Styling Saturday: Back to Basics with the Blazer

In the butch groups I am in, both online and off, one question comes up fairly frequently, either from young butches starting in the work world or older late-comers to butchness (and/or masculine-of-center (MOC) presentation and/or being nonbinary) in the work world. Now I am the last person to try to tell you how to dress if you are in the trades like construction, but as a long-time adjunct professor, I can advise on more white-collar style.

So the question folks ask is how do I start building a butch wardrobe for work. And the answer I often give is this: Start with that staple of the white-collar wardrobe, the blazer.

A blazer is a highly practical, highly adaptable piece of clothing. First of all, it covers you down to the wrist, so if you need to hide tattoos, you’re good. It gives you a uniform shape, so if you want to hide your Covid-15-pound extra belly (maybe I’m projecting here), it’s great at doing that too. People who experience gender dysmorphia will like the way it deprioritizes your bust. Also, it’s got POCKETS.

Let’s face it. Women mostly want three things—lifelong love, bodily autonomy, and pockets—not always in that order.

I’m not a fan of the shorter styles, which end at the hip rather than about three inches lower. A short blazer can be convenient on the train but I’d rather my blazer cover my wallet in one front pocket and my keys in the other. But this is the style of the moment, so oh well, I guess.

I put a black blazer with clean black jeans, or a navy blazer with navy pants and I’ve got an instant pseudo-suit. Or I can pair a black blazer with grey jeans or a navy blazer with khakis and I’ve got a slightly more informal outfit. Or camel or linen with brown or green pants… The possibilities are kind of endless, really.

It occurred to me to look up the history of this piece of clothing and I realized that men would probably call it a “sport coat,” at least in America. Apparently, the British used to and possibly still do call it an “odd coat.” The “odd” meant not part of a whole suit.

For the last few hundred years previous to the nineteenth/twentieth centuries, dress always revealed some very simple binaries: man vs. woman, high vs. low class, military vs. civilian, clerical vs. lay, etc. But outside of task-specific clothing like helmets, aprons, gloves and the like, and with the exception of horse-riding among the upper class, people didn’t wear different clothes for different tasks. Upper class people might have daywear and evening wear, but that had more to do with formality than with the task of sitting around eating. “In fact, it was not until 1923 that the style-conscious Ivy League undergraduate finally accepted the idea of a designated separate jacket for spectator sports” (Flusser 100).

I’m not sure when women started to add a blazer to skirts or dresses. Certainly, women’s riding habits (modeled after men’s) generally had two parts for practical reasons, but women’s clothes have rarely been particularly practical. Imagine a pioneer woman or any poor working woman doing any physical job in a dress. Based on my own memory, I would guess the woman’s blazer took off in the 1980s, and I suspect Ralph Lauren had a hand in that, as he did in popularizing Ivy League clothing styles to the Preppies of that decade.

In 1988-9, I went to every single college interview in the same outfit: a pale blue Oxford cloth button-down shirt, a khaki skirt (A-line, very plain), a navy blazer, and a cranberry necktie with white polka dots. (Don’t recall the shoes; something reddish with a low heel?) I think about this now and then when I wear neckties to work or church NOT along with a skirt but ABSOLUTELY along with a blazer.

JCrew Women’s Blazer

My favorite brand for blazers has for several years been JCrew, because they:

• always have good outer hip pockets

• almost always have working breast pockets for my ridiculous pocket square collection (although the size of the pocket can vary widely)

• frequently have an inside pocket and

• can be bought on sale several times a year; you get on the email list and they let you know when they are having a 30-40% off sale. They’re not cheap without a sale, but the quality is always worth it.

When I first started dressing a bit more MOC more consistently, I just added a blazer to whatever work trousers I had and complemented those colors and the button-front dress shirt or casual shirt and then a colorful pocket square in the blazer’s breast pocket. I’ve even gotten compliments from women in the restrooms at work and, as other MOC people will tell you, that’s surprisingly uncommon. (Usually they think you shouldn’t even be there.) But women seem to like that little pop of color.

That’s it for now. I’ll address pocket squares another time.

Flusser, Alan. Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion. Dey St., 2002.

Hannah Gadsby Rocks the Butch Look

So I just read a great short piece in Vanity Fair by the Australian butch lesbian comic on her clothes and why. Suffice it to say you should go read it.

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/04/hannah-gadsby-on-the-comfort-cocoon-she-calls-her-clothes?utm_campaign=likeshopme&client_service_id=31204&utm_social_type=owned&utm_brand=vf&service_user_id=1.78e+16&utm_content=instagram-bio-link&utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=social&client_service_name=vanity+fair&supported_service_name=instagram_publishing

High-Maintenance Butch?

I came out about three and a half years ago, and not much later realized that I was butch and probably always had been, even and possibly especially during the two years or so when I tried to grow my hair out and meet more guys and yeah, that. I’ve read about quite a few butches who went through that stage.

And then there was this Facebook quiz that showed up on my feed about two years ago and made me laugh, because, before I came out, I would have scored a perfect zero.

Nowadays, I am clearly much, much more high maintenance. Now, I score a grand total of four points. Yeah, not the hair extensions four points, or hair is dyed+nails are painted four points. Nope. Owns 20+ pairs of shoes.

Given that there was a time in the 1990s when I owned one pair of shoes for work, a pair of sneakers, a pair of snowboots and a pair of either flats or low heels for emergencies such as weddings, it still boggles my mind that I might own more than twenty pairs of shoes.

And I thought I owned only twenty pairs of shoes, including sneakers and boots. Nope. The other day I pulled all of my non-sneaker, non-boot shoes out into the living room to get a good look at what I had.

Pretty much, it came down to short boots,

Oxfords (bucks, brogues, wingtips and monkstraps), in black

Brown

And other exciting colors

And girly shoes.

The total came to thirty pairs. Who the hell owns thirty pairs of shoes? And when I think that most of them are made of leather, and I do know the problems with the leather industry, how did I manage to accumulate all of these? Or, to put it differently, how did I manage to eat this particular dinosaur? Sigh. One piece at a time. Okay, maybe a pair of pieces at a time. And that means, I suppose, that I can also reduce the excess one pair at a time, right?

To be fair, there is a real reason that I ended up with this many pairs of shoes, and if I look at the shoes I’ve got, the answer is pretty clear. Once I recognized and embraced myself as more of a masculine kinda girl, I wanted to express that through my clothes: blazers, cufflinks, vests, shoes.

Two years ago, I did a purge of all of my clothes. I got rid of 117 items of clothing, including shoes, socks, shirts, skirts, dresses. Things that were worn out but I was still wearing, I threw out. Things that no longer fit me physically, I donated. Things that no longer felt authentic, and probably hadn’t even when I thought I should be more feminine, I donated.

117 things. Gone. But we know that nature abhors a vacuum. (I know my cat does.) Apparently I filled it. With, among other things, shoes.

So this week, as part of a new purge, I tried on all thirty pairs of shoes and managed to winnow it down by one-sixth. One pair, the black oxfords, were simply too small. I was able to give them to a smaller friend who has been pulling together a working wardrobe for her post-graduate degree present. The others, all bought online even though I know that I have narrow heels and usually can’t wear shoes that don’t tie in some way but I was trying to have better girl shoes… Yeah, that didn’t work.

So now, I am 58 pieces of clothing down (including five pairs of shoes), in part because I just ordered two vests and yeah, another pair of shoes. I never meant to be a horrible consumeristic person, or as my sister called me a while back, God forbid, “a clothes horse.”

Life leads us in really strange directions.

This Week: My Half-Gay Agenda

1. Coffee. Every day. On Monday, fireworks like glitter in the sky.
2. But tomorrow, a coffee date. With a goil. Oy veh. How exciting!
3. I am about ten pages in to my newest novel, about the search for the perfect butch. Wish me luck. Send me ideas. Send me warnings. (You could send me money too, but I have enough good sense to know how unlikely that is.)
4. There was something else. Rainbow-colored boas were NOT involved. I think.

Styling Saturday: To Tie or Not to Tie

Vivienne Westwood says, “You have a more interesting life when you wear impressive clothes.” Now, Westwood is an old British fashion designer, apparently known for bringing punk clothing into the mainstream, so on the one hand, she would think this. On the other hand…I dunno if it’s true, but it sure feels true.

This also reminds me of the last time I wore a necktie, around 1986 or1987. It was the eighties, so I was not being ironic or gender-bendy in any way. I think I wore jeans and brown Oxford bucks, a light blue button-down Oxford shirt, my jeans jacket and a narrow light blue necktie with pink flowers. My hair was short, just as it is now. I was singing the final song at the top (bottom?) of my lungs, as I always do. Afterwards, the little old lady standing next to me patted me on the arm and said, “It’s so nice to hear young men singing in church!” That was the last time I wore a necktie.

I often get “sirred” at the grocery store. I don’t really care, but it always makes the person who says it get embarrassed in the following moment when they take a closer look at me and focus less on my fedora and more on my earrings, etc. I recently bought three modest neckties at SkinnyTies.com (one black, one navy, and one powder pink), but I don’t think I will probably wear them, or at least not until I learn how to do my makeup better. I don’t think I could pull off true butch, and I don’t think I would want to. But when I look at something like Katherine Moennig or Julie Andrews just looking so darn cute in a tie, I wish I could carry it off.

Muscles & Mascara Monday: Truthful Statements

“Style is fundamentally a truthful statement… There are layers and layers of truth; and style, whether in dress or life, art or literature, is involved in their discovery.” –Freya Stark

I have been thinking about makeup lately. I used to think that makeup was something women put a huge amount of time and money into to get the attention of men, who often don’t even bother to shave. O, patriarchy, why you so mean?

I am lucky enough to have clear skin and dark blue eyes so I always figured that if a guy needs me to “put on my face” simply to notice me, then he’s not a person I really feel like being noticed by. I still feel that the Manhattan style of makeup is over the top, but New York has always struck me as being a hard-edged city and maybe it’s just a form of protective coloration, layers of powder rather than a sword and buckler.

Boston, as an academic city (we’ve got thirty colleges just within a few miles of the city center) tends toward the mildly androgynous. We probably have more comfortable women’s shoes in just a five-mile radius than they have in Manhattan and Los Angeles combined. And women who work/teach at these colleges are not an exception, whether they are full-time, part-time or graduate students (and the undergrads in baggy sweatpants). This always worked for me. As long as I looked “professional” and teacher-like, I figured that nobody would care if I didn’t take the time to put on makeup before running out the door guzzling my coffee and trying to remember my lesson plan. I get good student evaluations every semester. The rest is meaningless.

But in January, I started going to the monthly lesbian happy hour, which is a fascinating sociological activity. Where else are you going to find a sample of about eighty women with such a wide variety of clothing styles in the same bad bar lighting? More than half of our sample look like any other women you might see on the train every day. But there are a few types who stand out.

Fashionista/International Femme: Makeup, long hair, dress, heels. An air of being exactly where she needs to be. Even if I wore the exact same thing, if I was standing next to her, no one would notice my existence. I have had friends like this.

Grad Student Femme: Shortish wash-and-wear hair. Casual clothing, such as skinny leg jeans. Comfortable shoes, minimal makeup. The glow of youth.

College Dean-ish: An excellent haircut, whatever the length. Makeup, but never too much. Classic jewelry. Professional clothes, more femme than not. Classic but comfortable shoes, probably expensive. An air of quiet authority.

Grad Student Butch: Short hair with a little product for style. No makeup. Men’s style clothes but not necessarily menswear. Comfortable shoes, maybe spiffy. The glow of youth.

Flannel Butch: Plaid flannel shirt, dark wash jeans, expensive sneakers. Most of the jewelry is in one ear. One or more tattoos. A. The glow of youth AND/OR B. An air of quiet authority AND/OR C. Laidback attitude.

Bowtie Butch: Short hair. No makeup. Menswear, including either necktie or bowtie. Men’s style shoes. Laidback attitude.

Perhaps if I saw the same people in the bright light of day, the differences might not be apparent. But in the dim light of a bar, the women who don’t wear makeup, especially if they are over 40, look kind of grey and washed out.

So I’ve made a couple of visits to Sephora, one to get help in picking a shade of lipstick and one to get a 15-minute primer on how to apply eye shadow the right way and get help picking good colors. The young women (and one or two men) who work there are all made up to within an inch of their lives. But when they ask me what style I am going for, and I say, “Sorta like Ellen,” and they say, “Oh! You mean natural!” they are gung ho in helping me achieve a look that is as little like theirs as possible.

My shift in thinking about all this is primarily a shift in thinking from more outward–what do other people see when they look at me–to more inward–can I see my best self when I look in the mirror, blue eyes, Polish cheekbones and all.

It also helps that two of the faces of makeup companies in recent memory have been Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Ellen Degeneres (Ellen the Homophobia Slayer), both of whom have fresh light looks that don’t scream, “Look at me! I’m wearing makeup! Ask me how!” Which is funny, actually, considering that is exactly what they’re getting paid to do… Ah, marketing, why you so sneaky?

Styling Saturday: Making Changes

First quarter of this football game that is 2016 down, three more quarters to go! So far I have kept my most important New Year’s Resolution: #9 Stay open to possibilities. Also I have been making small changes in my wardrobe, trying to remember to wear makeup and jewelry more to balance out my semi-masculine clothes. I have spent a lot of my life looking like I dressed this way by accident, in part because I did. Now I am dressing this way on purpose, and I want to be very clear about that.

For the last ten or twelve years I have had to wear glasses, first when I read and then all the time. I always got very simple frames. Now I am wearing these instead.

That’s the good news. Now for the other kind. As I mentioned a few days ago, I got a new haircut. I feel like I got scalped. I think I do this at the start of spring every year, emphasizing “short” to the hairdresser because I know the warm weather is, hopefully, coming soon. My friends have all been kind about it, saying it looks good, although one friend who knows about the recent changes in my life suggested that I use my new network to find a better hair dresser. “If there is one group who has the haircut thing locked in, it’s the lesbians!” This is also something I had noticed while in seminary, but never really took advantage of then. But she might have a point.

What to Do Once You Get Her Number

1. Grin to yourself. Outwardly, remain cool. Slip her card into your card case as if this feat of dating dexterity is something you do every week rather than once or twice a decade.
2. Imagine calling her. Panic. Realize that you have nothing to say that could be considered witty or interesting or remotely intelligent or even grammatically English.
3. Keep it tucked away safe. Take it out now and then to look at it. Repeat #2.
4. Google her. Tell yourself this is not stalker behavior. Clear your browser. Distract yourself with work.
5. Write five poems that no one within forty miles of your closet could tell were in any way gay. Post one on your blog. Repeat #4.
6. Check out her photography portfolio online. Wonder why the single photo of her doesn’t show the glow you see when you look at her in person. Repeat #5.
7. Write a poem that is, face it, just a little bit gay. Wait for the glitter to fall on your head.
8.  Repeat #2-7. Keep waiting.

The Bisexual Cento

 

I was on a blog the other day and the poet’s “and” list was exactly like a cento, a poem created from the single lines of other poems. I was looking at the Tag Cloud for this blog today and saw the ones that stand out:

 

Bisexuality, Catholic school, cufflinks,

Joss Whedon, androgyny,

butch, femme, hair, Jesus,

Katherine Moennig, ally,

lesbian, menswear, perception,

shoes.

Queering Holy Week, Cont’d.

So Wednesday, my church did the Women’s Stations of the Cross, a service made up of short (1 page) monologues by all the different women that Jesus interacted with and healed, recalling their relationship with him and watching as he makes his way to his death. Written by Katie Sherrod, it’s a moving service, especially for those of us reader involved in it. The last time we did it, I read his mother Mary receiving his body, Station 13, which was harrowing. This year, I did 12, Mary Magdalene watching him die on the cross. Sherrod uses some of the ideas from the Gnostic gospels rejected from the canon by Constantine in 325, including that Jesus called her “beloved disciple” and that Peter was jealous of her–these details get seeded into a few of the other women’s parts as they look to her as a leader among the women followers. We love the service in part for its good theological and elegant emotional writing and for its being a service led by non-clergy who are all women. So not transgressive in a big way, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t play well in Rome.

I was going to go to the Holy/Maundy Thursday service on Thursday evening but ended up binge-watching Season 5 of Ellen instead. Watching the earlier seasons I remembered why I had stopped watching it in the nineties–her funny but hapless dates with men in the first three seasons reminded me too much of my own failed efforts in that directions. Oh, the irony. Season 4 and 5 are encouraging for similar reasons.

Since I had already gone through the crucifixion on Wednesday, I spent Good Friday evening at a lesbian happy hour, a monthly meetup that always draws 50-80 women of a variety of ages and backgrounds. A woman I had met the previous month and found interesting did remember me (teachers are better at remembering names than other folks apparently). She is a flannel shirt butch but also kind of feminine with a brightness about her that draws people to her, so she is always surrounded at these events. I met almost a dozen women, from a physical therapist to an MIT grad student

A doctor who is recently out and I were talking. She looked past me at a woman sitting at the bar, fifties and relatively feminine, and asked if I thought her attractive. Assuming she was asking for encouragement to go talk to her I said, “Sure.” She turned to the woman and said, “My friend here thinks you’re attractive” and introduced us. Luckily the woman’s older friend was a realtor, so we could talk about how the Internet has changed her field and I managed to conduct a four-way conversation about nothing much until I could drift into another small group. Before she left, the doctor said, “I’m always looking to help people!”

Thanks, doc. The next time I need a wingman, you won’t be the first I’ll call.

Another set of women, finding out that I’ve only been thinking I’m bi for three months, reacted in a way I’m getting used to: not quite hysterical laughter. Finding out I’m only out to four people, they assured me, “Oh, honey, your parents already know. They might not know they know, if they’re old, but they know. Your siblings and friends too.” Yes, yes, terribly funny. Glad I amuse. I suspect that being lesbian is more straightforward than being bi (you should pardon the expression).

They also thought that “since you like men” might explain my attraction to somewhat more masculine women like Katherine Moennig and Ellen Degeneres (and the lady in plaid behind me regaling her new friend about the gay scene in Santiago that she should check out on her vacation next week). I managed to get myself back into that conversation, successfully guessing that the vacationer was Swiss (I recognized the accent). I was drinking a mai tai, which had a purple flower in it, which I gave to the Chilean who talks like a born American and she tucked it behind her ear and went off and joined other conversations.

I met a writer who gave me bad advice about writing and relationships, neither of which I intend to take. When I saw Flower Girl again she told me she had gotten a lot of compliments on it. She wondered out loud whether she would get anyone’s number by the end of the evening.

I said, “You could have mine.”

She looked surprised, so I said I thought she was cute.

“It’s because of the flower, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s why I gave it to you.”

Eventually, we exchanged cards. This flirting thing is hard. I feel like I am trying to flex a muscle I haven’t used in years and never was very good at in the first place.