VOICES

Pulling a Thread

My first impression of the dress was that its puffer sleeves would not stay on. After a minute, its many other faults became apparent including (but not limited to) a cheap elastic waist, a neckline ruffle that somehow simultaneously dug into and fell away from my collarbone, and an underskirt that snagged in all the wrong places. But the physical discomfort was tolerable, and all in all it didn’t feel as alien on my body as I had expected—if I thought hard enough, it was almost good. Besides, I hadn’t worn dresses for years and wasn’t used to the sensation.

So I waited, testing for any reactions.

Then a support beam cracked somewhere in my mind, and just like that my infrastructure unraveled: in the midst of the leftover debris was my dress, crumpled and sobbing on the floor.

I spent hours repeating this process. I put it on, blasted music, scrolled on my phone, and then the walls tilted and I had to take it off. I put it on again and again, and, invariably, everything would be fine until I caught a glimpse of myself.

It was a paradox. When I lay on my bed, stretched out and headphones on, I felt like maybe a boy in a dress. I say maybe because boy didn’t seem adequate: girl meant who I was supposed to be, so boy should have felt right, but boy also felt like a cheat, like something you say during small talk to avoid oversharing. Regardless, the moment I felt confident enough to glance into a mirror, I was reduced to only girl, nothing more. That mirror’s limelight flattened me into a mere image.

I took off the dress for the last time and hung it in my closet, where it remains even now.

Iris Hu ’27 enjoys listening to music and clicking the hyperlinks in Wikipedia articles. They work on crew for Blake’s theater productions.