By which I mean "femme" – though some might say "faggy". Let's dish about the recent men's shows, sex, and the science of self-expression.
A few weeks ago I asked my mom to help me choose which black lipstick selfie would be the cutest choice for Instagram. She laughed and said, "My sister and I used to do that." It was like I was five years old again, sneaking into my parent's bathroom to marvel at the sea of compacts laid out on the counter and the powder-caked puffy heads of makeup brushes—except this time, I wasn't afraid of getting caught.
When people ask me what my blog is about, what the focus is, I always feel left in the lurch. It seems wrong to say I’m a menswear blog, not just because I post about other stuff, too, but...“menswear”? Really? I'm coming around to calling it a "queer men's style site." When I was a kid I had no other associations for that word—queer—outside of its rhyming with “smear”, but nowadays there's something like comfort in the term. I like that it says other. I like that it suggests something amorphous, something unexpected, something that deviates. I like the idea that you can use it as a verb and a noun. I like that it's open and inclusive and ambiguous. “To identify as ‘queer’ is to be at ease with your own masculinity and femininity,” said writer Rohin Guha in his viral essay, On Gay Male Privilege. “You’re not constantly having to fear for your own gender expression.”
There was a time when the idea of sharing that side of myself that likes to play with makeup would have terrified me and made me feel unbelievably vulnerable. Now I'm broadcasting it to not just my mom, but to two thousand strangers on three or four different social networks. It's a bit self-indulgent, admittedly, but I'm just glad that the stigma associated with being open about what makes me different—or, really, the same as any eight-year-old girl—has dissipated.
