At the beginning of each season, all stores make their shameless efforts to get everyone excited and flustered about their new collections. They bombard us with countless emails, hoping to draw us in with their tactful writing and advertising. They distract us from their high prices by promising free shipping or up to 25 percent off– but only if you order over $75 worth of their merchandise. All of this to get us to feel like we need what we don’t have. For some, this is just the regular annoyance of junk emails flooding their inboxes, but for others it can feel like a societal burden and pressure to be something or someone that they’re not.
At the beginning of this spring, I got my “NEW- JUST IN SPRING LOOKBOOK” email from multiple stores that I shop at. As I was glancing through it, I saw crop tops, halter tops, cropped halter tops, tube tops, bralettes and high waisted cutoff shorts, among other spring clothing products and swim suits. Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything bad about those clothes at all, but I can say pretty definitively that they’re not for me. I can’t remember the last time I bought anything resembling a cropped halter top, and it’s not just because I’ve barely changed my outfit during quarantine. As many people know, my style is on the more masculine side. I get excited when I see cool button downs, chino shorts, T-shirts I can cuff the sleeves of, loose cut-sleeve tanks, and don’t forget the adidas soccer pants that are an absolute staple in my wardrobe. I like these clothes because I feel me in them; I feel comfortable. But when I get “NEW Women’s Styles That You’d Look Great In” emails every week from different clothing stores in which I’ve only bought items from the “Men’s” department, a sense of shame and discomfort starts to seep into the back of my mind and deteriorates the confidence that comes with wearing the clothes that I like to wear.
That’s why stumbling across a store advertised on my Instagram called Gender Free World was so refreshing for me. Usually to find clothes, whether that be online or in a store, we have to pick from a category within the gender binary which can be invalidating for a whole array of people. On this website though, clothes were categorized simply by the type of clothing item, such as “t-shirts” or “long-sleeves”. In each of the clothing categories, there is no alluding to any gendered terms. No “Women’s,” no “Men’s,” not even “masculine” or “feminine.” The people wearing the clothes are all diverse, unique individuals with different body types and gender identities. It was so validating to click the shirt category and see a female-presenting model wearing a button down shirt right next to a male-presenting model who was wearing the same shirt but in a different pattern. For many people, these little adjustments can help to take away some of the shame and fear that is associated with shopping.
I was really impacted by this company’s effort to make their store more inclusive, and the changes they made were not hard to make at all. If more stores could make similar efforts to adjust some of the ways in which they operate and even develop these ideas further, so many more people would be able to find shopping and getting clothes to be a euphoric and validating experience, rather than anxiety-inducing and stressful. While there still are many changes needed to help make the world around us less inherently binary and more inclusive of all gender identities and expressions, I can’t wait until our inboxes are flooded with emails that say “JUST IN – New Apparel for ALL” and actually mean it.
