Fashion’s gold kryptonite.

Some of you might know that I used to be a dude. I totally sucked at it. Come to think of it, I guess I continue to suck at it.

One of the weird things about not feeling comfortable in your own body is that you literally don’t feel comfortable in your own body. I masqueraded as male for my entire school career — only coming out as a transgender woman when I got to college — and I truly believe that I could have been a serious contender for “most awkward high schooler alive.”

I know — this comes as a shock to most of you. “Avery wasn’t always the most effortlessly awesome person on the planet? I refuse to believe such a thing.”

Well, believe it. In fact — here’s a story about how truly lame I used to be.

In my later high school years, I was an active participant in Drama club, because that’s where freaks go to escape their mandatory confinement with people they call peers only in the loosest of terms. During a club trip to the big city (although, really, every city is ‘the big city’ when you live in a place that has its own town crier) I decided that my return to school the following week would mark my ascension to the ranks of the cool and popular.

I’m told this is a common high school trope — the hope that one can disappear for a short while and come back completely changed, your identity gleaming and new. How was I to achieve this particular metamorphosis? I was going to buy the best jacket in the entire world.

I spent four hours and one hundred and sixty-five British pounds on the coolest, nicest jacket I could find. More of a blazer, really, it was was a deep brown with faint red pinstripes and grungy, multi-colored paint splotches covering its bottom half.

It went somewhat well with my standard ‘uniform’ at the time: jeans with a collared shirt, and a t-shirt or pullover on top. I may or may not have been watching a lot of The O.C.

If you’re ever an observer of these situations, the best you can hope for when someone you know attempts one of these re-brandings is that they’ll simply be ignored upon their return to the world they’re trying to impress. You have to hope that everything will just stay exactly the same as it was before, and that nobody will say a word about it.

But when I walked into school with that jacket hanging on my skinny frame like elephant hide on a paperclip (the very bottom of it gently brushing the backs of my knees) I was met with derisive glares. Knowing smirks greeted me as I passed the various cliques in the common room and made my way to the corner where the people you could charitably call my friends hung out. I believe the first comment I received was a pointed “What. The. Fuck.”, which set a tone of incredulity that carried on through the day. People were confused that I had even thought it possible to make myself cooler. Confused, and angry.

It was not a banner day. I spent my time regretting the purchase and contemplating returning the jacket as soon as possible. Just before the end of the last period, though, one of the popular dudes — Simon — came up to me and remarked “I was thinking about buying that jacket.”

Yes! Vindication! If this jacket was so awesome that Simon N_______ wanted it, then surely I’d made the right choice. I tried to downplay my excitement as I replied “I know, it’s pretty cool, right?”

He met my eyes, his expression completely blank, and told me, with a chill in his voice:

“Yeah. It used to be.”

I wore that jacket pretty much every day for the next two years out of pure spite.