Don’t girls wear jeans and t-shirts?

Someone wrote…

I wish people would realise that being MtF isn’t about my clothes or makeup. It’s strange how people can look at me on a day when I’m wearing a jeans and t-shirt and say ‘So you’re a boy today?’ Don’t girls wear jeans and t-shirts?

What’s your experience?

And what are you thinking about gender right now?


Posted by on May 22nd, 2010 at 08:00 am

Category: your voice 12 comments »

12 Responses to “Don’t girls wear jeans and t-shirts?”

  1. JayVon

    Not that it’s news to anyone here, but I do find it amazing (and frustrating) how atuned people are to the ‘gender’ of clothes. The cut, the fabric, the colour, the fit – the tiniest details decide how people read clothes. You’d think that jeans and a t-shirt would be neutral ground, but apparently not.

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  2. Tori

    I know how you feel. I’m MtF as well, though I don’t wear makeup or get all dolled up like most would consider (stereotypically) girly.

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  3. Alex

    I know exactly how you feel on the FTM side… even though most people draw a stronger gender line with things like skirts and eyeliner, I see no reason why a boy can’t wear them too.

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  4. Bubblegum Blues

    So true. I’m no less femme when I wear jeans and a t-shirt and read Spider-Man comics.

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  5. Cole

    Ignore people when they are being stupid like that. Most of my female friends (no matter how femme they are) wear jeans and t-shirts to college nearly everyday. It is completely normal and people who say things like that are just revealing their own insecurities about gender.

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  6. Jay

    Its so ridiculous for people to be saying that. Because girls do. Sigh. I could rant about this for days, but I shan’t. *g*

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  7. Lyn Aven

    My wife and I dress exactly the same way. We’re the same size of jeans and I’m only one t-shirt size bigger, so we can share clothes and generally none would be the wiser.

    Why should I have to give in to the fashion industry I hate so much just to be considered a girl?

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  8. Jessica

    As said elsewhere, I don’t usually make a point of my gender. Mostly I get looks. Sometimes people who decide I am male stare at my chest.

    I’m sort of dreading/looking forward to this weekend, when some very old friends (and their children) come to stay with my partner and me at the beach. They’ve grown up to be evangelical christians and way right republicans. I have a feeling that they may blow a few gaskets unless I go way, way stealth. I don’t want to bother to do that – they’re old friends and I forgive them for being idiots. They ought to forgive me for being trans.

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  9. William

    Like a few other men, I am a Drag Queen. I’m also a bit of a transvestite (women’s clothes are just more interesting, aren’t they?). Unlike most Drag Queens and transvestites, I’m a transsexual man. I have a body that still looks like it ought to “match” my dresses (in the eyes of our society, that is).

    I have gone out in drag publicly only a very few times since I began living as a man a year and a half ago. Each time, people who should know better have acted as though my transition never happened. This saddens me greatly and stops me wearing certain clothes.

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  10. Chase

    I am a Genderqueer MTF and I also just wear jeans, a T-shirt, and a very small amount of makeup. I don’t have access to things like hormone therapy, so I am usually percieved as a “boy”.

    My close friends know that I am trans, but even most of them judge me by the way I dress.

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  11. Ander

    I hate the stereotype that trans women are femme and feminine.

    Seems most of the women I know, trans or not, wear jeans and t-shirts most of the time.

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  12. Jessica

    That’s the cruelest part of the whole gender thing: it is amazing how many people who are so unconventional in their personal identification are so damn conventional about their gender characteristic expectations. Drives a person nuts when grown people self-identify with Ken and Barbie instead of with real people. I want to be just as prissy and cutesy as Emma Goldman or Dorothy Day.

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