@The.Thrifted.Gay

j frausto

I’ve always felt lost in my own body. I never quite knew why. On most days, I still struggle to look in the mirror and smile back at my reflection. I’ve had body dysmorphia for as long as I can remember.

One of my earliest memories of my body dysmorphia was when I was eight years old. Like most Latinos, I grew up Catholic. My family wanted me to have a first communion. I studied every bead of the rosary and the prayers in English and Spanish. After passing all the written and auditory prayer tests, the day finally came that I had passed the first communion.

My mom and grandma were so excited to go dress shopping. They took me to the local Mexican clothing store. You know, the ones with the puffy-ass dresses. They got me a white headband, white lace socks, black shoes, and the poofiest white dress possible. The morning of, they took me to the salon to get my hair done in this ugly curly style drowned in hairspray. I remember going through the motions, wanting to be done with this.

After the church thing happened, the first thing I asked my mom was if I could take off the dress and immediately put on a Chicago Bears shirt, shorts, and gym shoes. We went out for pizza afterwards and I must have looked ridiculous in my church hair with a T-shirt and shorts. But I felt somewhat comfortable. This was the first event I remember this comfortable feeling vividly, and it wasn't the last.

The second time was dress shopping for prom. My aunt has always had this obsession with high school. I remember her talking about prom since my sophomore year. She took me to so many dress places and I hated every second of it. When I finally found a dress I could tolerate, I left the dressing room to show my aunt. She screamed happily and cried. This reaction sent me deeper into a hole. I just wanted to scream and cry out of sadness, but I wasn’t sure why…it’s just a dress, right?

I had no idea why my aunt felt so happy and reacted that way. I always wished I could feel that same emotion when putting clothes on. At the time, I never thought that was going to be a possibility for me.

After going off to college and finding my style, I discovered that feeling. That happy-crying-and-screaming feeling. That feeling I thought would never be possible. It finally happened after 23 years when I bought a light pink suit. The suit jacket cropped perfectly at my waist. This gave my hips a more straight look to make me look more masculine. It was the first time the shoulders fit and I wasn’t swimming in a blazer. The cuffs stopped right at my wrist. The slacks were fitted right around my waist and were the perfect length to my ankles.

I wore the pink suit a couple of times. It was a beautiful moment to put this suit on for the first time and for it to fit me the way I wanted it to! I couldn’t put into words why this felt so right, until I got some friends together to put on an all queer fashion show called Dandy Dorothy. Dandy Dorothy was to represent all the beautiful sides of queerness. We had two other designers present their work. The last design of each collection was a showstopper: the look that leaves the audience in awe. I wanted to highlight this feeling when wearing this suit.

I wanted to tell a story with my collection. I’ve always considered myself to be a hopeless romantic. I wanted to celebrate my androgyny by marrying together my femininity and masculinity. I wanted my showstopper to represent my pure joy. That happy-screaming-and-crying feeling. After not having worn the pink suit for a couple of years, I decided to upcycle it. I wanted to give a chance to other queer people to experience the beauty of this feeling. I told my sewing coach Blair Goldman (@blair.wears) that this would be my coming out as trans. She’s been the most supportive of my design journey and this process of becoming myself. We spent weeks cutting, measuring, sewing, and ironing a trans flag to stitch into the blazer. Then, we cut out 5-foot-long pink, blue, and white stripes. We sewed these stripes into the collar, creating a trans cape coming out of the suit. I wanted to visually describe the happy feeling I had when I first put on this suit. At the time, I didn’t understand I was trans. This feeling of putting on a suit that I can finally be myself in saved me.

Queer people have very few safe spaces to be authentically ourselves. The one place we deserve to feel safe is in our own bodies. Oftentimes, I don’t feel safe in my own body, but styling and designing clothes to highlight the parts of my body I do love, and that I feel good in, gave me a new life. That’s what I strived for as a stylist with this project: to give a suit a new life, to style other queer people in this life-giving suit, to give others the same happy-screaming-and-crying feeling when they put it on. To be able to give others what I gave myself, that missing feeling.

about the creator

J Frausto (they/them, he/him) is a Mexican/Puerto Rican Chicago native who identifies as queer. They found their style through their gender expression that led to being an androgynous thrift stylist. After styling people who identified as queer they realized there is a need to bridge the gap to make clothes gender affirming.