TransHub’s Trans Awareness Week Art Gallery

Protection

Artist: Magnus Grahame

I wrote this piece because getting dressed has always been something I have put thought into and now when I add gender to the mix it's hard for it not to feel even more complicated.

When I was young and cold my dad would give me his too big jackets to wear. I knew this would happen so I often wore dresses and t-shirts even when I knew we would be out late or it would be cold, I was warned that I would regret my clothing choice later on. And maybe for a second, I would -but then my dad would be giving me his jacket and laughing about how he never dressed for the weather when he was younger either. I took the jacket in stride and care always. And I also kept the comparison to him in the back of my mind. Both the likeness and the feeling of the heavy jacket on my shoulder meant something: I just didn't know what yet.

At the age of seventeen I bought a blazer at an op shop. It was too big for me and I adored it. I wore it when it was too hot -as it often is. I wore it to the beach, I wore it at the grocery store, I wore it at home. But now, as it sits in my closet, not having been worn for a long time; the place I mostly remember wearing it was at a support group. Is that the word for it? What do you call a group of queer not-quite adults meeting to eat pizza and talk over each other? What do you call me putting on that blazer and leaving the house to go sit in a too loud and too bright room with people I never felt any true connection with. Well, except for our one thing.

I remember sitting there, wondering if I could have the courage to be me even though I was there being me. It didn't feel real, I didn't feel right but thinking back on that time now, it was the most real I had ever been. It was the most me I had known. I felt insecure and scared and used this blazer as my shield and my armour. When we would go around saying our names and pronouns I would grin when someone said one that I didn't expect or when someone talked about going on hormones or saving up for surgery. Maybe these weren't people I would ever befriend or love but they were my people. They were who I had and I needed that.

Two years ago, I bought a jacket out of necessity. I needed a jacket so I bought one. It's the thought that I assume most people have before buying a jacket. It is red and has buttons and is comfortable. Maybe it was a sign of growing up that I understood the need for items that are just day-to-day ones. It became what I would call my favourite jacket and maybe that's because it's all I wore but no matter how the love came about, it did. I bought more but my heart stayed with it. For quite a while. I had worn it in I guess -I also think in my head it became a signature look of sorts. If I was a cartoon character, it would be what I wore in every episode. It was my version of Velma's turtleneck or Popeye's pipe. It showed I was ready for the world to see me. A safety blanket of sorts, or maybe it was just a jacket. Just some material to keep me warm in the winter.

We find meaning in the belongings we have. I have stories I made up about the little ceramic frogs I have sitting on my bookshelf, they have names and family members who were lost to a flooding accident. I have a feather that someone once gave me that now sits inside of a bottle that I like to think once belonged to a sailor. These items bring me comfort and a sense of being. My clothing often is of a similar feeling -just maybe a little more complicated. Maybe it's because the world doesn't see these items unless I let them. It's finding a sense of self for both yourself and for the world; two people who have many things in common but are not the same.

Last week I bought a pink jacket. If you looked in my wardrobe you would not find a single piece of pink clothing in there. Honestly, the only place you would find pink in my entire room is on the covers of books I haven't read in years. The feminist in me would like to say that pink isn't a girl's colour but the years of growing up as a girl would say otherwise. When I told people that I was not a girI it was met with scepticism. Didn't you play with dolls? Didn't you wear pretty dresses? Didn't you like the colour pink? They would ask and question and hold these facts out to me as evidence to why I was wrong. These things made me a girl, they knew it and so does the world.

Except the world is wrong. I bought a pink jacket because I liked it. And I liked it as someone who is not a girl. This is all the proof I should need and It's all I have to give. A jacket goes on the outside, it's often the first thing someone will notice about you and maybe most people don't think too hard about it. They buy it and then wear it when it gets cold but I over think most things so here I am thinking about jackets. Sometimes the smallest things, the smallest concepts will get stuck in your brain, wedged in the corners of your own identity, the weirdest and tiniest ideas and subjects will start to define you without you ever having given them permission to do so.

And so, I made that decision. I bought the jacket. I have yet to wear it but I will. I will wear it and then some time in the future another jacket will come into my life. Because at their core they are here to protect me and maybe I will let it, maybe I will let it just be a protector instead of a definer. Or maybe it will be both. Maybe it always has been. I guess we will all just have to wait and see.