Go to any Pride festival and you will see a range of fashion choices pushing the boundaries of good taste and good sense. Every June this sparks arguments, both inside and outside the queer community, about what’s “too much” (or more often, too little) to wear to Pride events. Opinions on what’s cool, what’s cringe and what’s criminal vary from person to person. Are rainbow suspenders tacky? Is a leather pup mask indecent? Can enough body glitter qualify as clothing? There’s a lot to consider.
For my first Pride outfit, I also had to consider the fact I was still mostly in the closet. Very few friends knew I was bi, and even fewer knew I was trans. I was afraid that if I wore anything “too obvious,” my family might spot me in the background of some photo in the paper, outing myself before I was ready. No one in my family had read a physical newspaper in more than a decade, sure, but my fear was more persuasive than my logic.
So for my first Pride I decided to wear a nondescript tank top featuring spandex-clad heroes the Power Rangers forming an inadvertent rainbow. It gave me enough color to feel on-theme while still being a plausibly deniable “ally” costume if I ran into anyone I knew.
But when I got to the festival and saw the riotous rainbow of attendees being out and proud, I felt ashamed of my choice. The whole day was about embracing pride, and yet I was still hiding. What right did I have to celebrate? I knew it wasn’t a fair thought, but I couldn’t shake it. I needed to do something.
River James Witherow with a cicada on their hand in Centennial Park
Borrowing bravery from the sheer strength of the crowd, I bought a nonbinary flag pin from a vendor. I pinned it to my hat, and for about an hour, I experienced the true vulnerable, electric thrill of pride. Then I spotted one of my co-workers across the crowd. I scrambled to take the pin back off. I shoved it in my backpack.
When I passed a shirtless trans man, scarred chest proudly on display, I told myself one day that would be me. But the weight of that pin in my bag made it feel like a hollow promise. My fear was a 100-foot-tall monster, and I was no Power Ranger with a robot triceratops. The fight seemed impossible to win.
It would be four more years before I’d finally attend Pride as my whole visible self. I was three weeks post top surgery, my chest still wrapped in layers of gauze and tape. It was definitely a bad medical decision to brave the heat in my condition, but my hazy, pain-medicated brain was on a mission. I had a T-shirt tie-dyed in the colors of the trans flag. I had the life and the body that seemed impossible to me four years prior. Hell, I even had blue hair. I was the most visibly queer I had ever been in my entire life, and I was going to prove once and for all that I was done hiding. As the sun set and my favorite band played the festival’s main stage, I felt like I’d earned the perfect ending to my own personal coming-of-age movie. Credits rolling, my future without fear.
But real life is not a movie, and I still wasn’t a superhero. The uglier truth was this: I’d worn my running shoes that day, even though they didn’t match my outfit, just in case someone opened fire.Â
Fear kept me in the closet for decades, but it followed me out too.Â
I wish I could say my worries when choosing an outfit for Pride these days are purely fashion-related, but they’re not. I still worry about my outfit landing me in some right-wing YouTuber’s video, painting a target on my back for mockery or worse. I worry about the disgusted look the Uber driver gives my rainbow socks; I worry if I’ll ever make it to the festival at all. Every year, as I look in the mirror, a part of me wonders if this will be the outfit I die in.Â
Last year I bought a shirt at Pride that reads “Protect Trans Folks.” The days I need it most are the days I’m too afraid to wear it. It’s not a salacious costume; it’s just a T-shirt that says I deserve to live, and yet these days it still makes me a target.
That’s why all the arguments about what’s “inappropriate” to wear to Pride are pointless, because the bigots of the world don’t care what we pull out of our closets, only about forcing us back inside them. We could all show up to Pride in full-coverage gray jumpsuits and they would still hate us down to our skins, to our scars, and to our souls.Â
So I will wear whatever I damn well please to Pride this year. I will accessorize my fear with all the colors of my joy. If I can’t be fearless, at least I can be fabulous.
Talking to the Nashville Pride president, highlighting the best of the Nashville Pride Festival and more
