"Fellas is it gay...?" - Topic of the day 8/17/24
How has fashion helped you embrace your queer identity or overcome stereotypes of sex/gender/sexuality based on fashion? What potential hurdles are there in achieving this? Please be respectful here, the mods have it hard enough dealing with lame brands' self-promoting.
52 Replies
Honestly feel like the bar is so low ime it's really easy for people to categorize you with what feels like a minor thing
For the better or worse
dear straight people - in most cases anyone who cares about your sexual orientation enough to judge solely based on your clothes is weird
I was talking to my coworker-now-friend and her first impression was that bc I had a fuckton of plushies on my bags and a bandana with a big fking smiley face she would feel safe with me (in reference to having bad experiences with men) and I feel like a lot of that seems rooted into heteronormativity (half baked thought not sure where I want to take this)
men should start in jail and earn their way out
perfectly valid take; because the super calcified view of masculinity is sharp and angular and also perpetuates some toxic behaviors i can see someone responding well to the complete opposite
but anyway the process for me was
dress well in hs
got asked if i was gay
lol i guess if being drippy is gay then w/e
oh im gay
same
for me wearing some of the more exaggerated takes on menswear (oversized suits and jackets, ties without shirts, high rise pants) was a way of subverting traditional heteronormative tropes; in a way it's me signaling queerness in a way authentic to myself
As a straight guy
I don't give a fuck what straight people think
If my queer friend roasts my fit? Now I'm shaking in my boots
I don't think I've had anyone question it tho. Even though I've been wearing perfume and a few other women's clothes
Very region dependent
EC basically
*east coast US
yeah I feel like people wouldn't care there
I'm in pnw
We don't lmao
Which is how it should be!
i've worn women's clothes often and have never been questioned out irl about it
Yep
I do remember in high school that was a thing and I'm trying to remember if college in if it was
i do think some of the worry people have about "looking gay" by making intentional choices in appearance is an internal block
Oh yeah way too much
Oh wait I misread
I read it as "I do think people worry too much about looking gay"
i also agree with that
I did have like two friends that would act like that
But it was really stupid
i think the shorthand for "queer dressing" these days has largely flown out the window minus certain subgroups or niche choices
Like I had a picture of my dog as my wallpsper and they were like saying how it's a turn off to women and not masculine
Sometimes I just shake my head
Yes I'm serious
not that it matters but that's not even true
How could anyone dislike this (my wallpaper)
Wait actually wrong one
Ignore that captioning that was for a meme
It was in response the whole "I know what you are" meme
Anyways I can't say what happens in other parts of America tbh
I'm a bi guy, starting to care about what i wear and wearing jewelry is pretty much my coming out 😭
I know it shouldnt be and both of those things are for everyone, but in people's minds that equals gay and in this case it seems to help sort who to keep in my life
had a few "friends" remove me on instagram after seeing my IG stories
And maybe gay guys will understand when I'm into them now 😭
straight guys unfollowing you for wearing jewelry is so fucking funny i’m sorry
their insecurities will keep them from being as dripped out as naoki yoshida
to answer the prompt though, actually, seriously learning more about fashion and the aesthetics i want to dress in has helped me start moving away from normie-nothingburger-fits to looks with character that properly exude my t-boy swag. (the gender anarchy pin on one of my sling bags helps too though)
my biggest concerns ironically with dressing in ways that express my identity mostly boil down to swimwear and binding
i just got a pair of boardshorts that’ll be nice for days i crash at the beach/pool for a while and then hit the streets with no time to change, but figuring out what to put up top is an uphill battle
do i learn to tape and do that? do i bite the bullet and check out those weird compression-rash-guard-things?
the battle between dysphoria and presentation goals is unending i swear
i'm anti-carceral but
naw throw em in the panopticon
Blessed to be tall enough and have a menacing enough scowl that people rarely chat shit.
Paying it forward by scowling at people on my friends behalf
Man a friend got weird about this and I just told him I wear it because I like looking cute
The same friend that was weird because my wife proposed to me( which is honestly my biggest life flex)
I grew up in peak “metrosexual” era where any perceived effort into dressing fashionably could be seen as gay. As a youth, how people perceived my sexuality felt very important because god forbid the other boys thought i dressed gay. Thankfully i have grown past this internalized homophobia and i look back how damaging it was to me and probably every other kid who felt similarly.
i think this is really part of where i’m at in my journey, kinda realizing im just not super happy with the clothes that im wearing and looking to change that. also the nothing burger comment really does hit home, im really out here doing all this laundry to look mid?????
is that a frugal ass reference
not intentionally just posted while folding laundry and was annoyed by it
wha…. what is frugal ass?
i remembered the line "you're wasting tide pods to look mid" from a frugal aesthetic vid from a while ago
honestly i might have had it incepted into my brain i’ve been listening to a lot of “fashion” youtube while i go to sleep
I'm a few years older than Digs, but I also really took the "metrosexual" thing to heart. I've said this here before, but I intentionally chose to dress badly until my early 20's out of fear for being mistaken for gay. When I started putting more effort into how I dressed, I was really afraid of standing out or being perceived as feminine or queer. Even as I became more comfortable with my queerness I leaned into some combo of 2014 Basic Bastard/Your LL Bean Boyfriend and kind of stuck with it until my 30's.
Getting into jewelry was the first way I tried to attempt to express my queerness in how I dressed. I would spend hours on Purseblog and Pricescope trying to learn everything I could. Looking back, the way I dressed at that time was pretty discordant with the jewelry I wore, and I don't think it had the effect I intended.
Since joining mfad, I've gotten more comfortable with stepping outside my comfort zone with my clothes overall, and more than before I feel like I express my queerness in my general aesthetic. I'm definitely not 100% where I'd like to be (there's a reason I don't post fit :zeolook: ) but when it comes to expressing queerness in my clothes it's night and day from the same time last year.
I think queerness in clothing is more of a vibe than any one thing I do. I could point to specific things in my clothes (and a lot of them have been listed in this thread already--nonstandard fits, wearing women's clothes as a cis man, and yes the occasional opera length pearl necklace) but really at the end of the day there's not a formula. The thing that makes my aesthetic queer is that I'm rejecting the formula for how a man "should" dress.
For jewelry you mean like earrings and bracelets?
and necklaces and rings
I actually don't have my ears pierced, I've been talking about doing it for like 2 years I should just get it over with
I just use the clip on stuff
Obligatory https://discord.com/channels/1116793467654381685/1137088371055927416
^^Ignore anything I posted in that thread
I'll check it out later on for inspo, I gotta head out atm
I've been visibly gnc for most of my life, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. it's given me thicker skin and helped me not be as scared of standing out because sometimes just me existing is drawing attention (unwanted or otherwise) to myself
there was a short period of crisis for me when i was really fixated on Passing, and ended up wearing a lot of what lyon calls nothingburger fits. once i got past that and went back to being okay w/ standing out i really unlocked something and it's carried me far
it's also a sort of self-selecting process where the vast majority of people that end up talking to me and befriending me irl are also queer + interested in fashion
I think this is a really good point--looking queer will draw other queer and other likeminded people to want to engage with you. In retrospect, dressing more safely was ultimately because I was afraid of negative reactions from people that I shouldn't have been trying to impress anyways.
Of course it's important to acknowledge that as a cis man I have the privilege of being able to switch this on and off completely--I can cosplay as a bland cis straight white dude when I need to. Also, for a lot of people the decision of how to dress isn't just affected by a fear of being judged but a fear for their physical safety.
I hope it's ok for me to bring that up. I know it's a bit of a minefield but I also don't want to be like "Just wear what you want" when that's not an option for everyone.
idk where this fits in but I really appreciate your expertise and I like the vibe it brings here
Thanks, I'm mostly repeating shit I saw on Purseblog
I once had a guy say it was kind of gay that I shopped at Nordstrom Rack
I am still confused by this 12 years later
everywhere I shop is gay because im gay
I went to the gay shop and everyone knew you
I'm the district manager they better know me (please help I don't know how to run a business and I can't do any math)
I never really cared about my appearance for quite a long time despite already knowing i was queer and being pretty open about it.
Nowdays most ppl kinda notice im not the straightest tool in the shed, even those im not explicitly out to. Though dressing whise I still feel like I have yet to manage to really dress like myself. But thats part of an overall problem of me struggling to be authentic to myself.
Sorry for rambling