Every time I go on a walk around Green Lake, a small stretch of water ringed with a beautiful 2.5-mile path not too far from my house, I make sure to walk by Blue Sky Bridal. It’s this little boutique that sells consignment and sample dresses, and I can see pretty much everything through the front window: four to five aisles of racks stuffed full with beautiful dresses, the tiny, curtained-off dressing room, the couch for shopping parties, the stylist bustling around. The only barrier to my view is a trio of mannequins in dresses looking out across the intersection. They recently changed the gowns, and when I walked by, I gasped and stopped to take a closer look at each dress before continuing my walk.
This used to be a secret glimmer of mine. I’d go off on my walk and veer just a little off-course to slow down and peek inside. At first, I only surreptitiously glanced in the windows as I strode past. I’d like to say it was only because I didn’t want anyone inside to feel that fishbowl effect. But when the store was closed one day, I stopped and peered inside. It felt indulgent, stopping and looking. Like I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.
For much of my life, I’ve positioned myself away from overly feminine things. It started in around second grade. I liked the idea of being seen as independent, a tomboy, someone who was focused more on how I was living than how I was looking. I stopped wearing dresses and skirts and didn’t begin wearing them for non-formal settings until college. I wore makeup only for big dances. My favorite colors were blue and green, not pink or purple. My sports switched from ballet and gymnastics to soccer and swimming.
But before second grade, I loved those things. The walls in my bedroom were pink and dotted with fairies. My favorite picture book was Angelina Ballerina. Drawings of angels and girls with dresses (with long sleeves to hide their hands, which I couldn’t draw for the life of me) filled all my notebooks. My little brain had decided there was a binary between “girly girl” and “tomboy,” and I flipped the switch to “tomboy” because it was cooler.
From the age of eight onward, my feminine side was something I kept hidden. The Word document with dozens of romance stories amounting to close to 150,000 words? No one has ever seen it. My love for Project Runway was justified because it involved spending time with my mom, but I didn’t talk about it often. The America’s Next Top Model phase was a complete secret. My wedding board on Pinterest was (still is) locked and private. Whenever we got dressed up for an event, I made sure to say I felt weird, out of place.
But I loved wearing those dresses. Having someone curl or blow-dry my hair. Looking at how my face transformed with makeup. Shopping for prom dresses with my mom was one of my all-time favorite memories. Trying on my mother’s wedding dress was a treasure every few years.
When I started taking psychology courses in high school and college, I started learning about gender norms and stereotypes. I figured that because I wasn’t falling into the overly feminine stereotypes that I was doing something right.
If you’re hiding things that you love because you don’t want people to judge you for them, can that ever be right?
My path back in was through my “granola” phase during my first year of college. I liked long skirts and loose dresses because they were flowy and feminine… and tied to environmental issues and a counter-cultural response to all the tight clothes that were popular throughout my childhood and teen years.
But it was a start. I began exploring fashion again, buying different skirts and dresses. Started leaving my hair down instead of pulling it back into its characteristic ponytail. Began admitting that I liked romance stories. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a beginning.
I’m still untangling a lot of it. When I started using Instagram Reels a few years ago, the algorithm saw right through my mask and started sending me all sorts of fashion, wedding, and Renaissance Faire content. The commonality between all of these things? Dresses. Big, beautiful dresses. Want to know why I loved Bridgerton so much? The dresses. All the historical fiction stories? Dresses.
Some part of me is still a little embarrassed. Another part enjoys the idea of the transformation: that I could put on a dress and makeup and become a different, more beautiful me that everyone was stunned by. The “You Belong with Me” music video comes to mind.
It happened at my senior prom. I wore this elegant vintage black dress with beautiful flower-petal-like cutouts in the back and neckline. My hair was in an updo, my first, and I wore red lipstick. Someone I saw every day at school took me aside, put his hands on my arms, and said, with a whisper of incredulity, “You are beautiful.” It’s been almost a decade, and I still remember it vividly.
The downside of feeling like I need to hide these parts of myself away, that I treasure these moments when I dress up so that people will notice my transformation, is that I’ve denied that I’m beautiful regardless of how I look. Logically, consciously, I was telling myself I was doing this because I didn’t want to subscribe to the ridiculous beauty standards I grew up in.
In doing that, though, I’d stopped thinking of myself as beautiful at all.
I’d come to equate beauty and femininity as something to be avoided, to set myself apart from. And isn’t that just another form of sexism? I was telling that six-year-old Taylor that the things she loved were bad.
In college, I made a decision to be unapologetic about the things I loved. It began with YA novels. Then moved to Survivor, the objectively best show on television. I talked about loving the early mornings and going to bed early. I started sharing my passion for going antiquing. When we read selections of our creative writing capstone projects at an event, I chose the section about falling in love.
In the last few years, I’ve slowly but surely started talking about and experimenting with fashion again. Shaving my head (arguably another move away from traditional femininity) also gave me the chance to experiment with hair clips and headbands again: something I hadn’t done in twenty years. My Instagram Reels are filled with beautiful dresses.
And one day, when I was on a walk with Tom, I asked if we could go a little off-course to look in the window of the bridal store. My voice was soft, a little ashamed. I avoided eye contact. Add in the fact that they were wedding dresses, and this was my boyfriend, and the stakes felt even higher. I felt the need to explain away that awkwardness. “It’s just because I love the pretty dresses,” I blurted out. “It has nothing to do with…us.”
He laughed, and we walked over to gaze into the shop. He asked me which dress I liked the most of the three in the window. And whenever we walk by, he makes a point to take us in that direction. When I walk by too quickly (because I’m still a little embarrassed), he’ll tell me to slow down. I feel the joy of looking at those dresses for at least four more blocks.
It started out feeling like a confession. Now, I’m proud of it. It isn’t any less precious because it’s no longer a secret part of me. Instead of keeping it squished into a small corner of myself, I can let it fill my chest and shine.
Fluffernutter Friday 