Lessons Learned: Racism and Women's Clothing

The last few days have been quite a learning experience for me. I want to talk about two things that I have gained a new understanding of: my own racist bias and the insecurities of women’s clothing. Let’s talk about racism first.

Having recently moved from a comfortable suburb that’s 95% white into a city neighborhood that’s quite a bit more diverse, I’ve had to confront a number of biases that I don’t think I ever considered before. This was never more obvious than when I went for a walk with my dog the other day. Our new community faces a lot of the same challenges that many cities face: crime, poverty, and a lack of investment. Some houses and apartment buildings are very nice and well cared for. Some… not so much. Having been accustomed to living in a place where leaving your trashcans out for a day too long means you’ll get a ticket, it was jarring to see the dilapidation of some buildings. Overall, it gives a sense that things aren’t safe. People who don’t invest in their property probably don’t invest in the communities that they reside in. Not to blame anyone, to be clear, as it could be a landlord who doesn’t do their job and not the residents.

It’s different here. Not bad, per se, but different can lead to discomfort. And I’ll admit I wasn’t as comfortable walking around the neighborhood as I had been accustomed to. Here was the first sign of unconscious bias. What was different about this place? Sure, the buildings were different but it had to something else. It was all the people of color. While I might not have given a second glance at a bunch of white people hanging out in their yard in Shoreview, a gathering of people who didn’t look like me or dress like me made me feel… insecure.

I’m not proud to admit this. I thought I’d grown past this sort of thinking. But that’s the devil of bias. It doesn’t really leave you. It’s not a choice. It’s baked in. It’s only with reflection and understanding the bias that a person (me) can begin to confront this kind of thinking. Media and my own experiences having grown up in a mostly-white town have told me that while a bunch of white guys hanging out is “normal”, a group of men of color might be a threat. I mean, it’s the middle of the day, what are they doing there? Don’t they have jobs? Of course, the same could be said for me. But that’s where the invisible veil of bias and racism comes in.

First, it’s none of my business what they are doing or if they have jobs. They could be night workers. Or have a day off. Or it could be a family gathering. It could be anything. For a group of white people, I would have naturally provided the reasoning or not even considered it. But for people of color, it’s suspect. Second, the stories I tell myself are my responsibility. My mind could have told me anything it wanted. It chose to identify these people as something “other” and that’s the bias that we, as white people, all need to fight and confront.

This all came to a head when I approached an intersection. There was a Black man sitting on the corner, leaning against a stone wall looking at his phone. My mind was flooded with thoughts that I didn’t really appreciate at the time. What’s he doing? Why is standing there? Is he waiting for a victim, someone to rob? Again, I am not proud to say any of this but it is vital that white people begin to talk openly about this kind of thinking because it is the root of a lot of poisonous thinking. There’s also some misogyny in here too. If he’d been an Asian woman, would I have felt the same? All I saw was a big Black man and my mind, my bias, told me to be on alert.

As I got closer to him, he stopped looking at his phone and looked at me. My heart raced a little and I could feel sweat starting to gather on my neck (which could have also been the result of an obese person doing some minor activity for the first time in months). I paused the music in my headphones in case he said anything. I’d need to be on alert. To be fair, whenever I pass someone on the sidewalk I usually pause my music. This is still Minnesota and people say hi and chat a lot. And since I’m slowly becoming a Minnesotan I would never want them to think me rude. Heck, I’d already been stopped by someone for a quick exchange just a block earlier.

When I was a few steps from him, he spoke to me.

“Nice dog. He friendly?”

Duh. I’m out here strutting around with the most beautiful pupper in the world so, obviously, people want to look at him. I told him he was and he bent over and pet him. But that’s not the end of my bias. Now it swung in the other direction, something that I think white people do without realizing it. Not only was I relieved that he was no longer a menacing threat but now I was ecstatic that we had a connection. The guilt I unconsciously held was alleviated by this new relationship. I put all my racism on him and made it his job to make me feel better, which he did simply by being a person.

Oh, and the reason he was hanging out on the corner became clear when a yellow school bus pulled out and his daughter came racing off into his arms.

What an absolute racist asshole I am.

Now, I don’t have kids so bus schedules and things like that don’t naturally occur to me. But if it had been a white person, would that have been one of the automatically supplied reasons for why he was out there? Sadly, that is likely, especially if he’d been a woman. I would have never clocked a white woman in the same manner as I did him.

I don’t share this story of my racism because I am proud of it or looking for absolution. I want other white people to read this and think about how they approach strangers and how their unconscious bias makes them categorize others. If any of this sounded familiar, take some time for reflection and understand your biases.

For most of my life, I have been interested in women’s clothing. When I was a kid I would parade around in my mother’s shoes and sometimes wear her dresses. Any chance I got to dress in drag I took. Halloween costumes, school presentations, whatever. I have always loved the feeling that a flowy dress has on my legs. It’s breezy and comfortable.

This isn’t to say I’m interested in identifying as female or anything like that. I like being a man. For the most part. I wish we had a better rep and weren’t responsible for like 99% of all the awful stuff in the world, but I digress. This isn’t about identity. This is about clothing.

Did you notice the problem two paragraphs above? I ascribed a gender to fabric. What makes clothing men’s or women’s? Because the store selling it divides it up? Because society, in general, tells us how to be or what to wear? It’s really kind of an insane thing if you think about it. Women wear pants. Yet it is still very unusual for men to wear skirts or dresses. There’s probably a lot to consider about why women felt compelled to adopt men’s clothing and yet the desire, despite women’s clothing being far more interesting with more options, wasn’t reciprocal. At least in modern times in America.

Of course, this has been changing ever so slowly. The most famous example is probably Harry Styles being on a magazine cover wearing a skirt. People lost their collective minds over it. Was it a stunt? Was he trying to corrupt our nation’s youths? Maybe he just liked the silky smooth feeling of a dress.

Whooo now that’s a hunk of man meat right there.

Recently, I’ve decided to embrace my desire for dresses and what might be considered “women’s” clothing. I don’t intend on wearing a dress every day or anything like that. But if I find a lovely sundress that’s breezy and will look nice at a cookout this summer? I’ll probably wear it. I’m honestly terrified to do so. I worry about my safety and how other men will react to it. I don’t care what they think but I don’t want them to hurt me. Some men are so threatened by the act of breaking gender norms that they react violently. I have seen it with my own eyes and written about it before.

As part of this new desire to accept a facet of who I am, I’ve been spending a bit of time dress-shopping online. And MY GOD LADIES I UNDERSTAND THE PAIN SO MUCH NOW. The first thing I had to find out was my size since women’s clothing is measured differently than men’s. Apparently, I’m a 17-18 but maybe not because sizes run different so I might be bigger or smaller. This is literally something I never have to consider buying men’s clothing because our stuff is based on the actual size of the clothing and not some bizarre, idealized, seemingly-random number system. I also learned that this makes me something that’s insultingly called “PLUS SIZE”. Shit, that hurt my feelings, guys. I mean, I know I’m obese but damn clothing, you don’t have to get in on it too. Why even have something like this? Why not just have numbers and sizing and skip the judgemental extras?

As it’s been explained to me, that’s part of the poison of being a woman. It’s intentional and I can see why it would drive people to starve themselves, abuse diet pills, or end their lives. It’s brutal and I’ve been involved in this crap for like two weeks! I can’t imagine a lifetime of it. I’d be crazier than a shithouse rat. People come in all shapes and sizes. What is the purpose in categorizing those sizes into insulting terms? I can’t fathom men’s clothing ever being sized like that. Sure, we have husky sizes for boys, which also sucked being labeled with when I was younger. But adult men would never jump through the hoops women have to just to get clothing. Why is that?

Oh, it’s because men created and owned the fashion industry for centuries and this is just yet another example of how we damage and control women by applying unrealistic standards to them that we’d never apply to ourselves? Gotcha. FFS, guys.

Another thing about ladies’ clothing: it is expensive as hell. So it looks like I’ll be going to the Goodwill as I begin this experiment. I can’t get a dress for under $20. Let alone one that’ll fit me. Which also begs the question: why is it so hard to find clothing to fit me? Granted, I go about 6’4” and 270 lbs. but surely they make women with those proportions as well? My mother is at least six feet tall. I will not comment on her weight or even hazard a guess at it. She’s beautiful and looks attractive no matter what she wears. So I know bigger women exist. Have you seen the WNBA or college basketball? Where do they get clothing? Is that why they seem to wear more men’s clothing?

Oh, it’s more of the unrealistic standards thing again? Dammit.

If you haven’t seen the irony in both of these stories yet, allow me to point it out. Based solely on appearance, I judged and made assumptions about a Black man that impacted my reaction to him. And then later I bemoaned about how I would be judged by men and how those judgments would affect their behavior towards me. It’s the same damn thing!

In any event, I still have a lot to learn about acceptance and understanding my own bias. We are all born into this festering cesspool of racism and misogyny. We swim in it and bathe in it. We marinate in it. We will never be completely free of it. But that’s no reason to give up. By reflecting upon and confronting our biases, we can start to try to make it cleaner for the future generations born into it. All we have to be are open-minded, willing students.

And that’s a good lesson to learn.