During a Fashioning Masculinities exhibition, I caught myself tearing up in the middle of the underdressed section.

A mannequin stood in the front of the room with their binder and it was the first time I’d seen this intimacy in the casual normalcy, existing alongside the mundanity of other partially undressed mannequins as opposed to the mostly unspoken moments of starting the day.

I’ve been so used to thinking of ‘masculinity’ as cisness that the hidden everyday of our bent backs and strained necks disappears before finding a seat at the table (my gender nonconformingness is cursing itself for not being able to find a better way to phrase this at the moment).

Gender nonconforming artist and poet ALOK recently called out social media’s “Tragedy-Triump” binary in IT’S A LOT PODCAST: “The only way we accrue value is our glow-up or our breakdown, but not our actual everyday, boringness and ordinariness,” they said.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the joy and distress in trans mundanity is sensationalized through a dysphoria-euphoria continuum to invalidate and validate our existence.

From the so-called “gender dysphoria” certificate to the pre-post transition discourse, the mundanity of existing is snatched to declare our bodies as controversies.

A tragedy is needed to claim a triumph. The simplicity of being is convoluted by preventing a becoming.

Why do we need to repeatedly repeat our distress in order to sketch out the possibility to being and becoming who we are?

Anyway, photos from the exhibition are above – I so desperately want to drape that sari-suit someday 🤞