“You Should Wear Dresses More Often!” And Other Statements I Hate

Tonight, I was in a very abridged version of a play for a project at school. Since the play was about women in the Spanish Civil War era, I had to wear a dress. I never wear dresses; I’m always in cargo pants with t-shirts or sweater vests or ties and just very much in very masculine clothing all the time. This was my first time wearing a dress in which my college peers would see me, so I knew it would kind of be a big deal for me.

There’s always a cycle I experience whenever I wear clothes that really show my female figure, which usually occurs for a play. It basically goes: I wear the dress, people see me and momentarily tease me and shout “Oh my God!” just because they’re not used to me in a dress, then they proceed to tell me, “You should wear dresses more often!” and “You’ve been hiding that beautiful body!” and basically shower me with pseudo-compliments. I say “pseudo” because although I know they mean well, it always feels intrusive and uncomfortable.

If I had a dollar for every “I didn’t know you were hiding such hips/boobs/a butt/waist/figure!” I’ve heard throughout my life, I could pay my way through theatre school easily. I know that I have a very conventionally attractive body and that my normal attire does not show it, but I despise the idea that just because people don’t see it, I’m “hiding it.” I’m not uncomfortable with my body; I love it very much. I just feel more beautiful and comfortable in masculine clothes. And people think that’s weird and impossible because we’re trained to associate femininity with beauty, but that’s how I feel. Just because I have a different gender expressions does not mean I want to hide my gender.

Also, I know that people are expecting me to have some kind of Cinderella moment that you always see in movies: the frumpy or tomboyish or unstylish girl suddenly wears a beautiful dress, sees how beautiful she REALLY is, then proceeds to wear that style of clothing for the rest of her life and usually embraces conventional femininity meets the love of her life because of it, blah blah blah. But I’m not that. People associate being a woman with trying to look as beautiful and attractive as possible, but I don’t think they realize that my perception of how beautiful I view myself as a woman differs from the conventional way that women are supposed to seek beauty.

I appreciate the compliments, but I always feel uncomfortable with the implications that when I wear a dress, it’s like something has been “missing” from my life. Maybe I’m not the one who’s uncomfortable with my body; everyone else is uncomfortable that I don’t match up to their expectations of how I present it.