In This Body: Fabric of Femme
“I love the word, the non-hetero way to say feminine”
Our monthly column "In This Body" is comprised of true stories about sex, gender, the body, and love, written by Fiona George, for NAILED.
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Six dresses. Four tops. Two sweaters. A jumpsuit, a romper, a pair of shoes, a jacket, a vest, a ring, a necklace, a brooch. Tingly skin, warm heart beat, trying them all on again one by one at midnight. What would this dress look like with these shoes?
New clothing high.
The heft of self-representation, who I am. You’re supposed to be able to tell who I am by my vintage dress and velvet shoes. You’re supposed to be able to know me by my sweatpants and the pun on my shirt. You’re supposed to know from my oxfords and sweater that I’m a Twin-Peaks-loving, rain-listening, disenchanted, born-and-raised Northwest woman. Can you tell?
Every new dress could be a new me. Every new item of clothing holds the potential to show, through my image in your eye, who I am more completely.
No wardrobe can tell the whole story of me. But, every new sweater gets me a little bit closer.
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I like touch. Something to do with my hands. Velvet, tweed, wool, corduroy, silk. Things I never want to stop touching.
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My mind was always calmer with less clothing. I had a solid three months when I had less than fifty pieces of clothing in my closet and dresser combined. Nothing that I wasn’t in love with. Nothing that sat around unworn.
Even my costumes were built from day-to-day outfits.
It was the complete opposite of the way I always managed my clothing. The constant collection. The pile of clothes that was my floor. The clutter in my mind: tangible.
I call myself femme. I love the word, the non-hetero way to say feminine. The way it slides off your tongue slippery and sexy. A word to announce myself to the world as queer against all assumption.
A word that is tied, laced, zipped, buttoned into my obsession with, my addiction to, clothing, to the way I show myself to the world. To the hidden layers of meaning between layers of fabric.
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When I was a teenager, what I wanted more than anything was to not look normal. Most of the time, that meant looking masculine. That meant DIYing t-shirts into oblivion, shreds of fabric. It meant spending time every morning trying to find an outfit that wasn’t just jeans and a t-shirt. It meant not wearing colors. It meant thick black eyeliner.
It meant rolling my eyes and scoffing when my dad said I looked punk—because I knew I wasn’t a real punk—but still feeling the compliment burn through—punk. I looked punk. Not normal.
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If I discarded all my dresses, if the only shoes I wore were work boots, if I didn’t have a scrap of jewelry, if I dressed every day in a t-shirt and jeans.
I would be just as much of a femme. I would still not be punk. I would still be every bit of the Northwest woman I am.
I don’t know how to explain what would make me what I am without that outward representation of it. It just would be.
Something I can only think of backwards; I dress this way because I am this way, instead of I am this way so I dress to reflect that. Making the intangible, tangible.
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I went to a clothing swap and left with a broach, a necklace, a ring, a vest, a jacket, a pair of shoes, a romper, a jumpsuit, two sweaters, four tops, and six dresses.
Almost every woman there brought a lot of stuff to swap—it’s familiar. Every clothing swap I’ve gone to, women will bring enough clothes it could be an entire wardrobe. I always do.
I’ve never met anyone who hoards clothes like that who doesn’t identify in some way or another with the word femme or woman. What is it about feminine traits that demands an appearance, an aesthetic, to pin down its definition?
I’d meant to only take two dresses home from the swap. To keep hold of the scrap of minimal-wardrobe I had left. That kind of calm, to feel like myself in every outfit I owned, to own little enough that I knew what I felt like in every outfit I owned.
To break down the connection between femininity and image, presentation. Only a little. To explore my love of clothing without drowning in it.
Without letting the things I wear define the core of me.
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To read the previous In This Body: "Jealousy, Name It," go here.
Header images courtesy of Matteo Nazzari. To view his photo essay on NAILED, go here.