as small as a world and as large as alone

4:28am September 27, 2014

clatterbane:

It’s probably just as well that I have never been particularly femme anyway, but I do sometimes miss having the energy to do things with makeup at all. Or to get out enough that it even matters that much. (That great lip color I reblogged a while ago got me thinking again, yeah.)

Ditto for not having to dress primarily for comfort all the time, and not having so much trouble going out shopping. I actually used to have some style that wasn’t just “nerdy slob” all the time. I guess there’s nothing inherently wrong with that one, but it’s nice to have more workable options.

This stuff bothers me worse sometimes than I usually want to admit. I end up feeling kind of shallow, but it still bothers me.

It’s not shallow.

Most people in most cultures everywhere find clothing and personal appearance to be an important part of their lives.  And when you can’t engage in that kind of thing, it does cause problems.

That’s why so many instructions for chronically ill people say that if you’re at all able, simply changing clothes every day can make a huge difference to your sense of well-being, even if you can’t get out of bed.  Or painting your fingernails or toenails, or putting on makeup, if those are things you like to do.  

I never understood all this until I started developing aesthetics in the last few years that really, really fit who I am as a person.  And it doesn’t feel just like wearing clothes, it feels like the clothes are an important part of who I am.  Same with how I do my hair.  Having it long feels more like “me” than my old buzzcuts, even though my old buzzcuts were nice in their own way too.

(Would you believe that I went to visit my grandma with a flat-top, and her immediate response was “I want to do my hair like that!”  Then I visited my great-uncle and we were wearing the same hair, same shirt type, same pants, same suspenders, we got a picture together and it was great.)

Unfortunately I can’t just instantly go from a flat-top to long hair and back, not and have it be my hair, so I have chosen the long hair in the end.  For now, anyway.

But I’ve discovered that how I look has meaning.  And it’s not trivial meaning.  And it’s not vanity to care about it.  And it’s not vanity to be upset when I’m too sick to look how I want to look.  It’s normal to care how you look, to have a personal style (even in cultures where everyone more or less dresses the same, that’s still a style and people still care about it a great deal), and to be upset when you can’t dress how you want to dress.  Within reason of course, but nothing you’ve said is anywhere near unreasonable.

I’ve found the discovery of my personal aesthetics to be incredibly liberating, and at the same time really scary.  Scary because some of my personal aesthetics are considered feminine by most people, others are considered masculine, and others are considered androgynous.  And to me, they’re just different aesthetics independent of gender.  But to other people… switching between [other people’s conception of] “masculine” “feminine” and “androgynous” all the time has consequences.  And doing so when you have both breasts and visible facial hair has even more consequences.  (Even if my bra is compressing my breasts, I still get read as gender-variant or misgendered.  Since any gender given to me is a misgendering, it’s really damn easy to misgender me.)

Anyway, especially if you were just discovering you had a personal style, it can be devastating to suddenly not be able to engage in it.  I feel so much more comfortable in my own skin now that I have my basic combination of clothing aesthetics that mean so much to me:  Brown with blue or yellow in mostly skirts and shirts (often but not always read as feminine).  Dad-shirts with suspenders and either pants or shirts (usually read as masculine or androgynous).  And the one I can’t afford to wear – tailored Victorian menswear in specific colors I like, various shades of brown and tan and yellow.  I’ll probably never be able to actually wear that, but I’d love to have one nice suit for special occasions, tailored to my specifications both physicallly and color-wise (possibly read as masculine, possibly as androgynous, depending on how frilly the suit got).  Also steampunk things that are equally out of my price range (and can be read as masculine, feminine, or androgynous depending).  But at any rate, I do have aesthetics that I feel suit me, regardless of what gender other people assign to those aesthetics.   

And having those aesthetics makes me feel more like myself.  And there’s no shame in that.  It’s not vanity.  It’s normal for people to want to look a certain way.  Whether that way is heavily determined by their culture, or heavily individualistic, or some of both.  The important part is them feeling comfortable in their own skin.

And when you can’t do that, due to pain or illness, it does take a toll on you, because you want to be able to do it.  And there’s nothing wrong with being upset, with mourning that loss, or with trying to find little ways that you can hang onto your aesthetic despite low spoons.  (Like doing just one piece of clothing, or hair, or jewelry, or nail polish, or makeup, or whatever.  I do a lot with jewelry.  Even changing clothes once a day can make a huge difference, or even once a week if you can’t manage once a day.  And that goes even if the clothes aren’t in your personal aesthetic, just the act of changing makes you feel a little better.)

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