Page 21 - The Bridge Vol 17_pgs

VOLume 17

gender. It has been hard unbuttoning myself. But these difficulties, these pursuits of finding myself,
have been better than not having any control over my identity at all.

And, yet, despite this sad, mundane, slightly traumatic story of mine, I find myself connected to,
of all things, button-downs. I currently own twenty-six, all of which are hanging on the coat rack in my
closet. All of them have a different color, a different pattern, and a different personality intrinsic to my
being. Each day, before I head to school in the morning, I make the difficult decision of choosing which
shirt, which personality, to wear that day. It usually takes me a minute, but eventually I pick one. I then
perform my ritual: putting it on, buttoning it up, rolling up my sleeves, and looking in my mirror. My hair
is shorter now, a high-and-tight undercut, and is not reminiscent of my long hair—the hair I had before
button-downs. My new look has allowed me to own who I am, even if I don’t know exactly who I am.
Perhaps I wear button-downs to feel powerful, to feel privileged, to feel as though I belong to a
group that I obviously do not belong in. Perhaps I am stealing from that group, rebelling against them
and their binaries by claiming their button-downs and making them my own.
A wise person once told me that gender is performative. I did not understand until I sat down for a
while and thought about what it meant. At first, I was against the idea, firm in my belief that gender is
something that we are, not an act to play out. But then I realized—we are what we act. We are what we
perform. Every day we wake up, put on clothes, maybe put on makeup, maybe do our hair, maybe put
on jewelry, maybe do our nails. All of these things we do, these rituals we perform, shape us, mold us,
define us. I may not know exactly who I am yet. I could be cisgender, I could be transgender, I could
have multiple genders, I could have no genders. I will figure this out when I figure this out. All I know
now is that each day, each morning, I wake up and perform who I am through button-downs. Each day,
through wearing them—through queering them—I am, in a small and barely noticeable way, changing
what power means, and changing what privilege means.

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