Vogue is Worse Than You Thought

Vogue’s latest issue described Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid as gender fluid, even though neither of them are.
This whole mixup will probably be dismissed as another example of Vogue messing up on a sensitive issue for the umpteenth time, but the claim they made — that Zayn and Gigi were gender fluid because they wore each other’s clothes — concisely captures the current state of trans and nonbinary understanding in popular culture.
Vogue’s interview is yet one more example of transphobic stereotypes being hailed as the actual trans experience, and the sensationalization of the LGBT community for the sake of a publicity stunt.
Nonbinary for publicity
One common theme of fake coming out narratives is that the claim of being a sexual or gender minority is always published along with a photo or video whose contents involve the celebrity kissing someone of the same gender, or wearing clothes that do not correspond with the stereotypical expectations for the cisgender celebrity’s assigned gender at birth.
Why would news outlets describe Jaden Smith as a “nonbinary icon” while he’s wearing a skirt but not say the same thing when he’s wearing a shirt, jeans, and sneakers?
Mass media is just perpetuating the same old gender roles and stereotypes.
Why would Zayn Malik’s gender change once he puts on a skirt? This theme of “men who wear dresses are not men anymore” is extremely harmful to cis, trans, and/or nonbinary people alike. It implies that:
- cis men wearing dresses cannot be men anymore
- not-cis people who were AMAB that do not wear dresses are male
- not-cis people wearing dresses who were AFAB are faking it and actually just women (because they are wearing a dress, which is something only women do)
- cis women are only women because they wear dresses
Isn’t that chain of logic completely irrational? Laying it out as such reveals how ridiculous its premise is. When you equate dresses to gender, or gender presentation to gender itself, false consciousness is the only possible result. Instead of genitals = gender, these narratives make the argument that clothes = gender. The latter idea is not better than the first.
Clothes = gender: a brief history
It’s no coincidence that media outlets equate a celebrity’s outfit to the celebrity’s literal gender. In Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble,” the author puts forth the idea that gender is merely a construct created by the way people perform gender, or gender performativity.
Butler herself has apologized to the trans community, but there are still many academics, such as Candace West and Don Zimmerman, who insist that since gender is just a performance, it is not possible for anyone to be trans — the legitimacy of trans existence would require gender to be innate, which these academics insist it is not. Innate gender does not exist, they say, only the performance of gender does.
The idea that gendered clothing can change gender is a product of how theorists, especially West and Zimmerman, have interpreted Butler’s work. West and Zimmerman insist that since there is no such thing as innate gender, then gender is “a product of interaction [and] can be changed if we change our performances” — therefore, a man changing the performance of gender by wearing a skirt is seen as actually changing his gender. Media coverage of male celebrities who wore skirts in 2016 such as Jaden Smith and Ezra Miller contributed to a pervasive false consciousness in which male celebrities who wore skirts in magazine editorials or their free time were hailed as exhibiting “gender fluidity” time and time again.
In reality, of course, whether a trans or cis male wears a skirt does not change the state of their manhood, but queer theory and mass media alike have failed to separate gender identity from gender presentation (not to mention acknowledging that often, men do not wear skirts to make some statement about their gender, so it does not really count as gender presentation; they just want to wear a skirt). Not only is this media cycle an exhibition of false consciousness, it is also an example of transphobic ideology dripping from academia into popular culture.
The idea that clothes = gender actively hurts trans people
The idea that what you wear determines your gender is described by West and Zimmerman as “doing gender”. For trans and nonbinary people, the idea of “doing gender” is often the direct cause of interpersonal and institutional oppression that we face.
When my conservative, evangelical Christian mother started to suspect that I might be trans, she told me that being trans is not necessary because you can do anything while being a woman. When I was younger, did not yet know I was trans, and held many transphobic beliefs, I also said this — I said, “there’s no need to go around calling yourself a woman, just be a man and wear a dress!” There’s so much to unpack in this idea, but for our purposes it is necessary to note how no one actually believes this.
Cis people claim that being trans is never necessary because you can do whatever you want while being your assigned gender at birth, but once you do something that disregards those expectations, the very same cis people assume you are trans or that your gender has changed.
Even my mother, who told me that being trans was not “necessary,” only suspected I was trans because I wanted to wear a suit to prom. If my mom really believed I can do anything as my assigned gender as birth, then why did she think that wearing a suit was a sign I did not see myself as a woman anymore?
It is hypocrisy.
When you say that clothes = gender, you are making life harder for trans and nonbinary people. We are already held up to inhumanely rigid gender roles. Trans women are criticized for not being feminine in the way cis people want them to. Trans men can be fetishized whenever they exhibit some facet of femininity.
If you are walking down the street as a trans woman and a stranger looks at you and sees you as trans, you are in danger. In this case, gender roles are seen as a standard which trans women do not live up to well enough (although I can not speak from personal experience).
If you are walking down the street as someone who is not cis and was AFAB, it is extremely difficult to be seen as male by strangers, or at least in the case that you are not taking testosterone and are not extremely thin. In this case, gender roles make it impossible for you to escape your assigned gender at birth.
When I was in high school, I spent months preparing for the day I would make myself be seen as male on my college campus. I wore all bland, neutral clothing from men’s sections in department stores, wore a binder (to flatten my chest), didn’t speak to strangers (for fear of them hearing my high-pitched voice), cut off 10 inches of my hair, and religiously studied makeup tutorials which teach you how to contour the shadows that cis men have onto your face so that your face looks masculine. The makeup tutorials were so realistic that when I met people online and they saw my face, they would default to using he pronouns for me.
I remember going out one fateful morning in my first semester of college, fully manned out so to speak, but being called “miss” and “she” consistently by strangers…always. Never did a stranger even question my gender or even feel confused about it; I was undoubtedly female in the mind of everyone I met. This made me very distraught.
It kept happening.
I failed my first semester, rarely ever able to go to class, always being a subject of surveillance by the suicide watch on my campus, eventually spending more time in therapy than in class. My trans male friend with the same experience of being constantly misgendered was admitted to the psychiatric ward for a suicide attempt. I followed him 5 months later.
It kept happening. It keeps happening. It is something I deal with every day.
The idea perpetuated by Vogue that clothes are gendered, and the gender of those clothes is the same as the gender of the person wearing them, hurts trans people every day.
Clothes = gender makes it harder for trans people to be seen as who they are
Just like many cis women do not want to be fully decked out in makeup, a dress, and heels all the time, many trans women and not-cis people who were AMAB would rather wear a shirt and pants. Just like cis men can at least wear pastel shorts and preppy colorful polos, so should trans men and not-cis people who were AFAB have some ability to wear clothing that isn’t grey, brown, dark blue, or black.
The pain of being misgendered was partially that I was trying so hard. A trans male friend of mine mentioned how if he was wearing all black, wearing a binder, and looked masculine in every possible way, holding a pink paperclip in his hand would lead a stranger to gendering him as female.
Because the tiniest aspect of femininity leads to being misgendered, I already feel the pain of constricting myself to the tiniest variety of possessions and experiences ever, such as not letting myself buy pencils that are too light a shade of green. Sometimes I see cis men writing with pencils that have pink stripes or a colorful pattern, or socks that are lighter than navy blue, and I get pissed off — they can be careless but I have to monitor everything. Everything I own is grey or black, and it’s not really a choice.
The idea that Zayn Malik wearing a dress makes him something else besides a man reinforces the strict boundaries that are set on masculinity. It means that anyone assigned female at birth who wants to be seen as male has to try even harder.
I cannot speak for trans and nonbinary people assigned male at birth, but broadly I will say that Gigi Hadid becoming something other than female simply because she wore a suit is an idea which harms all women and all people who desire to be read as female in public*. Cis women should not feel that wearing a suit changes their gender — to do so would be undoing decades of feminist theory surrounding gender roles. Transfeminine people should not have to feel that wearing a suit would change their gender, and are already are held to impossibly high standards of femininity. To say that even wearing a suit is something un-womanly makes those standards higher.
Clothes = gender restricts access to hormones and surgery
Despite how far trans activism has come, gaining access to hormones or surgery is still extremely difficult. For some reason, most cis people who have the power to grant or deny trans people access to these resources seem to think that they want surgery on a whim or that they are pretending to be trans for shits and giggles.
For most trans and nonbinary people, access to hormones and surgery depends on being the most stereotypical version of your gender possible. Hidden Brain’s episode titled “The Fox and the Hedgehog” details the story of Don Laub, one of the first surgeons in the US to do gender affirming surgeries. Don Laub was famous for how many people he turned away, and his legacy of extensive gatekeeping continues to this day.
Not-cis people who were AMAB cannot wear pants or have facial hair when going in to be approved for medical resources. Not-cis people who were AFAB must be wearing something to make them flat-chested and pants and neutral colors and not be wearing makeup when hoping to be approved for medical resources.
I say not-cis to be inclusive of nonbinary people, as I myself am not a trans man (or a woman). Access to trans-specific medical resources depends on a certain idea of what a not-cis person is like, which includes the idea that the person accessing these resources wants to look like the “opposite” gender.
The idea of someone who wants top surgery but does not see themself as male is baffling or unacceptable to cis health professionals. On top of that, to get top surgery, a candidate in my state must be on testosterone for two years and “live as male” for that time. It is not possible to get the surgery I want because I need to first need to prove to health professionals that I am male and want to live as such.
Reinforcing rigid definitions of maleness and femaleness forces trans and nonbinary people to act a certain way to get access to medical help, and even limits the medical procedures that they have access to.
Moving forward
Very basic information about what it means to be trans is still being withheld or misconstrued from the general public. It will take a long time for me to see myself in mass media. Even Teen Vogue’s forays into nonbinary representation has ended up accidentally imperialist.
I did not discover that I was nonbinary because of Jaden Smith wearing a skirt or because of any magazine article; I came into my self-discovery by absorbing the love and the stories of trans and nonbinary friends with no bylines or Twitter presence. We spread our message by making the choice to live, sharing our experiences, and engaging with other trans and nonbinary people. We lift each other’s voices, and through this, we lift each other.
Notes:
*Some nonbinary people are aware that no stranger will ever gender them as nonbinary, so they put effort into being seen as the binary gender which they weren’t assigned at birth, because even that is better than being seen as their assigned gender at birth.
