Gentleman -or how to de-sexify yourself once and for all

shirt: my dad’s old, blazer: thrifted, jeans: weekday, shoes: converse


Actually, contrary to the title, it is my belief that girls can look incredibly sexy in guys’ clothes. You only have to look at this project to realize that girls can look just as cool in girls’ or guys’ clothes, while a guy in a dress just looks funny.

But sometimes you just want to be completely gender-neutral. So, really, I didn’t want to dress like a guy. I just didn’t want to dress like a girl. Sometimes it’s nice to forget your gender -which doesn’t mean I’m not proud to of who I am, but rather that sometimes I don’t feel like impersonating the stereotype of a woman. Which is why I didn’t just wear these androgynous clothes. I also didn’t wear makeup or contact lenses, or let my hair down in an attempt to look more feminine.

OK, OK, the real reason I looked like this is because I was dead tired and I had an exam so I didn’t have time to, or feel particularly like, constructing an image of femininity. I just changed the top and otherwise wore what I was wearing the night before. And the thing is, I felt a little insecure during this little experiment.

Every time I leave my femininity at home, I feel a bit ugly. The truth is that even if I don’t usually dress sexy, I almost always try to wear a little makeup, or use my long hair to assert my sexuality. And I now realize how pressured women (and probably men, too) are to assume a gender identity, to look and be feminine or masculine. And like I said, even though I’m proud of being a woman, there are so many other things I am that have nothing to do with my gender, and yet I don’t feel the need to walk around with a sticker saying: ‘I’m Greek’, or ‘I like reading books’, or something else. But then again I do express these things, albeit in a less forceful manner. Expressing yourself is supposed to be a good thing, after all. I guess the point here is that I should be free to express my femininity through my appearance (as I am happy to do, most of the time), but I shouldn’t be made to feel less of a woman when I choose not to. Not by society, but most of all not by myself.