HOW MUCH DOES BEING IN THE LGBTQ COMMUNITY INFORM PERSONAL STYLE? By Jordan Snow

How much does being in the LGBTQ community inform personal style?

by Jordan Snow

MODEL Jordan Snow PHOTOGRAPHY Morgan Snow STYLING Morgan Snow

Growing up as a rural trans kid in the South in my adolescence I scoured to find family, a friend, a stranger or anything that held this “othered” part of me, this queerness I couldn’t quite describe yet in common with me. The only thing that seemed to be in solidarity with me and asked no questions was the creek whispering into the woods, the trees talking along the land, the sun speaking a bright beaming, the sky singing a soft hue of baby blue, and the southern dirt licking me dirty clean. The landscape around me knew how to provide a place to rest my head, a place of comfort but out of compassion for our separateness not because we shared solidarity.

Time dipped up and down the hills dotted in hay bales and hospitable handshakes among neighbors and strangers in Wendell, NC and I began to give the doorframe a little more of a fight as my inches inched taller. Still I searched for solidarity, for some sort of sameness in this difference of mine that seemed to grow taller in shame alongside the doorframe. My search never failed to leave me shortchanged and instead arranged in a binary that boxed every free and good thing in. I began to believe that as true as the sun settles into the horizon day in and day out, I would always be sure to find something in my search. That something being exactly nothing, but then there came the cowboy.

This beckoning being, this rebel roundup, this freedom flyer, this heavenly herder of all the wild and wandering. I stumbled into the saloon one of my younger years on Christmas. As I ripped away the red wrapping paper, the cowboy spurred into the light flying of his silvered spurs. I ran my hands over the fluffed cow print chaps, the tangling tassels to my vest, the spilling silk of my red neck tie, and the straw drawn into a cowboy hat that rested perfectly on my head. But I hadn’t just found any cowboy, I found a queer cowboy. Although, I did not come out as trans or queer until I was a steady 18-years-old, my growing hands new I finally caught something that I would never let go of. Finally, something that shared in solidarity with me while way down in the country where only the dirt dusting my boots didn’t question my abstract existence.

When you find yourself as part of the LGBTQ community liberation and embrace rush into a river of feeling. There is finally a place you belong, but just belonging is not the only thing you find. You find new ways of expressions, especially fashion. Being forced into the closet for so long, it is only logical that personal style is cemented into the queer community. Every LGBTQ member can tell you a glimmering moment that they stole in the mirror, a time where no one was looking. Their head held high while wearing something the world would’ve looked down upon. Like the LGBTQ community there is an endlessness within it like there is in fashion and expression. From statement stilettos, a tattered T-shirt, a loved lipstick or more, being in the LGBTQ community brings you belonging along with a coveted closet and mine just so happened to be southern grit, a freedom fighter, a wild wick, a queer cowboy who’s hat is now tipped up in truimph.