I can count the number of times I’ve worn this swimsuit on both hands. It’s a black one piece, with an exposed back and halter straps tied behind my neck. The ruffles spilling down the front are tattered from living in the corners of various bay area dresser drawers, giving that Jackie-O look I usually go for a bit of faded Hollywood. It was the last thing I got before leaving Florida, under the illusion I could stretch out on San Francisco’s beach, which requires a hoodie and wetsuit at minimum. Instead, I walk down Broadway in downtown Santa Monica towards the ocean with a distinct sense of nostalgia. Hate to admit it, but I felt a little homesick, if just for the beach.
It’s easy to feel underdressed in this part of LA, holding my stomach in and trying to straighten the arch I call my back walking past women leaving Nordstrom. Doubly so as a queer woman in a bathing suit she hasn’t worn too often. Maybe in another setting, like back in SF, that self-consciousness would take over my thoughts, still awkward in dressing for its moody weather. Here, where the palm trees lean westward instead of east, I feel more confident. A navy-striped boat-neck top with dolman sleeves and a scarf wrapped around my hips pulls focus where I want them. My shoulders and chest area are diffused to take the eye down to my waist, where stripes meet neon flower blotches, and further down the part of my makeshift wrap that reveals a nude leg. Throughout my stay down south, I would wear bright gladiator sandals with shorts, crop tops with sheer kimono-style coverups and feel, well, good. Sexy. It’s been a while.
In upright tanning pose, on my back with palms facing down and knees pointed skywards, I thought about my life-long war with clothes and fashion. Like each wave and its quell, I had a perpetual binge-purge relationship with fashion, not knowing how to clothe a queer body on a meager income. Other people seemed to wear things so effortlessly, like it belonged on them. Everything I put on didn’t look right, didn’t fit the weather, wore easily with time. Whenever I looked up fashion advice, an inspirational quote by some luxury designer would pop up saying you don’t need a lot of money to fashionable, leaving me bitter as they continued to make clothes I’ll never touch in my lifetime. Is there fashion without money? Is there fashion without trends?
Fashion, or maybe style, is dear to me because of its playful qualities. It allows me to affect how others perceive me, make statements without words. I think the first step to untangling the pain fashion marked on many of us is understanding the designed statements popular and haute trends tell us. Like all art, fashion has its own statements, values, arguments communicated through its design. In order to start feeling good about what we adorn our bodies with, we would have to know what we’re communicating and feel good about what we’re saying. As it is with a lot of creative work, it’s doing things with purpose, a purpose we feel confident about. It’s important to me to explore this topic because it opens up more doors for everyday artistic expression, for the blurring between life and game, and for reclaiming the conflict spaces on our bodies that are seized by hegemonic forces.
Of the many factors that go into styling your look, the silhouette is probably the most fundamental design point that you will be working around. It is basically the outline of your body, typically seen from the front and focused on the torso but in general all around. A lot of the design will center around how you’re manipulating your silhouette, and the whats and hows of that form the basis of how another person is going to receive your look. This is where we see both the hegemonic ideals for bodies and also the way to subvert them: garments are made assuming either a man or woman is going to wear them, and that men or women have their own ideal body shapes they want to achieve. For clothes coded for men, this is the inverted triangle, with shoulders broader than the hips and the waist being thinner than the rest of the body. Clothes coded for women are a little more flexible since beauty standards for women’s bodies change more frequently, but ultimately they all speak to the hourglass shape, where the bust and hips are the widest parts of the body with the waist being the smallest. The other silhouette is the child’s, mostly a straight column with little definition, showing how much fashion buys into emphasizing and playing with dimorphism between the binary sexes. All of these silhouettes are in constant conversation with each other, with adults being pushed to look further like their assigned gender’s shape and less like the other two.
Knowledge of this means you can purposefully mess with your silhouette in accordance to how your body actually is shaped. Because unless you’re one of the few who have it naturally, your body’s actual silhouette and the ideal one are going to be different. Women’s fashion in particular plays with the expected silhouette enough through the ages, thinking of the iconic shoulder pads during the more androgynous 80s and more column-like bodies afterwards during drug and exercise idolization. I’ve also noticed a resurgence of this in body-positive fashion with fat women wearing clothes they’re ‘not supposed to,’ like ones that expose their belly and horizontal stripes. There is also flagging for cultural groups that often include race- and class-passing, which can lend to this sort of artistic mess up of fashion to further communicate the messiness of bodies and identities. I’ve found this particularly striking as someone who’s body is in between the column and inverted triangle while striving for the silhouette canonically coded for cis women. The clothes I wear changes how people interact with my body, and interact with me as well, making certain assumptions and calling in social stripts they find appropriate for the relationship between our identities.
I’m particularly interested in playing with the silhouette because of how much focus there is on the body, both claiming it as yours and also yours to mess with. Though it comes along with some salt, I find it is true that people compliment more when I feel totally comfortable and confident in what I’m expressing with my clothing choices. I merely put on a blue top with mustard shorts and someone commented that I looked ‘powerful,’ or maybe, I looked in control of my own body, which is a rare feeling. I think what they were responding to was what my outfit made them look at, the lines and play with figure, and just that I was confident in making a statement. It was cloudy and raining, but I was there for a summer’s day in vibrant colors. I continued this sort of look back here in the bay, where May, the usual start of summer for me back home, of sunshine and barbeques and flirting, is covered in fog and wind. In a way, I know that I don’t quite fit in here just yet, and I’m my own little island, and I think people should get to know me better. There is a feeling of alienation and longing for other things wrapped up in the neons and shear of South Beach style. A style I didn’t get to wear too much while I was there, but now feel it is one of the few ways to make my body feel like my own.
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