Q&A not Q&A: “I’m a female androgyne & clothes are a problem for me.”

anonymous said:

Hi. I really like your style. I’m a female androgyne & clothes are a problem for me. I’m skinny & short & I like men’s clothes but they don’t fit me because they are all too big for me. So I hate how I look like. I see pictures on the internet with beautiful women wearing great men’s clothes, they are divine but where I live there’s not a single shop for genderqueer. When I’m trying to tell this to someone, girls are telling me that with my body I can wear what I want. Yes… in a shop for women

thanks, anon. 🙂

i totally share your frustration when it comes to shopping for clothes…. i, too, prefer clothes that tend to be in “men’s” sections. i’m also (very) short and have more curves than i care to admit… that, combined with how selective and uncompromising i am when it comes to what i wear + body image & dysphoria issues when things don’t fit right turns shopping for clothes from a chore into a nightmare that can ruin my entire day sometimes…

sigh.

a few years back, i was able to finally begin the slow, but steady process of redoing my wardrobe. since i’ve always hated shopping for clothes, it’s always been a really bad habit of mine to wear the same few articles of clothing that i actually like repeatedly for years until they’d literally turn to rags and i’d be forced to finally throw them out. upon starting my current job 3 years ago, i finally realized that rags + the stuff i hated and never wore was pretty much all i had. i had to buy a whole new set of clothes for work, so i took that (plus finally having a stable income) as the initiative to try and make my wardrobe what i’ve always wanted it to be. it’s still an on-going process (i still have rags from high school that have literally traveled the world with me lol….) and there’s been a ton of (costly) trial and error, but i’m happy to say that my wardrobe is finally getting where i want it to be.

i don’t have much in the way of actual advice to offer you, but…

when it comes to tops, i generally go to stores that i know carry extra small (XS) in “men’s” shirts. H&M and Uniqlo are my favorites, but i’ve heard American Apparel, J.Crew, GAP also carry extra small and i’m sure there are other brands that do too. that said, not all extra small shirts fit me, sadly…. especially with H&M collared shirts, the sleeves are often too long and the waist too tight for me… pants, on the other hand, tend to be a lost cause for me being as short as i am… i’m lucky if i can even find “women’s” pants that fit length wise. oh, and another place that i like to shop are secondhand stores because you can find a mix of things there and sometimes (just sometimes) you find gold.

to avoid some of the costly mistakes that i’ve made, i highly recommend trying things on in store if you can. fitting rooms are a nightmare because they’re segregated by gender, but i do my best to ignore that fact. i shop at stores where “men’s” and “women’s” clothing is on the same floor and i can easily gather anything that i want to try on from any part of the store and take it all into whatever fitting room i go into. the staff doesn’t care / know what’s from where. if i’m in a store that’s entirely gendered or i’m getting something from the “boys’” section (hey, you do what you gotta do!) and it’s impossible for me to try something on, i try my best to guestimate how something will fit based off of measurements on the tag and hang onto receipts in case i need to return it.

tl;dr: shopping for clothes is a pain in the ass when none of the clothes that you want to wear are made with someone of your height / measurements in mind. it sucks even more when that fact is made painfully obvious looking at yourself in the mirror and when no one around you even acknowledges your struggle, acting as if it’s the easiest thing in the world to “just wear whatever you want to wear.” totally vent and avoid clothes shopping when you need to, but also don’t give up! for me, it’s been a long and trying endeavor to find clothes that both fit the way i want / need them to fit and look the way that i want / need them to look, but when i do finally find it all of my effort becomes worth it. it means so much to finally look in the mirror and see what i like to see– in terms of clothes, anyway. with trial and error, your odds of finding something that works increases, so definitely keep trying! and definitely make use of this amazing resource that we have known as The Internet.

i hope things start looking up for you.