#it's just a bunch of dysphoria venting spurred by an innocent question by a well meaning but ignorant family friend

[fenderjess]

last night a cis woman asked me if I liked her top and it ended up making me cry

oh, it looks great, i said, but what's 'kors'?

"WHAAAT? Don't pretend you don't know who that is, EVERYONE knows michael kors! You know, the fashion designer?"

can't say i do, i respond

"Wow, that's surprising! well, what's your favorite brand?"

favorite brand. what an odd concept.

how do i tell her ive never been interested in flashy expensive things. that even in a magical world where price is no object, i dont have the luxury of being choosy about where my clothes come from, that i dont get to have a wide selection of clothes because the powers that be running the clothing lines have deemed my body Too Big to be worthy of flattering or fun outifts, that i have to get whatever fits me from whoever sells it, that fat women are only accommodated if they're curvy in the Right Way, that tall women must be supermodel-thin?

how do i tell her that no, i don't know all the labels, because when i was growing up the clothes i wore were often whatever bland stuff i got at christmas, or dumb edgy hot topic graphic tees and jnco jeans and tripp pants, or polos and cargo shorts, or mechanic coveralls? that if i'd ever shown any interest in fashion, the boys at school would have beaten my ass, and called me a faggot even more than they already did; hell, maybe my dad would have, too

how do i tell her that where she and my mom and all the other cis women in my life have decades of cultural context and marketing and rebellion against the marketing and cultural discourse and whatever the complete gestalt of GIRLHOOD is and its effect on tastes informing their response to such a question, i just have a gaping thirty-year void of twisted feelings and avoiding things like "my appearance" as much as possible and painful memories and dissociation and trauma and enforced male gender roles and interests that rolled off my mind like a duck's back leaving me a shell of a young adult?

how do i tell her that my sole desire is to tear down the entire edifice of the Fashion Industry and the capitalist system that runs it and the class that benefits from my suffering and my insecurity and my desperation that drives me to buy clothes that fit at a 50% markup if they're available in my size at all, and replace it with a world where clothes just Last and you don't have to keep up with trends and every single person can get comfortable, beautiful clothes tailored to them without having to fork over money to a company that employs slave labor?

how do i tell her that even in asking the question, i'm reminded of the yawning chasm between their upbringings and mine, that i never had a pretty senior portrait or a tacky prom dress or goofy rebelliously short-skirted outfits that i can look back on and shake my head with a smile, that i would need another thirty years of immersion in that world to even have a prayer of answering that, that i'm too busy stressing over whether next month there'll be new laws that kick me off my hrt again, that it's yet another gut-punch of an interaction reminding me that in some people's eyes I'll be forever marked out as a Different Kind of woman?

well, i mean, i say, hugging myself and averting my gaze, i'm so big that finding things in my size is amlost impossible, and honestly the whole experience is so stressful i just don't bother most of the time.

"Ooooh you sohuld start your own clothing line tailored to girls like you! That'd be fun, right?"