Codes.

Male doctrine.

Growing up, terms like “masculine” or “feminine” were not part of my vocabulary. That’s not to say that I didn’t know these words existed, it was simply that there was no occasion to use them. They wouldn’t come up in conversation or writing, casual or academic. I’d be more likely to pull out a word like cornucopia than masculinity or a word like penultimate than femininity. So in college, I was a little confused when my roommate checked herself in the mirror as we were about to go to a party, frowned, and said “I don’t know, I was trying to go for androgynous tonight.” I shrug.

“You look fine to me,” I say. 

“But my outfit isn’t projecting androgynous.” My brain begins to buffer. The thought of my roommate appearing to anyone as anything other than a human female seemed highly unlikely. However, she kept speaking. “It’s just so effortless for you,” she says. Cue a fresh wave of confusion. 

I wasn’t exactly a stranger to being mistaken for a male. It would happen from time to time typically in the winter when I’d be the most covered up. But I remember as a kid at summer camp the absolute horror on a cafeteria lady’s face when we’d gone through a whole (albeit brief) interaction with her thinking I was a boy but somehow at the end, she realized I was a girl then launched into a long string of apologies. I didn’t understand why she was so flustered. Me being a boy or girl wasn’t relevant to getting my lunch on a plate. But even with my clothing choices since my pre-teen years favoring the side of the store labeled “men’s,” I’d never been called something like androgynous. 

Through further reflection, this category of vocabulary was likely tucked away in favor of the more simple “proper” and “improper.” For church, I would need to wear proper clothes. Going to the department store with my mother and automatically finding myself in front of a rack of Star Wars t-shirts saw me getting tugged away for being improper because what would two ladies be doing on the men’s side of the store? What if someone saw us? When I got to make my own clothing decisions, I knew I technically wasn’t buying things made with my body type in mind, but it all still fit, and I’d had a few conversations with people who were surprised when I’d say everything I was wearing came from the men’s department. They couldn’t tell. As far as I was concerned, the moment those clothes came off the rack they weren’t men’s clothes or women’s clothes, they were my clothes and I happened to be a woman so… derive from that what you will. I wasn’t aiming for a masculine presentation or a feminine presentation or even an androgynous presentation, I was looking for a Star Wars t-shirt, a solid pair of cargo pants, and a denim jacket with (and this is important) inside pockets. 

“How much would it cost to get this tailored?” I ask a men’s formalwear store employee, holding up a vest. Formalwear, in my mind, came with hard and fast nonsensical rules that I’d long since felt didn’t apply to casualwear but I’d finally worked up the nerve to try to find something that was actually comfortable and stylistically appealing to wear to church or anywhere else that warranted dressing up. All the characters in my favorite old TV westerns had three-piece suits so I wanted a three-piece suit too. And now that I was fresh out of college with a paycheck in my pocket after coming home from my first tour, I was ready to dress to impress. The employee looked at me awkwardly.

“We can’t tailor for you here,” he said. But I gesture to the sign right next to him that says this is the corner of the shop where in-store tailoring was clearly being advertised. “We only tailor for men,” he clarifies. 

“It’s basically my size though,” I try to explain, saying it’s just the sides that need taking in. I’d heard my father say all my life that an untailored suit said a lot of things about you, none of them good. “Is it that hard to do?” 

“We can only tailor for men,” he repeats. 

I shuffle off to the side, confused by what had just happened and start to become self-conscious about being the only woman in the store. A different employee makes his way over to me and asks if I’m shopping for someone. 

“Nope. Just for me,” I say. 

“Oh,” he says. 

“I was hoping to get this tailored here?” I try, testing the waters. But I get the same response. I’d come too far though. I go to the register, buy the vest, and leave more determined than when I came in. I was an adult, after all. I had a college degree, a debit card, and a supercomputer in my pocket in the form of a smartphone that could direct me to every tailor shop on the planet.

A few months later, the living room erupts with hysterics. 

“Go change into something proper,” my father says over the tune of “oh no” from my grandmother. 

“This is proper. And quite expensive.” I’d matched the tweed vest with black wool pants and a white cotton shirt. I’d even put a necklace on! “Something feminine,” he clarifies. “This isn’t appropriate for your grandmother’s church.” 

“They’ll think you’re my grandson!” she says, already tugging at the threads. 

“Everyone in the congregation knows who I am and even if they didn’t, I am clearly female,” I push back. But I wasn’t too keen on giving my grandmother a heart attack and knew that is what I’d be blamed for if I carried this on much further so I went upstairs and changed. 

“Now you just look like a nun,” my sister says in response to me wearing my shin-length skirt, unchanged white shirt, and a sweater vest. The whole thing evoked the vibe of my schooldays more than anything. But for me, that was comfortable too. 

“See? That wasn’t so hard,” my mother says to me on our way out to the car. 

Nowadays, these words seem to be everywhere often shortened to the more en vogue masc or femme which half the time will involve some discussion about gender identity. But it will appear just as much in feminist circles that want nothing to do with, at the very least, anything on the trans side of gender. 

“I think you should instead use more specific words to clarify what you mean,” I say to a trans-critical feminist who has proclaimed that she simply likes feeling feminine. She doesn’t understand what I’m saying. “For example, I could point to a pink shirt and call it a feminine shirt. Or I could just say it’s a pink shirt.” She claims that this method of reframing wouldn’t work for what she’s talking about. “Terms like femininity are a product of male doctrine,” I say. “I think we can reach more clarity if we simply say what we mean rather than defaulting to it. You’ll see people all day on the internet enthusiastically talking about trendy terms like toxic masculinity or the patriarchy but many will be stopped in their tracks if you say male violence or the male subjugation of women. Because it’s too specific. It forces you to acknowledge what is actually being spoken about.” 

I recall a fateful shopping trip in high school, still wearing a knee brace as part of my ACL surgery recovery process and my mother and sister took me through DSW for my first pair of heels. Due to my reluctance, I am accused of never wanting to be proper which I can now interpret as being told that I never want to be feminine. 

“Is it improper to not want to voluntarily give myself a handicap?” I ask. Sure, the shoe before me could be described as a representation of femininity. But I had jumped to the more specific wording of restrictive and believe one can make of that what they will. My mother interpreted this as me hating myself as a woman. I assured her that wearing such footwear was a far more definitive sign of self-hatred or, at the very least, a sign of being confused, stupid, or nonsensical. I could probably make it to my bus stop hopping on one foot. I could get really good at it and say it’s easy or even comfortable. But the question will always remain why the hell am I choosing to hop to my bus stop on one foot?

Somewhere in the barrage of internet posts about this year’s Met Gala, I happened upon a short clip of Rihanna from the event some number of years ago, arriving on the red carpet in a gold dress that draped behind her all the way down the staircase like something straight out of a Disney fairytale. The music in the clip supported this with a man gushing about this moment being a representation of the American dream. In my view, I was witnessing what is often packaged as the dream a girl should have: Entering the room, all eyes on you, because you are stunning, graceful, gorgeous, and desirable in a notably carnal way… but also untouchable… for the moment. It reminded me of the rituals carried out at my friend’s wedding. When the groom walked down the aisle to take his position, it was nothing special. But when she walked in? The music changed. It swelled. Everyone rose to their feet. All eyes were on her in her dress that draped behind her. 

It disgusted me as much as it terrified me. And all these months later I’m still trying to articulate why I experienced such a visceral reaction. 

It’s not a hatred of myself specifically or women as a whole. I think it is a hatred of how we are framed by male scripture, by male language, and by male values. It was a set of values that I was aware existed but, for whatever reason, didn’t feel touched my world that much growing up. I had compartmentalized it away without knowing it. The absence of boys in my schooling brought other values to the forefront, values of academic or creative accomplishments, finding a common groove in teamwork, and being acknowledged for your unique strengths within that team or as an individual. I never thought of beauty or desire. There was little to no value there. I thought of creation and adventure. That’s why I assume even the concept of having a body image was foreign to me. It wasn’t something that would compute with my value structure and I figured all the girls around me were the same. Because this was our world, our society, our home in that place.

And it’s really these comparatively little things: The heels, the makeup, the grand fairytale entrance… that I presume set me off because they are accessories to the body of the beast that I am far more aware of now than I was as a child, a reminder of the cage that encases all women no matter how comfortable we make it for ourselves as individuals. I am presented with it and lash out in response because it feels as though there is nothing to be done about it. It makes me think of a time my mother finally did let me take that Star Wars t-shirt and cargo pants off the rack and smuggle it to the girl’s dressing room at Macy’s. 

“You can choose to hide yourself in these clothes but that will just fuel the imaginations of any boy that looks at you,” she said. I was taken aback. I hadn’t been thinking about boys at all. Boys weren’t part of my world. They were just signs in department stores and Jedi knights galaxies away.

I wasn’t hiding, not consciously. I wasn’t rebelling, not consciously. I just liked Star Wars and I liked collecting rocks and other things I’d find outside in my pockets. And if I think back over my whole life, such a monumental moment at Macy’s had been turned upside down to represent something else: My first acute sinking feeling that something beyond my control was horribly wrong.