that populate our past.

We are all standing on the shoulders of giants, of all the women who suffered so that we could be here today.

#Stone Butch Blues #Leslie Feinberg #Thank you for your courage #Thank you for your generosity #Thank you

How to confirm that you're not femme

My lifelong inability to do the laundry on time meant that I had to put on one of my "girl" tops this morning.

It's your everyday sort of top: brown jersey with a scoop neck and a three-quarter length sleeve. To show it’s “feminine”, it has a Renaissance-style graphic with calligraphic lettering, all in soft shades of brown, cream, and gray with a touch of black. And the inevitable sparklies that burden all women's clothing, as they do all children's clothing, these days.

It's really a perfectly fine top. It fits well. The shoulder seams are at my shoulders. The three-quarter length sleeves really are three-quarter length, even on me. (My feet never touch the floor when I'm sitting in a chair. Never.) It's even long enough to tuck into my trousers and stay tucked, which not all women's tops do. I'm pretty happy with it, even though it screams "middle-aged woman who doesn’t care any more".

But when I got in to work this morning, Jimmie (our office manager) greeted me with, "it must be Friday, it's time for the sparkly top!"

I felt like I’d been seen through. My mood plummeted.

I’ve only recently gone over to the men’s department, and I still feel a little impostor-ish wearing men’s trousers and shirts. I still pretend to anyone who asks that my ties are “trendy”. I feel relieved when someone praises my “outfit”; I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet.

But being called “sparkly”, being labeled a woman, really upset me. I’m a cis female, and I'm mostly okay with that. But I’m really starting to feel gross when I wear womenswear, like everything’s suddenly about the female-ness of my body, and I wish I could peel off my female body as easily as I can pull off my clothes.

I think I’m having a mid-life gender identity crisis.

#gender #gender non-conforming #women's clothing #gender identity crisis #oops i thought i evaded that way back in the 70s #what goes around comes around

the-glitter-clit

positiveease

We all need to be more like Malala. Clear-headed, fearless, outspoken.

s-trawberryveins

I no longer crack my bones And shrink my size To fit into other people’s hearts. I am worth more Than a misshapen stature, Trying to please others.

“Don’t let anybody ever tell you that you aren’t enough”

(via

s-trawberryveins

)

the-glitter-clit

Got my first bow tie this weekend. Love it. It matches my wardrobe colors and fabrics perfectly. No interfacing, so it's easy for a newbie to manage. Could I tie it? At all? At any time today? Nope. So, for today, I decided it was the tiniest, cutest scarf I owned. Even if it's the crookedest scarf I own. But next time it will be a bowtie.

Fels Naphtha soap... Or, why I want better shirts

You want to spend quality time with your shirts... but not with their cuffs and collars. Which I did for about an hour tonight, with Kent nailbrush and Fels Naphtha soap.

But I learned a valuable lesson in that hour. I definitely want to have better quality shirts. Not just because I’d like better quality shirts. Which I would, don’t get me wrong. But poorer quality shirts grab on to grime and they don’t want to let it go.

Back in The Olde Days, a vigorous brushing with Fels Naptha soap made short work of the cuffs and collars of the paternal shirts. And Fels Naptha and elbow grease still work perfectly well--I just proved it tonight. I got the ink out of the cuff of my white Lands End button down with no problem, but I just couldn’t scrub the day’s grime out of the cuffs.

I had a lot of time to inspect the collar and cuffs of that shirt while I was doing all that scrubbing. Do you ever notice little wrinkles running perpendicular to the edge of the cuff and the stitching? They’re the mark of the cheaply made shirt. (You know, I used to know what the exact mechanism was that caused the wrinkling, but I’ve forgotten right now. I’ll look it up so I can impugn it in a future post.)

So, spoiled and fussy thing that I am, I’m going to look for a better brand of shirt.

No, I take that back. I may be fussy, but I’m not spoiled. I know what I want.

#lands' end #fels naptha #Kent brushes #cuff grime #interfacing

That Perfect White Shirt

I googled “perfect white shirt.” Not surprisingly, all sorts of crazy stuff popped out.

I clicked on the top result, “Perfect White Shirts for Women” from http://www.realsimple.com/beauty-fashion/clothing/sweaters-tops/womens-white-shirt. But, as I seem to find with RealSimple articles, it had some problems.

First, RealSimple (despite its name seems to want you to think) is a luxury brand. I’m looking for a shirt, not a silk boho poet blouse or a henley-style pullover with dolman sleeves.

And I think you should know what you’re getting in your basic, wear-it-everyday shirt. You know, fabric, construction, fit--how well the shirt is made, how it will fit you, and how well it repays your investment. But the womenswear force is strong with this one, and it focuses instead on how to be “downtown cool” or “as prim as Audrey Hepburn”.

Also, my price range does not start at $228. I work in publishing. $228 is my clothing budget for the quarter.

Finally, I want a shirt that will be there the next time I look for it. Something I can depend on over time, so that I won’t have to repeat the whole ordeal next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.... You know, the way that men find a brand and a fit that works for them, so that they don’t have to suffer the endless slings and arrows of fashion fortune.... because they have better things to do with their lives.

commongayboy-deactivated2018082

#KnowYourHistory: #Stonewall

Sewing machine

Sewing machine: half ordeal, half zen.

Ordeal

Struggling to understand and use the Singer 237 I bought used on Craigslist earlier this year.

Can’t fault its construction: heavy, solid, steel.

Can fault its industrial design: if they’d made the curly bit of metal just at the top of the presser foot a little longer, it would have been possible to get the thread through it without practically standing on your head. And let’s just not think about why someone would put the bobbin in the dark underneath the body of the machine. I blame misogyny.

Zen

Feeding the material through the machine, your macro and micro focus working in perfect harmony to keep the seam perfectly straight.

#sewing machine

acollectedgentleman-deactivated

Note 2 Self

I feel like my dreams are within my grasp. I just gotta figure out what that next step is. I’m realizing that I can’t be what others want me to be. I am who I am. This whole notion of doing things to please others is bad for your health. I’m very fortunate that my parents pushed me to do what I love. They’ve always been accepting of my choices. I think we all just want to be FREE. Free to love, create, inspire, dream, achieve, and the list goes on and on. But society teaches us to follow the norm, don’t pursue that dream because you won’t make money, don’t love him or her because they’re not of your race. Fuck what people think of you. Don’t live for the approval of others. Love who you are and do it unconditionally. You’re beautiful in your own unique way and nobody can ever take that away from you. Use your brain and voice for the greater good. Inspire those who are following in your footsteps. Don’t buy into everything you hear and read. Just spread love and remain humble. Keep going even at your lowest point. We’ve been through it all, so what’s an obstacle to us?

-ACG

positiveease

Wise words from ACollectedGentleman.

The perfect white shirt

What does woman want? The perfect shirt. But I’ll be damned if I can find one.

“Don’t be so narrow, women have lots more choices. Why not just get a nice blouse?”

A shirt is what it says on the tin. You can depend on it. My friend Merriam-Webster.com tells me that a shirt is “1: a garment for the upper part of the body ... a cloth garment usually having a collar, sleeves, a front opening, and a tail long enough to be tucked inside trousers or a skirt.”

But nobody knows what a blouse is. Even M-W has given up on defining it: “a usually loose-fitting garment especially for women that covers the body from the neck to the waist”.

Because, yeah, as a woman, there’s nothing I want more than a closet full of amorphous garments that don’t really go with anything. Nothing I want more of than the womenswear I abandoned earlier this year after five decades of trying to come to terms with it.

So I want a shirt. But it’s sooo hard to find a well made shirt that fits, and that I can afford.

#shirt #womenswear #androgynous #clothing #noblousesthanks

Good shoes, small sizes

Good shoes in small sizes are nowhere to be found. At least not in the US. At least not in places I’ve looked.

Where, oh, where can I find well-made oxfords and brogues in women’s small sizes?

Are there any?

A fashion gift

I’ve just learned about gender-neutral clothing. OMG. It’s been a thing for a couple of years. But I’ve been living in the middle of nowhere for the past couple of years, and obvs not following the correct fashion blogs.

Gender-neutral clothing, where have you been all my life?

#genderneutral #gender neutral clothing #short woman #women's clothing is shit #men's clothing is better