When I was little I was thrilled by the word "tomboy." I loved that there was a word to describe a person like me, a "girl of boyish behavior," and I may have embraced that identity with more wholehearted glee than I've embraced any other since. Naturally I eschewed dresses, played a lot of sports, gobbled up books about tomboys and emulated their pursuits (tree-climbing, spying on the neighbors). I also spent time imagining I actually was a boy (Tom Sawyer, plus assorted other adventurers with dogs or guns). Though tomboy-itude never offered quite the same level of adventure as boy-playing, it did suggest a livable compromise. It held out the real-world promise that the fantasy didn't have to end, that I could in fact be both things at once, that what I imagined myself to be could continue for all time.
I was slow to give up this conceit, which is how I found myself, in sixth grade, the only girl on the flag football team. I had assumed there would be other girls on the team — I mean, who doesn't love football? — but somehow all my female classmates had been swept up by the estrogen-hungry force field of the volleyball court. The "team" mostly just drilled and scrimmaged, but one fall afternoon we played another school. It was a cold, raw day, the grass on the field intensely green under the overcast sky. When I hold a football now, I re-experience the thrills of the game — the happy pain of catching a ball hard against my chest, the exhilaration of sucking big lungfuls of spiky fall air during a sprint. But I also remember that day's surprise. The other team had brought an informal all-girl cheerleading squad, and among them was a girl I knew, a neighbor named Cindy. At the game, she didn't say hello to me, didn't say anything to me, until she yelled out, safely within the confines of her all-girl group: "What are you doing on the boy's team? Do you think you're a boy?" Giggle giggle giggle. Ho ho ho. My cheeks burned in the cold. When I had signed up to play, I had only wanted the pleasures of the game, its rituals and rhythms, the way it made me feel strong, and now here was this intrusion from the stupid outside world.
This is not, of course, a story about discrimination, about being denied something essential, like housing, a job or even service in a store. It's merely a story about being made to feel painfully uncomfortable, that one is not where one is supposed to be, or who one is supposed to be, when one had been quite comfortably ensconced in a delicious daydream.
My daydreams have of course changed, but it took me a while to realize the world of imagining does not have to end simply because you are told it is time to grow up. I learned that there are, in fact, numerous adult worlds within which imagination is the only thing that matters. The world of fashion is one of these. Shopping is all about daydreaming, and really, we all shop for the same thing: a way to broadcast our sense of self. You have an image of yourself ("I'm bad to the bone," "I'm a quirky makeup artist," "I'm a feral anarchist") and you take that image with you to the store. You wait for the moment when you try something on and suddenly say, Yes. It's me. It allows you to feel natural.
It's rare that I experience that shopping yes. To be butch and get dressed in the morning is to pave your own road. There aren't too many chic menswear designers churning out stuff that fits my frame, nor are there many womenswear designers interested in outfitting faggy butches.
Perhaps I should explain that when I say "butch," I'm not describing a particular style of dress, but something that exists outside of clothes: female masculinity. Clothing this not-off-the-rack masculinity is a challenge. It takes some doing for a woman to convey masculinity and sexuality in the same outfit, to wear boy clothing or aspire to a boy look without appearing gallumphy and sexless. Gallumphy masculinity is not the type to which I aspire. The trick for butches, it seems to me, is understanding that not all masculine signifiers are sexy, that some may be just masculine and free of aspirational value. I shudder when I hear butches aping the sort of macho posturing they've learned from some silly straight men, and I feel likewise when I see butches dress like them. It's bad enough that we have the original. Lord knows we don't need copies. If you were, as we butches are, given the opportunity to make a new sort of masculinity, why, for Pete's sake, wouldn't you, clothing included?
But clothing this concept (and body) is work. In order to find the stuff I need, I have to do a lot of hunting, gathering, foraging. Vintage and fag-oriented shops are the most fertile for me, mainstream ones the least. On a recent trip to Urban Outfitters, I couldn't find a single thing to suit me and not just because I'm no doubt too old for the place. I left empty-handed because, as in many other stores, I was stranded between departments. As is the trend, the departments in Urban have become as ridiculously gender-stratified as the aisles of toy stores. Guns for the boys. Dolls for the girls. Teeny-weeny, tight, scoop-necked T-shirts stamped with I'm-so-naughty statements for the girls, enormous, thundering, in-yer-face No Fear XXXL T-shirts for the boys. A strict gender divide has long been the rule for adult dress clothes, but there's something sad about its rise among the juniors' stuff. Where are the clothes for the ragged tomboys? Who will clothe the little fairies?
When I go to the men's department and exit frustrated because I can't find anything to fit me, then try the women's and exit twice as frustrated because I can't find anything that's right — neither of these is a traumatic event. It's just a reminder of the tiresome way things are. It's a reminder of all the times I've been forced to pick one door or another only to realize I have not been shown the appropriate range of doors and therefore am relegated to fidgeting in some drafty foyer. No matter how convinced I become that my friends and I inhabit a world in which our erotic needs are the norm, clothing stores remind — in the same way that banks remind, or small towns remind — that normal does exist, that convention can be unforgiving. It's difficult enough to think outside of the box. Shopping outside of it can seem downright impossible.
You might argue that lots of people have trouble finding clothes they like. But most people know where the marketers, at least, think they belong, and which racks they should rifle. But I rarely encounter such trail markers. When I do find an item I like, it is a triumph. When the right shirt falls across my shoulders I think, "See? It can be done."
It is only a bit of a stretch to say that this shopping eureka moment is what we all want, and not just in the dressing room. The right clothing brings you one step nearer to closing the gap between who you are and who you would like to be. And it's simply a fact that it's easier for certain people to find themselves among the racks at the local shop, and more of a homecoming for others when they finally do.
a ball hard against my chest, the exhilaration of sucking big lungfuls of spiky fall air during a sprint. But I also remember that day's surprise. The other team had brought an informal all-girl cheerleading squad, and among them was a girl I knew, a neighbor named Cindy. At the game, she didn't say hello to me, didn't say anything to me, until she yelled out, safely within the confines of her all-girl group: "What are you doing on the boy's team? Do you think you're a boy?" Giggle giggle giggle. Ho ho ho. My cheeks burned in the cold. When I had signed up to play, I had only wanted the pleasures of the game, its rituals and rhythms, the way it made me feel strong, and now here was this intrusion from the stupid outside world.
