On Clothing (Five Pieces)

Veronica Wasson

1983 – L’Eggs pantyhose, sheer

Standing in line at the Big Apple supermarket. I threw in a box of Tic Tacs and a quart of orange juice to make my purchase less conspicuous. As if the cashier would care or even notice.

I shaved in the tub. Smooth legs were an interesting new sensation. I liked how they looked. (I remember recoiling as a child at the thought that some day I would have a hairy chest, a “manly” chest. This seemed to be a thing that I was supposed to look forward to.)

I dried myself and gingerly pulled the nylon pantyhose over one calf, then the other, and rolled them upward, like a shiny second skin. But immediately I felt dirty. I must be a pervert. I had no other vocabulary to describe this impulse. Disgusted with myself, I threw them in the trash.

1984 – Blouse, alabaster white, ruffled sleeves

I thought it was very beautiful. Maybe it was just ‘80s tacky. Throat dry, I explained to the saleswoman that it was a gift for my girlfriend.

“Do you know her size?”

“Uh, she’s about as big as I am.”

The humiliation of that moment still crawls on my skin.

When I tried it on at home, I was delighted by the satiny sheen and the tiny round buttons.

Before class Ryan approached me in the corridor. He looked me up and down. The sneering face of a bully.

“Hey, f⸺.”

That night I shoved the blouse in the back of a drawer.

1986 – Wraparound midi skirt, black

Purchased at a vintage clothing store.

I strode with jubilation, not caring what looks I got. By now I had cultivated a punk rock persona and the skirt went with combat boots and shaved head. Some girls thought it looked cool. Some boys made nervous jokes at this implicit threat to the gender binary.

While I never wore the skirt to my office job, I did start to experiment with lipstick and nail polish, until one day my boss pulled me aside to give me a talk about work-appropriate appearance. Looking back, this was a juncture. The choice was made very clear. Rebel and join the nonconforming fringes of society. Or conform, have an office job, pay rent—be normal. I’m not brave. I wanted the humdrum of American middle class life.

My father died that summer. I dropped out of college. Nothing held me in NYC except pain and dissociation, and I left soon after. I retired the skirt.

Interlude

Clothing from that point on was nothing in particular: jeans, T-shirts, sneakers. Who cared. I always seemed to have exactly two pairs of blue jeans. When those wore out, I bought two more. From time to time, I would buy khaki slacks, with a vague idea of owning something dressier. But when I caught a glimpse of myself in a changing room mirror, in photos, or in a reflecting window, I thought I looked ridiculous. I must be the type of person, I told myself, who just doesn’t care about clothing.

2021 – Black skirt with white elephant print

Stuck working at home, I had nowhere to go but the daily walk around the neighborhood, thinking about mortality.

To my coworkers, I existed only from the waist up on video calls. So with newly painted purple nails, I searched online clothing stores. I had no plan. It just seemed fun to wear a skirt again.

A couple of weeks later, the package arrived. I fingered the heavy cotton. A long dormant part of myself stirred.

2023 – Sleeveless blouse with cinched waist

Yesterday, I had some time to kill after lunch, so I stopped to look for a new top. The sales associate wrote my name with a dry erase marker on the door of a changing room. My new name. It’s been almost two years since I left my deadname behind.

I picked out a sleeveless blouse, a beautiful cobalt blue. It looked nice. The cinched waist and square neck suited me.

Shopping for clothes no longer carries a panicked sense of danger, shame, and fierce, secret joy. It’s just . . . normal. Some clothes are flattering, others not so much. In the mornings, I look in my closet and pick out something I want to wear. I get dressed. I go to work. I’m not completely comfortable in myself, but I’m working on it.

Clothes don’t make a woman. But clothing has always spoken to me. Clothing was the most visible manifestation of what I was and what I wasn’t; of who I wanted to be and who I dreamed of becoming.

Clothes were the spark that I needed to light my assigned gender on fire and rebuild an authentic version of myself from the ashes of my deadname.