Six months ago I owned no dresses and was terrified to shop in the women’s section. I couldn’t do it without help; initially I felt ashamed and embarrassed merely browsing the racks in the women’s section. But I’ve confronted this and broken it down and I now feel confident shopping in the women’s section alone, and buying more feminine things like dresses.

This is my fourth dress that I own. I love this particular one, it’s made of a soft cotton and feels so comfy, like wearing pajamas. You can’t see it much in this pic but it has very fine horizontal stripes. I wore fleece leggings under it to walk outside, and took them off for dancing, and just wore some spandex shorts because the skirt flares up quite a lot if I spin.

When I wear a dress I feel super empowered. Something about confidently breaking a norm that I see no one else around me breaking (I don’t know a single other AMAB nonbinary person in this town although there are plenty of AFAB nonbinary people, and I never see guys wearing dresses or skirts here) makes me feel really confident. It’s like, hello my name is Alex and I give exactly zero fucks about unnecessary social norms.

I also find that wearing a dress helps free me from a lot of the anxiety that I used to experience in association with being perceived as male. It’s like, people can still easily tell that I am AMAB but I don’t care, because it’s a strong signal of a more feminine sort of self-expression that I think it communicates that I want to be perceived differently.

When I wear a dress I feel more like myself, I feel more playful and I can more easily relax into feminine body language when it feels natural, or exhibit more masculine body language without worrying about coming across as a “manly man”. I find this helps me to feel happier and more confident because there are both feminine and masculine qualities that help me to feel happy and confident, and I think I used to experience quite a bit of anxiety associated with both, because I felt shame associated with transmisogyny, crossing into more feminine expression, but I also felt discomfort acting too masculine because I could feel profoundly uncomfortable with being perceived masculinely in certain situations.

Oh and I bought this at a thrift store! Three of my dresses have been thrift store finds and the other was on a clearance rack!