My other two friends were environmental science majors who went on backpacking trips, played rugby, and didn’t wear makeup unless they were going out. She was actively hit on by other women for the first few weeks of school. She came in on move-in day with a pixie cut and wearing a flannel shirt. Out of the six of us, only two were queer (bisexual and pansexual), yet three of the women were assumed to be queer just because of how they dressed. I only wish people would stop labeling me as straight because I like mini skirts and lipstick.ĭuring college, I lived with five other women. Fashion is more than a hobby to me - it’s a way to express myself to the world.
![lady wearing the gay pride dress lady wearing the gay pride dress](https://www.billboard.com/wp-content/uploads/media/pride-festival-celebrations-laverne-cox-billboard-650.jpg)
I spend a lot of time and money on my appearance for own my self-esteem. Like my sexuality, my wardrobe is a huge part of my identity.
![lady wearing the gay pride dress lady wearing the gay pride dress](https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/152262/lady-gagas-most-bizarre-outfits.jpg)
I’ve always been a girly girl, my closet brimming with pretty dresses, sky-high heels, and all things traditionally feminine. While I was comfortable with my sexuality, coming out was more complicated than expected mainly because everyone assumed I was straight. My journey to my bisexual identity was a quiet one, filled with introspection and fanfiction. When did my sexuality come with a dress code? I looked down at my outfit: a floral backless dress, red high heels, and my long brown hair worn down. She rolled her eyes and pointed to the flannel shirt she was wearing. “I’m sorry?” I shouted over the music, though I’m not sure what I was apologizing for. It’s cool.Those words were casually tossed at me by a pretty girl I was trying - and failing - to flirt with at a college party. It’s illustrated hiply, and as Tyler wears it, fit, and tucked with normcore aplomb.
![lady wearing the gay pride dress lady wearing the gay pride dress](https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/5c898d33-eb88-4a0f-9866-448070781098_1.34ce57c92166a1bc872be80121b3ab85.jpeg)
(Tyler couldn’t resist putting his brand name "GOLF" on there, but even that non sequitur isn’t a distraction.) I imagine straight skaters wearing this shirt around the suburbs and flying the flag for gay rights whether they ever intended to. Throw a rainbow and the word "PRIDE" together, as Tyler does here, and you have a fairly universal statement of gay strength. Tyler uses the aesthetics of cool while being deliberate about what he’s using it for: to say that being gay is cool. But this new shirt does something else-it’s childish, yes, but earnestly so. In fact, Odd Future has stupidly used the swastika in some distasteful merchandise before. Without the politics to make it a truly radical statement, something as vitriolic as a swastika was reduced to another purposeless, toxic way to seem edgy, like smoking cigarettes to piss off your parents. Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren often used Nazi symbols in their Sex Pistols-era Seditionaries clothing, which they sold to London punks in their boutique, but it always felt a little empty-shock without substance. There is a heritage of punks (and Tyler is nothing if not a punk) appropriating oppressive symbols. How he’s selling it on his Tumblr might be convoluted, but I’m sold. This made the photo even more important to me, because it was me playing with the idea of taking the power out of something so stupid." Tyler is taking symbols that oppress him as a black man, and using them to empathize with gay men. The thing that tops it off is the homo erotic tone of the hand holding, which to some degree HAS to piss off the guys who takes this logo serious. and take a photo with a white guy in it and we have an amazing photo.
![lady wearing the gay pride dress lady wearing the gay pride dress](https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2017/06/F170609MA017-640x400.jpg)
In the blog post accompanying the photo, he writes : "Throw a little rainbow in the logo. Though I’ve never cared much for him and his music, partially for his past offensiveness, when I saw this shirt, my reaction was instant: I wanted it. It’s a juvenile spin, the type he usually makes brattily, but it’s genuine in a way he’s not been before. That’s the sole privilege of gay men and women who have had to endure its unruly wrath for far too long.īut then here he is today, posting a photo on Tumblr of him holding hands with another man, looking like a goon, wearing a twisted new piece of Odd Future merchandise that reimagines a white supremacist insignia emblazoned with the rainbow colors of a pride flag. Tyler does not get to decide where, when, and how that term gets used. He’s always passionately claimed he doesn’t dislike gay people, arguing instead that that term is "just a word," and that his overuse dilutes its hateful power. You have to work hard to use a word so much. With 15 tracks, that’s an average of 14.2 times per song. In 2011, the LA rapper and Odd Future figurehead used the word "faggot" a total of 213 times on his debut album Goblin. Tyler, The Creator has long had to defend himself against charges of homophobia.