New Dress

For ages, I've dressed as though I were the rare woman in a male-dominated field of study. I was. My school was 40% women, 60% men, but my field is less than 10% women. I disliked clothing that defined itself as feminine by being frail, ornamental and highly non-utilitarian, and I had no desire to be labeled 'feminine,' or 'flighty,' on account my fashion sense. And can you climb trees or keep up in a skirt? I was a tomboy and had better things to do than look pretty. It helped that no one at MIT cares what you look like, and if they do, they're not taking enough classes. Additionally, I had no money for clothes, so I shopped at the Salvation Army and happily wore BDUs, men's Medium T-shirts (I abhorred form-fitting clothes), combat boots, full-length skirts and bulky sweaters, tank tops always under men's silk shirts and vests. It was a huge event if I wore a dress, because not only did I think that I needed to be masculine to be taken seriously as an engineer, but I would physically flinch from wearing short skirts or revealing tops.

I didn't eschew fashion entirely... I loved clothes and I coveted girly clothes, but I'd only look feminine in public on a dare, as a kind of reverse-machismo assertion that I could be just as feminine as I wanted. For example, in high-school, I cross-dressed for a spring dance by showing up in a leather mini-skirt and red lipstick, curling my hair and ruined the appearance by daring the boys to just say anything. I was really threatened by women's clothing. I felt that exposing myself made me highly vulnerable, because it did. I hated being cat-called or stared at, and wearing dresses always got me that sort of negative attention and more. Even worse, though, I was mortified that people would take one look at me in a skirt and treat me like, "a little lady," and not as an engineer. Many times, I wished I were a man. It would have made things a lot easier. Instead, that wish made a lot of things worse - I constantly experienced cognitive dissonance for being a woman in engineering, because I kept convincing myself I was out of place.

Well, screw that! I've spent the last three years mulling over these (and many other) weird social neuroses and growing up. I don't have to excuse the fact that I'm a woman, regardless of whether I'm using a welder or walking down the street. If someone sees the skirt and ignores the person wearing it... that's no reflection on me.



I'm very excited to wear this midi sun-dress this weekend. The dress (new) and purse (vintage) are from Poor Little Rich Girl. The shoes are from Nine West. The necklace was a gift and is from Magpie and the earrings are from a now-defunct artists gallery in south St. Louis.