Realisation

Today I finally tried on the full outfit I’ve assembled for Castlefest. I bought most of the actual clothes at the Celtic Midsummer Fair earlier this month and had tried the clothes then, but not fully together.

The reason I decided tonight was a good time to try it on (besides the fact that Castlefest is next weekend and it would be kinda nice to know if the outfit is complete or if it needs more oomph) was that the binder I ordered came today.

Backtracking slightly, I’m going to Castlefest as a male character. This, combined with my own genderqueerness, and a conversation I had with Eva recently, made me look to get one

The binder was delivered this morning, and I tried it out then immediately. It’s a pain to put on, but it looks awesome! (Although when I loose some more weight it will be even better :D) I wore it again tonight with the costume photoshoot and am still wearing it. It’s much more comfortable then I thought and works great. However, as I was looking at my self in the mirror tonight and enjoying the masculine looking chest, I realised I’ve been doing this, diminishing my chest, for a long time now. Much more so than I previously realised.

I’m female bodied, obviously, but identify as something beyond the male/female dichotomy, I feel I am, at the very least, both, if not more.
The way I dress varies between more feminine things one day and more masculine things the other, depending on my mood and inner feeling basically.  Up till now I usually turned to my hoodies and wider t-shirts on ‘male’ days, and combined that not only with my most minimising bra (and thanking my lucky stars my cup size is moderate enough :D) but always adding a tight tanktop over it to flatten it as much as I could. It was a fun thing to realise that I’ve been doing that basically since before I even started figuring out who and what I was in regards to gender. It kinda feels like validation, in a way of “see, I had these feelings and stuff before I realised it, it’s real”. And this makes me happy.

So, to close, here’s some pics. First two of the outfit (binder makes it so much better! I’m definitely wearing it at Castlefest too), then me wearing the binder. If you’re my friend on Facebook, I’m uploading more outfit pics there.