Fashion & Feminism——How my expression changed with my feminist journey

There is nothing that quite captures your identity as the clothes you choose to express yourselves with. Fashion can be everything from the outfit you picked to go grocery shopping to celebrities making a political statement on events such as the Met Gala. How other people respond to it is certainly not in our control but if anyone tells you that they did not think about the statement their clothes would make then they are probably lying. Yes, even that one male friend you have who always shows up in slippers and shorts that he probably slept in, he likes that people think he doesn’t concern himself with ‘frivolous’ things like dressing up.

When it comes to my own fashion it has always been closely related to my identity as a feminist, a realization that I only had recently if I am being honest. In the early years of high school, I was certainly not someone that you would consider feminine. When I showed a college friend a photo from grade 9, I think I almost gave the poor girl a heart attack. It was the best glow up she had ever seen apparently but I think that might have been a little too harsh on my high school self. Back then I was only just beginning to understand feminism. I knew that I wanted everyone to take me just as seriously as my brother and somewhere along the way I decided the best way to do that was to appear more masculine. So, I did that through the best form of expression there is, the clothes on my body.

You would not catch me in anything remotely girly. Whether it was form fitting blouses or the color pink this girl stayed miles away from all of that. I think some part of me almost felt like I deserved a pat on the back from breaking away from something that was clearly just holding women back. In hindsight, my understanding of feminism could not have been more wrong. As my feminism evolved, I realized that preferring masculine forms of expression over the feminine was really not the revolution that I thought it to be. Not to mention I quite enjoyed putting on makeup. With this new understanding feminism my perspective on fashion also shifted, I learned to embrace the feminine.

Now I am that girl you see in the grocery store with perfectly winged eyeliner, and it has certainly done me good. The person I am now is a lot more comfortable in her clothes and identity than that young girl from high school, but I had to learn something else along the way as well. Fashion is not always about pushing an agenda and the lines that we often draw for ourselves don’t really matter. As I embrace more feminine forms of expression it does not have to take away from the fact that sometimes I like shopping from the men’s section. The biggest statement you can make with both your feminism and fashion is to just be yourself and do whatever feels rights in the moment regardless of any societal expectations and ideas about your identity.