Here's what I wore to work today. The shirt is Calvin Klein and the tie is Perry Ellis Portfolio. I used be ambivalent about solid black ties, but they work well with a variety of shirts, including almost anything with dark stripes. I wore nice black dress slacks with it, and felt pretty sharp. Right now, one of my favorite places to buy ties is from rabbitstop, an Etsy seller. She makes great ties and always has a huge selection (over 500 right now!) They come in three different widths and she can often customize a tie you like for the width you want. All six ties I've ordered from rabbitstop have been awesome quality fabric. They're a little challenging to tie, because they're slightly thicker than store bought ties. But they look great. Below are some samples of rabbitstop's ties. I lifted these pics from rabbitstop's Etsy site. Rabbitstop, whoever you are, I hope you don't mind... free publicity for you, after all! My other go-to tie source is discount clothing stores: Marshall's, TJ Maxx, Ross, and the like. Of course, if you're not on a budget, you can just swing into Macy's or Nordstrom and drop $50-$100 on whatever tie you please. But for me, discount stores are great because they often have last season's brand-name ties for a third of the original price. And as long as the tie looks good on you, who cares if it hit the stores last season? Shop around for long enough and you'll find your go-to brands and can be on the lookout for them. I seem to love Calvin Klein ties, and Kenneth Cole Reaction isn't far behind.
Introduction to Tie-Buying: A few Basic Do's and Don'ts: DON'T spend a bunch of money until you've figured out your own personal style--and you will! But it takes time to learn what suits you. In the beginning, many of us dress like our fathers, which (may or) may not suit us. Try different colors and combinations. Try knit ties and bow ties and plaid ties and wild ties. DON'T buy a skinny tie unless you are skinny. I know you want to look like Don Draper--hell, we all do. But if you're a heftier butch, a too-skinny tie will make your head look enormous. My girlfriend looks rad in a skinny tie; I, on the other hand, look like I have just eaten the Pillsbury Doughboy. DON'T buy a wide tie. Yes, these were en vogue once, and they will be again someday, but now is not their moment. Anything wider than about four inches (at the widest point) is pushing it. DO take along a stylish buddy or two to help you decide what looks good (and run interference in the event of dressing room confrontations...). DO learn how to tie a tie. I learned by using these online videos of a hilariously boring British guy. There's also a version made by the Sartorial Butch! She teaches two knots: the four-in-hand and the full Windsor. If you only learn one, go for the four-in-hand; it's easiest and most versatile. DO choose ties that will match at least two or three different shirts. (Again, if money's not a concern, scratch that.) DO get the length right. After you finish tying it, the end of the tie should fall precisely at the middle of your belt. DO keep your shirts in mind. If you have no grey shirts and no orange shirts, a grey-and-orange checked tie is not your best bet. Sometimes I'll take along a particular shirt I'm trying to match. You can even snap a few pictures of the row of shirts hanging in your closet and take them along. DO try mixing patterns. This can be fun--my favorite is a tie with a large plaid print against a shirt with a small checked pattern. For some starters, check out this link--it's not bad. I'll write more about ties in the future--they're one of my favorite articles of clothing, after all. But I'm hoping this will get you started. Send me pictures of your tie-buying adventures--I'd love to post them on the blog!
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There are some little accouterments that every butch should have in her fashion arsenal, and one of these is... metal collar stays! Woohoo!! [Several seconds of resounding silence] Okay, okay--I know they may seem a little mundane, but if you've never used them before, they will rock your world. Basically, all men's shirt collars that are neither button-down nor especially casual have little slots on the underside (one on each side). These are where your collar stays go. Many shirts come with plastic ones that, unless you are more fastidious with your laundry than I, are likely to end up warped and thin at the bottom of your dryer. Metal collar stays are worth buying for several reasons. They weight your collar down better than plastic ones, and keep the points of your collar taut and crisp. This is especially important if you launder your shirts yourself and don't always (or ever) iron. If you forget them in the dryer, no problem--they come out perfectly fine and never warp. PLUS, you can keep them in a little glass jar in your bathroom, which is both convenient and attractive: It's hard to tell from the picture, but I have two different sizes of stainless steel collar stays. (I've also hung onto the plastic ones that are suitably thick and haven't been been through the wash yet. Most of them are pretty cheap, though, and I just toss 'em.) I recommend getting 6-10 stays of two different sizes (anywhere from 2 1/8 in. to 2 3/4 in. is good--I find that I use 2 1/2 inch by far the most, so now I own mostly those). Some eBay sellers offer good quality items for cheaper than most stores. Don't pay more than a dollar per stay, and don't bother with the plastic ones Banana Republic sells--they're way overpriced for what you get.
Lastly, the Sartorial Butch pointed out a while ago that personalized collar stays make a good butch gift. I feel so-so about this, since no one would see the personalization. Although you could always take advantage of their invisibility by writing hilariously inappropriate things on them. After all, who wouldn't want a collar stay that said "MY BOSS SUCKS" or "NICE VULVA?" For some queer women, “butch” means short hair and sensible shoes. For others, it means sexual dominance. For still others, it’s an attitude or a way of life. To paraphrase former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous take on pornography, the collective wisdom on defining butchness can be boiled down no further than: “I know it when I see it.” So why bother to identify as “butch” at all if there are so many possible definitions?
My DGF argues that it’s pointless to label one's self (ironic that she’s dating someone whose blog does exactly that, eh?), but I disagree. When I first came out, I was scared of the word "butch." I thought it meant that I wanted to be a man (I don’t), or that I could fix cars (I can’t), or that I’m attracted to femmes (I’m not). But since then, I’ve come to embrace the word "butch." Here are five reasons why: 1. Identifying as butch made me feel less deviant. Instead of seeing myself as "failing" at being a woman, I could see myself "succeeding" at being a different kind of woman. I could finally put a name to my collection of “defects”: wearing cargo pants, feeling like an alien every time I opened a women’s magazine, or finding it inexplicably crucial that I learn to tie a tie. Viewed through this lens, countless moments of frustration and discomfort suddenly made sense. Before identifying as butch, I had a collection of random dots; when I connected them, they finally made a picture. 2. I wasn’t alone. Putting a name to my masculine-of-center femininity allowed me to identify others with similar traits--most importantly, to find others whose experiences echoed mine. In some fundamental respect, there were people like me. Even before I had butch buddies of my own, simply knowing that other butches existed made me feel less alone. 3. It helped develop my fashion sense. Wearing women’s clothes made me feel like I was in drag. This was part of the "defectiveness" I mention above; I just wasn't "doing" attractiveness properly. But "butch" put a name to my style and categorized me as a possible recipient of others' sexual interest (though not my DXH's) even if I dressed as I wanted to! Clothes became a source of fun rather than frustration once I realized I could be myself and look attractive in some recognized "sense" (albeit not a conventional one). These days, I even enjoy shopping with my girlier female friends for their clothes, because I feel zero pressure to look like them. 4. It helped me define my attraction to others. I spent a long time believing that if I wasn’t attracted to “feminine” women, I couldn’t be a lesbian. If Rachel Maddow made me swoon, but Rachel McAdams left me cold, I was attracted to masculine people... So, I reasoned, I was actually straight. (This reasoning may strike some of you as silly, but I performed all kinds of mental gymnastics to convince myself I wasn’t gay.) Recognizing “butch” as a category showed me that there was a common denominator among the objects of my attraction. Yes, I was attracted to women--specifically, women of a certain type. This helped me come to terms with my sexual orientation. 5. It gave me a useful vocabulary. "Butch" is a great shorthand to express the idea of "a chick who looks sort of, but not really, like a dude," which was frequently something I wanted to express. The term also came with useful attendant vocabulary, such as "bro date" (hanging out with a platonic buddy who also sort of, but not really, looks like a dude), "boi" (a queer woman who looks like a gay male high schooler) and "soft butch" (somewhere between androgynous and butch, which I studiously practiced through online use of the phrase, "soft butch seeks same"). Theoretically, I didn't need to identify as "butch" to accomplish any of this. And maybe if I had been more confident, I wouldn't have. But we are social creatures, and the word "butch" validated aspects of me that had never felt valid. Ironically, putting a label on myself was pretty darn liberating. Here are today's shirt and tie. Do not adjust your monitor--my neck really IS that white. I first tied an excellent Windsor knot, but it looked odd with a button-down collar, because it's such a thick knot. For button-down collars, I think it's best to go with just a casual four-in-hand knot (which is the easiest to tie, anyway). Since my DGF had a job interview today, she let me drag her to Nordstrom Rack (a different NR from the one featured in a previous post) and dress her up yesterday. Saying that my DGF is not exactly a fashionista is like saying that Fred Phelps is not exactly a fan of gay marriage. She hates shopping, usually burns out after about 30 minutes, and doesn't want to try anything on. (Oh--and in case this is causing a little head-scratching, I should clarify that my DGF and I are both butch, although she eschews such labels.) I tried to talk her into a $50 purple shirt with wonderfully textured fabric, but she selected a Nordstrom brand white shirt with subtle blue and grey stripes--still really nice, and it looks great on her. We also found some black pants for her lithe little 31-inch waist and a decent belt (she refused to get my favorite one because I told her that the buckle was at a "jaunty" angle; my DGF says that my use of words like "jaunty" and "delightful" make her feel like she's dating a 70-year-old man). Bottom line: she looked damned good, and it made me want to dress her up some more, if she ever lets me. Little does she know that I was taking mental notes about sizes and fits the whole time so that I can surreptitiously slip new, colorful shirts into her closet among her army of white button-down Oxfords (I kid you not--she has like six of the same shirt). So how about you, dear readers? Got any good tricks for dragging your own DGFs to the store, or are you usually the one being dragged? I emerged from a weekend of car-buying craziness with this sweet little number. It's a 2004 Impreza Outback Sport Wagon, which I bought at a Subaru dealership after more than four absurd hours of negotiation. Although I'm not happy with the dealership, I *am* quite happy with my car. Not only does it have AWD, which is going to rock on hiking trips and my curvy commute, but it's small, gets decent gas mileage, and is reasonably safe. My nerdy side is still crestfallen about the absence of side airbags, but my lesbian side is stoked. My DGF saw it for the first time today and definitely approves, though she finds the color "a little childish" (what?!). But she thinks I got a good deal on it, and since she knows more about cars than I do, I was quite pleased. While I was weighing whether to buy it, I named the car "Bastian." I have never named a car before, and it popped into my mind out of nowhere (was "The Neverending Story" rattling around in my subconscious?). Though I loathe the misogynistic practice of giving vehicles women's names and referring to them as "she," I am perfectly happy to have a male car, because it somehow turns that practice on its head (or does it?). Anyhow, I hope Bastian and I will be buddies for a long time to come. The best part of my car search, though, was talking on the phone with a private party seller on Saturday about a different car. The conversation proceeded as follows: BW: Hi. I'm interested in your 2006 Honda Civic. Is that still for sale? Car Dude (henceforth CD): Yeah, it is. BW: Oh, great. I just had a couple questions about it. CD: Sure. BW: Does it have a clean title? CD: No. BW: Oh, okay. In that case, I'm not interested. But thanks for your time. CD: I DON'T WANT TO SELL IT TO YOU ANYWAY!! BW: Um, okay. Bye. As my DXH said when I told him the story, I didn't know third graders were allowed to own cars! |
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