Queerness and lingerie
June 18th 2021, Alex (they/them)
There’s something about lingerie that holds such power – however, most brands emphasize the strength of femininity with lingerie, and it just doesn’t ring any bells to me. Yet, I feel that power when I wear lingerie. What resonates for me is the way it shapes my body, the way it embraces it softly, but mostly the way I can choose what to emphasize and how it makes me perceive myself. Some days, it’s with some delicate pieces, some other days with sports bras.
As a nonbinary person, yet someone still presenting as femme, I struggle with people misgendering me a lot. I am trying to navigate which parts of me feel right in feminine settings and which parts I want to embrace more androgynously; my main goal is to not “perform” anything. I want to find what feels right for me without wondering how I should present, or what people expect from me. Exploring gender and actually listening to my body when clothes don’t feel right on me has been so liberating. One thing I’ve found is that, sometimes, I want to still embrace a form of femininity – yet I want to live it for me without having people necessarily perceive me as feminine. The more I dress as I want, which happens to be androgynous (nonbinary people do not owe you androgyny, but it feels so right for me), the more I love layering lingerie that people won’t see.
It feels like the ultimate “doing it for me”. Not as in “I do it for me, I don’t care what people think”, but as in “nobody but me actually knows I’m wearing the cutest lingerie set under this”. It’s my way of enjoying a super high leg panty that highlights my hips in *just* the right way, or the occasional matching set that is just too cute and delicate to pass by.
I find it’s the perfect touch for me to add to an outfit, without having to worry about people’s perceptions of me. Whenever I struggle getting dressed in the morning, most often because of body dysphoria, I find the perfect way to merge the sexy or cute or delicate that I want to be, without other people’s perceptions of it. There’s not many things that are more freeing than doing something 100% for you, like a little secret with myself.