As always, I admire you for your leadership and vision that you bring to transgenderism. I also admire when you take a stand on something controversial. I simply wish to try to organize my thoughts on this very interesting topic. Here goes.
As you know, I am an architect. Many of my clients want to do projects that fit in with the traditional building styles of our region. Greek Revival has been a popular style over the centuries. And when my clients want to do Greek Revival, I always say that we are either going to do it all the way, or not at all. That is to say, if I design a Greek Revival house, all of the details, the eaves, the corners, the cornice, the trim... all of that is done exactly the way it would have been built 130 years ago.
I always advise my clients that if you just sort of do Greek Revival, then it stands out like a fake. It looks stupid. Some of the trim pieces are not in the correct proportion and the discrepancy is clear as a bell.
What I hear you saying is that if you are going to look like a traditional woman, then you better pay attention to all of the details so that you are as authentically and traditionally woman as you can possibly be. I understand that and I agree.
If you only get two-thirds of the way there, just like the Greek Revival knock-off, you will look silly. And you will look silly because you are going for traditional woman and you did not get even close. It looks like you don't know what you are doing. And it is kind of funny.
In my perfect world, all of the items that are typically gender markers, which include clothes, what you put on your face, shoes, hair, nail polish, etc. will be able to be worn by anybody in any mixture. In this guise, people are simply wearing what feels comfortable and right to them. I'm experimenting with this now and it feels wonderful.
Recently my wife and I went to dinner and I wore an androgynous (Eileen Fisher) tunic-length blouse, bra (no padding), women's pleated knee-length flowing shorts, painted fingernails, no makeup, my hair with a bit of holding gel with a mildly feminine look and I don't think I have ever had a more enjoyable dinner in a restaurant. I don't think I even got so much as a sidelong glance either in the restaurant or walking in the streets. I would dress like that every day if I could.
I am in awe of the dedication, effort, time and money that you have expended to to bring together Stana, Traditional Woman.
All the best.
Beth
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| Wearing Boston Proper (Source: Boston Proper) |
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| Femulating British spy Lt. Col. Dudley Clarke (Source: Crystal Stephens) |
Well said, Beth. More men need to reject this ridiculous convention of the jacket and tie day in and day out and embrace the wonderful expression accessible through artful, graceful, elegant feminine clothing. I think everyone looks better in skirts. Men should take the opportunity to try them out instead of letting society decide for them that skirt wearing is something they wouldn't like simply because it's not in their nature to like them.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't know what this is about. Is it sarcasm, or a poor analogy? Is it in support of Stana's prior (controversial) blog posts, or is it about thumbing a nose at it? The way you described yourself for your dinner engagement, you were only two-thirds there, for which, in a Greek Revival knock-off, you say looks silly. What's the idiom: back to the drawing board?
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