Photo: Benjamin Combs

When I realized I was queer and wanted to embrace it, one of the first things I started freaking out about (well, after coming out to my friends and family and kissing a girl for the first time) was how exactly I was supposed to look gay. I finally wanted people to know I was queer, but I wasn't sure how to let them know without having to run around telling everyone I met. It was a confusing time.

For me, this translated into figuring out how exactly I was supposed to dress. Mainstream gay media made me feel like I had to pick a side: femme, or butch. And of course there’s 100% nothing wrong with identifying with either. But I don’t identify as femme, butch, or really as anything beyond just vaguely — but definitely — queer. This meant that I ended up just sort of doing the opposite of whatever the person I was dating was doing. When I dated people who ID’d as more butch, I went femme. If I was hooking up with someone who was more femme, I went more butch.

It always felt inauthentic to me (and probably to everyone else), because it was. But the last thing I wanted during that period in my life was for people to think I was straight. I wanted to claim my sexuality, and that felt like something I needed to embody in my dress. If I didn’t wear flannel and beanies, how would girls know I wanted to hook up with them?

Obviously this is problematic as hell, but that was all I had to go off of. My queer education (aka, The L Word) hadn’t exactly prepared me to push beyond the binary when it comes to how queer ladies are “supposed” to dress to make sure they aren’t mistaken for the straight friend.

It took a lot of reading, a re-education around what my queerness actually meant, and, most importantly, meant to me, but I was able to get closer to embracing my sexuality in a way that felt real instead of forced. I came to realize that I didn’t need to dress any differently than I had when I was dating boys, but I was excited about the chance not to have to play into binary gender roles I’d always found sort of suffocating. I felt freer dating girls; for the most part, they didn’t seem to like me more or less based on how well I was playing into feminine stereotypes. They didn’t tell me I looked tired, or sick, if I wasn’t wearing makeup, or that I’d look hotter (read: whiter) if I straightened my hair.

I kissed a lot of girls. And I wore whatever I felt like. And I came to realize the simple truth: what I wore had nothing to do with whether or not I was queer.

Sure, more people would perceive me as queer if I dressed to the stereotype, but it wasn’t my job to play into stereotypes. The political nature of my specific queerness means that I’m most interested in breaking down those stereotypes, anyway.

Today, I still worry about whether or not I look gay enough, or, sometimes, too gay to be safe in certain environments. It’s not like I never think about what I wear, but I’m no longer wasting money trying to buy the “right stuff” so people don’t call my sexuality into question. I’m never going to be a skinny white girl with short, straight hair and a beanie tucked into the back pocket of her skinny jeans, but that doesn’t mean I’m any less gay. My sexuality is valid, anyway.