Why Gender Expression Is So Confusing

The terms "masculine" and "feminine" are inhibiting your personal style

Many of the clients I've worked with have struggled with the weight of these terms. They would come to the mirror and be paralyzed by the need to fulfill a specific gender related narrative they had in their mind. They didn’t have the language necessary to understand what these binary terms, expectations, and expressions actually looked like authentically expressed through clothing.

The reason this is a barrier for so many people is because "masculine" and "feminine" are too ambiguous/broad of terms. Across time and cultures these words hold very little continuity. What I've learned in styling others, and myself, is that there is a level underneath masculine and feminine; a  layer that is personal to each and every one of us, where the true individual expressions of these words lie. 

What needs to happen in order to move past this paralysis, is to take a deeper look at what YOU specifically mean when you say masculine and feminine, because everyone has a nuanced understanding and expression of their gender.

For example, they could mean soft and hard, light and dark, movement and structure, vulnerability and protection. Each of these have slightly different meanings and will be expressed aesthetically as such for each person. Once you assign an anchored personal definition to these broad terms, it will be infinitely easier for you to know what to wear to achieve the look you're going for.

It's not really about defining what you believe the words to literally mean in general, it's about discovering what it looks like to authentically express those concepts for yourself. Does that make sense?

When I want to express gender in my outfit, for me, the words that fit best are “movement,” and “structure.” What do you think your words are?

( Follow my substack for more… https://pirkritude.substack.com/ )