— Mogai ABCs Event | Day 05 – Letter E
Expression
How do you express your identity? What's your ideal expression/presentation?
I try my best to express it visually as much as possible. Even if it may not seem obvious to others, it always is to me.
For starters, I think of my appearance the same way you’d make a Sim with a lot of CC or dress up an Everskies avatar. In fact, if I’m being entirely honest, I think about it the same way I think about character design: The palette, the shapes, the layering. I pick a concept I want to embody that day and work around it. “Concept” can be anything, of course. Sometimes an aesthetic, sometimes a certain character or trope, sometimes even a Literal Concept. This includes my kins as well as other aspects of my identity, but gender isn’t really at the forefront and never really was.
While yes, my presentation is very tied to my gender, it’s not as straightforward as you may assume. See, I don’t aim to pass in one way or another. I want to confuse, always. My goal is to make others wonder what I am, while I get to do whatever I want with my looks. Androgyny is instrumental to every aspect of my identity, and something I always do is try to “balance” my masculinity and femininity. It isn’t just dressing masc but wearing make-up or wearing a dress with sneakers and a baseball cap, it’s more intricate than that. Let’s say I want to wear jeans and a plain shirt. A few options are : if my hair is long, go for baggy-on-baggy skaterboy fit, but with many accessories. With shorter hair I would gravitate more towards little-shirt-big-pant. If it gets cold, humongous jacket for option 1 and cropped Adidas hoodie for option 2. Other idea, sleeveless + shorts. I can aim for a mcbling twink with the thinnest tightest tank top you can imagine or classic wife-pleaser with big chunky cargos (shout out butches). And what about formal attire? The options are endless. Do I want to give Victorian bishoujo vampire? Do I channel my inner office siren? Do I become the mafia boss of every fanfic? It’s a lot of fun, especially if you consider I can mix and match to my heart’s content.
That’s based on the “standard” “masc-fem scale”, which isn’t my priority and just something I enjoy to play with every day. What I pay closest attention to is channeling The Vibe. On my most grimine days, I put on the ol’ reliable. When I want to be more dogboyish, I pull out my several bone and paw-shaped trinkets and accessories. I love chrome and stars on days I want to channel my core aesthetics, and I can’t help but try my best to mirror the feeling or style or literally, once again, vibe of the music I’m listening to that particular day. Hell, I even consider the weather, but I’m not even talking about the temperature. Just literally “it’s sunny so let’s channel sunny-day vibes”. On top of all that, I always hold my interests close and do my best to include even a little something about them in my every day appearance.
Being entirely honest, I’m too aldernic to have one single ideal presentation of my truest self. If could look outwardly however I desired, I wouldn’t even be able to choose one form. That’s partly why I believe I connect with so many different things in so many different ways. My ideal expression is truly impossible to achieve, but that does not sadden me, as I do the active effort to allow my perceivable form to channel, embody and showcase even if just a tiny bit of what it could be. Humanly speaking, I never really had a fixed “goal” appearance. I’ve always been very confustransitional and I’m always moving the goalpost. That being said, I look in the mirror and look exactly how I want to present to the world as: Myself.
Ps: I tried to link references as much as I could to better illustrate what i was talking about at any given point, but for a full (ever growing) list of presentation terms i like and/or connect with, feel free to check this tag.
Thanks for reading !
Event by @dragonpride17 | Dividers .
