I distinctly remember my high school gym teacher, Miss Brannon, coming to school one day wearing a black skirt and white blouse. She normally only wore sweat pants and a tee shirt. What struck me is how out-of-place she looked in those clothes. It’s not that they didn’t fit, but that they didn’t fit her. It was as though she were wearing someone else’s clothes. In this 1985 South Carolina world, where it didn’t occur to me there could be more than two choices, Miss Brannon was definitely a woman. And, I can assure you that she bought that skirt and blouse in the women’s section of some department store. But, the clothes did not fit her just as surely as if she had been a man wearing them. It fact, Mr. Griffin, the male gym teacher, might have looked better in that outfit.
Photographs of me over the years conjure Denise Riley’s work, “Ain’t I A Fluctuating Identity?” Some years I look feminine, some years I look like a boy, and some years I look like Miss Brannon in her funeral costume.
With a little reading under my belt, I can now say that Miss Brannon and I are outside the gender binary. We cannot find clothes that look good on us in the women’s or men’s departments because we are neither of those socially constructed options.[1] We are not men or women. Female-bodied – yes, but, not women in the sense that we don’t look good in the clothes a woman would (should?) choose to wear to a formal setting.
Miss Brannon is appropriately dressed in sweat pants and tee shirts at work because she’s a gym teacher, but what should she wear to school performances? What will she wear if she wants to switch careers and become a banker? What should she wear on a date? For goodness sakes, what should Miss Brannon wear to a funeral?
[1]. Not that I’m claiming that my identity (or Miss Brannon’s) is not socially constructed. I’m sure it is. Now, I know there are infinite possibilities.