✁ 06/06/2025 ✁
I am without a doubt a huge nerd. Some of my special interests have included theme park history and the Chicago World’s Fair. I was really into art history and philosophy as a teen, and always gravitated to the symbolism of aesthetics. I am also aware that people who completely misunderstand my worldview have gravitated towards me because they think I look cool and dress well. Yeah- That’s what I spent years curating, is it not? What does it mean to have spent years curating a self-specific, distinctly referential, yet very marketable aesthetic?
Group settings have always unnerved me. In my pretentious teen girl years I found it much easier to spit out witty insults than to carry out polite small talk. It felt like a great back-up plan to just be well-dressed, whatever that meant, to start (and end) a conversation with “I love your outfit”. In college, appearance felt like glass armor. I dyed my hair and preferred showing up late to class over showing up without eyeliner. I grew up wearing things ironically, in a different way, subversively. In college I’d posture that I wore my camo jacket out of nobler intentions than the white twinks in the cafeteria, just because I hopped on the trend earlier. I used to spend a lot of time in online “alt” fashion spaces. I don’t really anymore- that kind of social media… enables my mean spiritedness and distracts me from other things I want to do. Now, I’m trying my best to open 50 tabs to look for web graphics on the Wayback Machine as an alternative to obsessive online shopping. But despite being less on social media now, have I outgrown an immature attitude towards presentation and appearance? How do I let fashion brand ads find me while ignoring dms? And what parts of that tension pull me towards better attitudes towards my interdependence on other people and stronger critical thinking?
Part of why I still miss my godawful thrift store job and think about going back there is without a doubt the employee discount and how many absolute gems I found while working there. But then again there were also the many impulse purchases that I have since sent back to another Goodwill. Thrifting makes those of us with “spendable income” consume more. The post-Emma Chamberlain thrift store offers up a collector’s dream to everybody for a seemingly good price. In fact, it’s sustainable! morally good! I often feel like the online “discourse” around the ethics of thrifting hasn’t changed much since I first discovered Depop in 2017. Social media conversations circle around a lot of ethical problems that elude simple answers and require a lot of nuanced thinking and connecting information and research. You have to consider where everything comes from and the vast and long global material histories of the fashion industry. This is horrible for advertising and can’t really fit in an Instagram post.
Fashion has a long love affair with pop feminism. Greenwashing is really easy. Vintage is trendy, so you can just keep buying things and if it doesn’t work out let someone else have it! It’s good and sustainable, in fact. Plus you’ll be spending less and then you can really “splurge” on whatever overpriced microtrend “piece” you’ve been really coveting this pay cycle. I say this because I’ve absolutely fallen for it myself. The thrift economy is like instant moral gratification that drags you away from the impulse to question your consumption.
Before I unwittingly demonstrated my gay organization skills and got reassigned to the sales floor, I’d often run into customers at the cash register who made some very prescient remarks and asked some very good questions. Why are you asking for donations at the register- isn’t the clothing and shopping there already a donation? Why are things priced so randomly? (That, you can partly blame on search engine optimization. My managers were not fashion enthusiasts. They just searched up the clothing tags and let Googles shopping feature distort the rest.) I’ve grown a visceral reaction to feeling the icky smooth shininess of Zara “silk” shirts. I worked in Manhattan, which skews things, but I cannot count how many items came in unworn with tags still attached. Sometimes there were great deals for someone who had the time to dig through the chaotic racks in this crowded little space. Many more items went unnoticed and straight onto the sale rack and then to some mysterious warehouse or raghouse, wherever those huge blue bins get sent off to. You ever notice how adoreme sends racks and racks of unsold lingerie to some Goodwills?
I would think petty judgemental thoughts to pass the time at work. Perhaps that is just a pattern I often fall into: criticism comes easily to me. Perhaps I was just constantly on the defensive as a trans retail worker. I only complimented someones outfit on two occassions, and felt awkward both times. My coworker who often complimented people’s outfits was this transphobic and racist sleazy cis guy who was “just being friendly” towards every moderately attractive femme who came into the store. And I tried to remember, do I really feel good getting complimented on my outfits? I know I dress well, but do I need other people to know? What does it serve, to try to invite compliments through dress?
Sometimes I resort to “plotting and scheming” to get a little extra “spending money”. Whatever that means. Having gained weight and proportions on testosterone, old clothes don’t fit and buying things online turns out weird. Going to Buffalo Exchange is usually relatively fruitful for me because I embody something profitable. It’s a chicken or the egg question, in a way. Every Bushwick bisexual wants an alt (asian) girlfriend the same way they covet tattoos and two hundred dollar jeans. I, despite my weekly testosterone injections, know I fit the picture. Vanity is vapid, but often feels like the only way someone like me can have a role in this society and economy. At the same time I want to burn it all down. Looking cute is a lot easier and something I’ve been taught to do since birth.
