[Vol. 18] I'm the Tough Boy in a Crop-Top
My toughness is in my roots, and walking around with my stomach out won’t change that.
Happy Thursday, ya’ll! 😉
Today’s newsletter is one from the archives – pulled allll the way back from September. I originally published it in the LBGTQ+ focused Medium publication, Prism & Pen (which, if you like this newsletter, you should definitely check out – lots of amazing, introspective queer writing going on over there).
So, yah, it’s an oldie, but I think the message is evergreen – wear what you want to wear, because, at the end of the day, you can’t control what people see in you anyway.
Billy Porter, one of the shining stars of my new favorite Netflix show, Pose, once said, “It’s easy to be who you are when who you are is popular.”
I want you to keep that quote in mind while reading this article, because I think Billy Porter’s words so beautifully capture the struggle behind wanting to feel seen and, at the same time, dealing with all the bullshit that comes your way when you are (both from yourself and the world around you).
I hope you like it :)
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And, and, and – consider helping to get the word out! Tell a friend, DM, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook – whichever poison you prefer, word of mouth, a few clicks, and a share are the only way the That’s Gay community is going to grow.
If you saw me on the subway this past weekend, with my cropped sweater on and short shorts hiked up, “tough” may not have been the first adjective to come to mind.
And that’s problematic for a number of reasons, but we’ll get to that later.
First, let me tell you, I am tough.
It’s not as obvious at face value, but it’s a quality of mine that sinks deep into my roots.
My parents are both born and bred Swiss Germans. Besides fancy watches, delicious chocolate, and sketchy overseas bank accounts, you should know that Switzerland has another big export: tough people — mountain people, to be exact (or “savages”, as my dad proudly refers to his ancestors 😉).
Now, I should say that neither my mom nor my dad was actually raised in the mountains — they’re city folk. Nevertheless, they both carry that unmistakably Swiss salt-of-the-earth, grit-and-bear-it, nail-with-heads attitude with them.
*Ok, I guess that last phrase doesn’t really translate right … I promise it sounds better in Swiss German.
As one of my mom and dad’s three children, I can definitively say that we were raised on that attitude.
Take our family’s ski trips for example.
There are lots of families who go skiing, sure, but I can’t say I know a lot of families that go skiing quite like mine does. After winter break in High School, while my friends would regale me with peaceful stories of ambling down the green slopes and returning to the lodge to rest their feet by the fire with a steaming cup of hot cocoa, I would still be massaging deep cramps out of my legs. Unlike my hot cocoa-sipping peers, I was born into a clan that insisted on traversing mountains, pushing off lunch for “just one more run”, and playing chicken on only the most precarious of precarious double black diamond slopes.
Long story short, we don’t mess around: When the Kaeslins go skiing, we go skiing. Our call-time comes at the crack of dawn, and we’re out on the slopes until only the floodlights can make out the path ahead.
Was I the first to suggest choosing the slopes that had more rocks than snow or skiing until my knees started wobbling and the path before me was consumed by darkness? No, I wasn’t. I was more so the kid that dreamed of hot chocolate in the lounge. Still, you’d be hard-pressed to find me hanging up my mittens early.
I may not be a natural daredevil, but I’ve always been stubborn as hell.
I kept up with my naturally daredevilish family. Not to give them all the credit here, but I don’t think I’d be half as tough as I am now had it not been for them.
But let’s get back to that subway-surfing boy in a crop-top.
Although we don’t often like to say it out loud, especially not in the LGBTQ+ community, the truth is that when a masculine-passing person expresses their femininity, society tends to label them “dainty” or “weak”.
You can’t wear a crop top and short shorts and still be a tough guy … or can you?
As much as we all know, as rational human beings, that the clothes on our backs and how we choose to express ourselves don’t dictate what we can and can’t do, society’s incessant brainwashing often leaves us tripping up on what we really believe.
That’s why it took me so long to experiment with my gender expression through style — I didn’t want to lose the tough part of my identity that I had unwittingly tied so closely to my masculinity.
So how did I come to have my belly button exposed and my thighs out to play on the subway this weekend?
I’m tempted to say it was just a moment of inspiration that overcame me when I opened my closet the-morning-of, but that would be too easy. No, my fashion choices that day weren’t the result of some spontaneous decision to spice things up, but rather the cumulative effect of hours of hard work and introspection in the form of therapy, journaling, and simply taking the time to sit with my own thoughts.
It took putting in the hard work and facing my demons for me to realize that sacrificing one part of me to keep another part alive was never a choice I had to make in the first place.
The day I casually threw on my crop top and short shorts, I got to embrace all of me. Not only was I proudly showcasing my hard-earned toned stomach to the underground world of Manhattan’s subway system, but I was also coming back from a long day of helping my friends move out of their apartment. Although not the most practical outfit for the plans of the day (I’ll admit I picked it out while more than a little sleep-deprived), I made do. Before I got on that subway, I spent the better half of the day loading and unloading boxes, maneuvering big furniture onto a dolly, and breaking a sweat packing things into my friend’s storage unit like I was getting paid to be there.
I was reminded that day that no matter what I wear or how feminine I choose to take my style, I will never lose that inner toughness.
That grit-and-bear it attitude is not tied to my masculinity (what an antiquated belief!), it’s tied to me, my family, and my roots.
As I’m writing this, I’m remembering more than a few amused glances at my exposed stomach as I stood in that subway car. That’s actually exactly when I came up with the idea to write this article — I thought to myself, ‘How frustrating is it that these people will never know that this crop-top wearing kid just busted his ass to carry a massive closet out of his friend’s apartment, or that he used to ski double black slopes for breakfast (literally!) ?’
But then I realized I don’t care what they think – not because I’m too cool to care, or that I’m somehow magically “over it”, but because I realize I’ll never win at playing the guessing game. The world’s perception of me was never mine to control —
what you wear and how you choose to present yourself may have an impact on how people see you, but you can’t control what people see.
Yes, I’m the friend who feels their identity affirmed in a crop top, or short shorts, or both. If you can’t fathom that I’m not also the friend you should call for a heavy-duty move, that’s not on me.
I’m the tough boy in a crop-top.
*This piece was originally published in Prism & Pen on Medium.
Today’s discussion Q:
When you think about it, the only thing that distinguishes a skirt from a pair of shorts is that the cloth isn’t sewn together in the middle to separate the two legs. It’s just some extra cloth, so why do we as a society have such visceral reactions to gendered clothing?
I have my answer. Let me know yours in the comments below! As always, I’ll be reading/responding to all.
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 18. See you in Volume 19, folks!
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I think we have such strong reactions to gendered clothing because we have such strong reactions to gender in general – it follows a pattern. From the moment we're born into this world (literally), we're expected to live a certain way and follow certain unwritten rules of gender.
If we're assigned male at birth, we're expected to play with action figures, keep our hair short, wear shorts, date girls. If we're assigned female at birth, we're expected to play with barbies, grow out our hair, wear skirts, date boys.
Yes, these expectations are changing as we start pushing the limitations of gender and sexuality (shoutout to the feminist and gay liberation movements) but, whether people like to admit it or not, they're still there. We still have to break those expectations by coming out, and many people the world over still don't have the privilege to do so, or have their lives cut short in the process.
Expectations of gender do nothing for no one, in my opinion – and they're silly when you think about it for a bit. Why should it matter that a boy prefers wearing a skirt over shorts anyways? It's just a little bit of fabric – who cares? Well, apparently we all care a whole lot. It'll be interesting to see how we untie that knot going forward.
'The world’s perception of me was never mine to control.'
This. This is one of the most important realisations that anyone can come to. We can't control the ways in which we are seen, we can only control what there is to see. How people interpret our fashion, our physicality, our demeanour, is all in the eye of the beholder. The best we can hope to do is be true to ourselves.