Janie Dresses Up

I usually wear dresses. It’s a recent development. I remember when my whole crush on dresses began. About a year and a half ago, I tried on a black sleeveless babydoll style dress that looked really cute on the rack. I remember my friend saying once that I should wear that style of dress if I ever decided to actually wear dresses. I tried on the dress and I found that I quite liked the way I looked in it. It was quite short. Showed off my generous cleavage and flared out just enough to hide my tummy while accentuating my toned calves. I remember recognizing that I looked pretty in it and sort of sexy and that it might be a nice thing to wear on a date. I know, this isn’t rocket science, but you have to understand, this was a new recent development for me: dressing to emphasize my femininity. Dressing to attract the attention of boys. Dressing to say, “These are my legs, these are my breasts, these are my arms, and you can see everything else if this one garment comes off.” Also, quite simply, dressing up makes ME feel good, me—by myself. Even if I’m tired that day, or feeling cranky, or feeling a bit too chubby, or just in rotten mood, a dress helps me get there. To a better mood place. I can look in the mirror and say, “Okay, I might not be feeling my best today, but I can try to look my best.” Working from the outside, in. Sometimes, it really does work.

I used to wear jeans. A lot. Nearly every day. But I was never really able to find a pair that I really liked. My legs are quite thin, but my tummy is significant. Jeans never fit like the glove that I see on some girls. I like my smallish Irish ass, I like my hips, and my legs. But the size of the jeans I have to buy in order to accommodate my belly never fits these parts that I do want to show off. The jeans end up baggy, saggy, not emphasizing my curves, but rather, covering them up and making me look bigger than I’d like. I have thought about getting a custom pair of jeans made to suit my body but those are expensive and I’m always working on trimming down, admittedly, and a custom pair of jeans that only fits for a few weeks seems like a waste of money. If I’m, gulp, dieting.

Which isn’t something I talk about here, really. My chubby issues. It’s not that I’m trying to pass as some skinny girl of my readers’ dreams. It’s just an issue that’s a blog on its own and besides, my tummy has never prevented me from having orgasms or good sex. In fact, my stomach has become my most erogenous zone, apart from the obvious ones (pussy, breasts, ass). It was a scary thing when someone first touched my stomach and I found it very arousing. Because it is a place on my body that holds for me, historically, tons of shame, insecurity, and doubt. However, there is a miracle that happens in sexuality. Or at least in mine. All those negative-ish feelings about my tummy translate into physical sensitivity. My fears about my stomach not being attractive are eroticized and, bam, kink is born. Touch my stomach in a certain way, grope it, massage it, and well, I get very, very wet kids. And boys who have elicited this reaction out of me, well, this reaction has often made them touch my stomach even more, and in turn, I have started to treasure my tummy. As a place of power, of VULNERABILITY. Vulnerability is power, folks.

When I wore that black babydoll dress the first time on a date, boy, did I feel vulnerable. And not quite like myself. Whoever myself is. I’ve learned that as soon as we start feeling out of our element is the moment where growth happens. Anyway, the guy I was out with told me that my legs looked hot in the dress. I saw him staring at my cleavage. He brushed away the hair from my face. Now, men have stared at my tits before. But no one had ever brushed the hair away from my face. Okay, it could just be a coincidence, true. But I didn’t see it as that. I just KNEW it was because I was wearing the dress. He could act more manly and chivalrously because I was showing him my girlyness. My date held my hand as we walked to the train. And I remember thinking, I’m a girl in a dress and a boy is holding my hand. I’m in a dress and walking through the city with a boy who is my date. I’m in a dress and I can feel the breeze go up my thighs and hit the cool wet spot on my panties. I’m in a dress, I’m in a dress, I’m in a dress.

In a way, I have never since felt as feminine as I did that night when I first wore that black dress. Of course, it wasn’t the first dress I’d ever worn. But it was the first dress I’d ever worn on a date. It was. Now I always wear dresses on dates. I find myself buying more dresses, and skirts as well. I now look for special tights and pretty bras I know will enhance the dress. I mean, these are just typical “girly” things to do, traditionally. “Girls” enjoy going shopping for clothes, relish in matching up their underwear under sexy outfits, treasure seeking out new fall fashions, and look forward to that first hot day when they can wear a sundress. Now, I like all these things as well.

Dressing up has been an extremely vital part of my blooming. When a boy compliments me on a dress I’m wearing, I melt a little bit. That bit of sweetness is like no other. He is recognizing the femininity I am offering to him.

Two years ago, that dressed-up femininity was definitely a performance. Sometimes, a more forced one than I’d like to admit. I didn’t really incorporate it into my being all the time. I crossed my arms over my chest. I wore long coats over dresses and sometimes didn’t take the coat off until several minutes into the date, even if the bar or restaurant was hot. I kept my legs crossed tight in the dress and didn’t understand the allure of an ankle cross, or the hotness of switching the top leg over to the bottom leg as legs were crossed and uncrossed. I was just trying to keep it together. My femininity and sexual availability were often separate at that time. I knew looking feminine would attract the attention of boys in a sexual manner, but I wasn’t sure how else to act feminine besides putting on a dress. But now, there is no putting on a dress. The dress sort of, well, stays with me. I FEEL feminine. And I AM feminine. I believe I might want to say I’m femme. Even.

It’s a hard thing for me to admit. Femininity is a source of my power that I haven’t always embraced. Naturally, I’m sort of the bawdy girl, brass, sometimes loud, witty and very quick. Qualities that don’t always lend themselves to being a girly-girl. I do not possess a small, sweet femininity. I did not start wearing dresses and grow into being cutesy-femme. I started wearing dresses, and as soon as I got over the strangeness of the costume, I was Mae West. In black rectangular glasses. In a way. My femininity, like the rest of me, is not subtle. But it attracts the kinds of men that I want it to attract these days—men who also own their masculinity, who aren’t always traditionally masculine, but whose masculinity appeals to me in an intellectually sensual way. Oh, men. Delicious, masculine, sexy, sweet, sensitive men. Whether he takes me or I take him, or we share the lead in bed—my femininity is there to offer something to him that he doesn’t have, but that he can possess, in a way, for a while. And his masculinity provokes even more femininity in me, and I provoke his masculinity through my femininity.

And then, the dress comes off. And even though it’s off, in a lump on the floor, tossed aside, out of sight out of mind, for a while, when I slip it back on the next morning—God. I am at once clothed.

And exposed.

As feminine.