I’m at the bar waiting to order lunch. It’s Harvi’s turn to pay so we are in one of those cheap and cheerful places mainly frequented by old men, students and impoverished types like us. I’ve positioned myself in the likeliest space to get served, as near to the middle as I can manage – that way you double your chances that either of the bar staff working the section both sides of you will include you in their mental queue – and between the shortest people available. Height has some advantages when it comes to bar technique. Which explains why I’m here and not Harvi.
I sneak a sidelong glance at the competition. I calculate my relevant position in the serving order and roughly estimate the time it’ll take before I’m asked for my table number. On my left there are a couple of regulars propped with half full pints discussing some current celebrity football scandal and a large group of sensibly dressed women – probably all work in the same office I’m thinking – mid-order of a complicated round. To my right there’s a bunch of grimy guys in hi-vis jackets pocketing change and handing around beer, then a dapper old chap with a stick and a student in a baggy checked shirt and a bobble hat. My hunch is that I’m best off waggling Harvi’s tenner in my right hand as I can’t see these two taking long.
When the builders have cleared off the woman behind the bar turns her attention to my neighbours, and asks smilingly, “Who’s next?”
The old chap beams back, lifting his stick and pointing in the direction of his fellow queuer, “Serve t’lad first” he says.
“I’m not a fucking boy!” says the student, tutting loudly.
“Oh, sorry luv … I didn’t mean … I mean …” He falls silent and fiddles with the elaborately carved handle of his cane.
When the student had gone – having fixed the old guy with one last withering look of pure disdain – the bar worker turned to us both and shrugged, “I thought it was a bloke too … same again?
She held a fresh glass under the Leeds Pale.
“But I really didn’t know … I just thought … well, I just thought, you know … it was a lad.” His voice trailed off and he rummaged in his pocket for his wallet.
“You must have thought it was a lad too?” He said, turning to me, suddenly animated.
“I couldn’t really say” I said, “I didn’t get a good look.”
I wanted to remain noncommittal. Ungenerously I didn’t want to ally myself with the likes of him, unsound, antediluvian possibly phobic. But the truth was I did think it was a boy. I just didn’t like to think of myself as so out of touch.
Then I told myself, its just a fashion thing. What the hell do I care about fashion? Not my thing. So I couldn’t really be blamed for misjudging the situation. All I know about fashion could be written with a board marker on the back of the laundry label on my underpants. I suspect that my casual revelation that I wear “underpants” and not whatever it is that young men these days flaunt over the tops of their sagging jeans will cause a titter of condescension among the fashion cognoscenti. All I can say is that if the belt fits, wear it.
One thing I do know about clothes is that they are meant to say something about the person wearing them. For instance, my clothes say “Dammit, I remembered not to be naked, didn’t I!” which is enough of a statement for me. And Harvi’s shirts … a shriek for help?
Walk down any high street (there are a couple left, I checked on Google) and it’s clear that clothes for men and clothes for women are assigned separate shops. If capitalism has gone to such great pains to differentiate the market for shirts and shoes and undergarments along strict gender lines then there must be good reason for this. Profit is Reason in monetary form.
Then it struck me. I may not think I know much about clothes, but every judgement I’d made in the previous five minutes – and not simply the embarrassing gender gaffe – was based on what people were wearing. I may not think much about clothes but it seems I let clothes do a lot of my thinking for me. It’s probably inescapable.
I take the beers back to the table. Harvi is wearing a flouncy pink shirt with some sort of swirly pattern and oddly exaggerated cuffs, and pale linen tight trousers.
What the hell do people make of us, I wonder?
I’ve been mistaken for a boy two times in my life – the first when I was a lanky 12 year old and got given a key for the boys locker room at the swimming pool and the second when I was a lanky teen waitress and a customer told her kid to “ask the nice boy” for something.
It didn’t feel good. But when I think about it – I’m 6ft tall, pretty flat chested, don’t generally wear make up and on both occasions was actually dressed in boys clothes (a rugby shirt first time, my dad’s shirt which I nicked for work the second time). So on quick glance I can understand the mistake.
It’s only more recently that I’ve become more interested in clothes. I still can’t be bothered to put make-up on, but I can often be spotted wearing a frock – I do like to be called Miss from time to time.
Although people make quick judgments based on clothes, often that is all we have to go on before we get talking to someone. And, it’s fair to say that many people choose their clothes because they feel they make a statement about them or because the clothes make them feel a certain way.
Really worthwhile post. Spen