Importance of clothing

Clothing has a unique relationship with gender in that almost all types of clothing are gender-coded; clothing is an immediately visible expression of one’s gender, but can also be used as a disguise or costume to make one appear as a different gender. Anne Lister, John Radclyffe Hall, and many military and police women wore masculine clothing without the intention of disguising themselves as men, while some of their contemporaries used and modern drag kings use masculine clothing to impersonate men or perform masculinity. Importantly, as Halberstam emphasizes, wearing clothing that does not match one’s gender assigned at birth can represent a “complex act of self-creation”; the clothed body can be experienced as more natural than the nude (106).