#GirlsShitToo

Wrong Way

After the comments started coming in, I could see that some people had taken my vlog the wrong way. Some of them were twisting my thoughts, or at least accusing me of not realizing the path my thoughts were leading down. Some of them had ... legitimate criticisms.

Leila K @L_Klein_66

.@DallasDelaney Dresses rule, so please do us all a favor and STFU

Amy aMy amY @AmyBMonson

.@DallasDelaney Saying dresses make us vulnerable implies they make us vulnerable to rape, which = we make ourselves vulnerable to rape by wearing them (1/2)

Amy aMy amY @AmyBMonson

.@DallasDelaney Let's be clear: the rapist is always at fault, never the victim! (2/2)

Amy aMy amY @AmyBMonson

.@DallasDelaney The same goes for the heels logic. Men need to stop chasing women; women don't need to get more savvy at running from them!

Adree Richards @AdreeSchmadree_dancer

.@DallasDelaney Faulty comparison fallacy...foot binding is actual torture with real pain, wearing dresses is not

Heather Anderson @HeatherA_yogi

The fact is, @DallasDelaney, that the one-sidedness of this debate should concern us. Yes, women have had to fight for the right to wear pants... (1/2)

Heather Anderson @HeatherA_yogi

but what about the men who want to wear skirts? Homophobia is so at large that this side of the debate is far less heard of. That should concern us. (2/2)

Bada$$ Benny @BennnnnnnnnyB

You're lucky you get 2 wear dresses, @DallasDelaney. I would love to be able to go through the day without fabric between my thighs.

EllaDC @DestructiveCreations

.@DallasDelaney Yeah; why does a woman who wears pants = a woman wearing pants, while a man who wears a dress = crossdresser?

There were still some viewers that completely agreed with me. Some of these viewers started trending hashtags: #DownWithTheDress and #DownWithHeels. Then #DownWithPurses and #DownWithCosmetics was added. These seemed pretty cool, especially when it was girls using them to toss aside the constraints of femininity—to show others they wouldn't conform to girlhood by wearing dresses, heels, and purses.

But then I saw the way other people were using them.

Forever Middle-aged @TheSilverYears4ever

Dresses make girls vulnerable to being caught #DownWithHeels

Forever Middle-aged @TheSilverYears4ever

Purses make girls vulnerable to theft #DownWithThePurse

Forever Middle-aged @TheSilverYears4ever

Dresses make girls vulnerable to rape #DownWithTheDress

Those tweets made me want to hurl, and I couldn't believe I'd inspired them. A large portion of the internet did not understand nuance, and they had taken my far-more-nuanced thoughts about vulnerability, twisted them slightly, and turned them into much worse ideas that could be used for victim-blaming. 

At school I discovered Valerie was giving me the cold shoulder again. We'd gotten close enough to where she was regularly leaning into me during chemistry to whisper about this or that, allowing me to take in the scents of all of her gum flavors: bubblemint, spearmint, cinnamon, watermelon. Not this week. This week, I wouldn't be able to tell if her gum was fruity or minty or something else. Which made sense, since she wore dresses on the regular, and probably felt pretty angered by my remarks. (It wasn't like she'd never criticized my outfits.)

Adree looked like she thought she was winning, again. She wore a dress to school, a cerulean one decorated in cherry blossoms that was short enough to get her a dress code violation, and she also wore heels, and she asked, "Dallas, how do you like my outfit?" I seized the opportunity to look her up and down; sparkles covered her legs (they were probably in her lotion?), and I could see that her eloquence rivaled Valerie's as she twirled on the spot where she stood. I rolled my eyes instead of telling her my true feelings: she looked hot, and yes, I really dug her outfit, and I had a sudden, intrusive fantasy of her sitting on my lap.

Before I sat down, Sharkbite told me any movement to try to get girls to stop wearing dresses was not fly at all. "You went from here—" he held his hand flat and horizontally above his head, "—to here," he turned his flat hand into an upside-down thumb that slowly traveled to below his hips. Then he shook his head and sat down, facing away from me.

I asked Eric what he thought of my vlog when he and I went to the Platinum Spoon gelato shop on Tuesday after school.

"Would you really prefer a world where girls don't wear dresses?" he asked. "I feel like that would suck."

Thinking of Valerie in one of her short black dresses and Adree in her cherry-blossom dress, and thinking of a world where I never got to see them in those dresses, I answered, "Yeah, it would." Then I smiled before taking a bite of my sweet-cream gelato. "I like you, Eric. You're straight up with me."

He smiled back, then spooned some espresso gelato into his mouth before saying, "I have this memory of my mom putting me in a dress to take Easter pictures, and me throwing an epic fit where I cried so hard I threw up."

"Gross. How old were you?"

"Like four. But I guess that's what I had to do to get her to realize how much I didn't want to wear a dress. She never tried to make me again."

"Maybe my vlog was just a subconscious attempt to get my mom to stop making me wear dresses. Too bad I'm too old for fits, and word-vomit doesn't clean up so well."

His eyebrows went up in intrigue. "You wear dresses? When?"

"Ugh. For my grandparents, on holidays and stuff. I think it's my mom's way of easing their discomfort at me being a lesbian."

"I feel like I need to see that."

I shook my head vigorously. "Sorry, dude. It'll never happen."

When I went home that night, I sent out some tweets:

Dallas Delaney @DallasDelaney

It wasn't my intention to perpetuate victim blaming, but it looks like some of u saw my vlog as doing just that

Dallas Delaney @DallasDelaney

Plz don't use my words to validate ideas about victim blaming. Try to see the more nuanced perspective I hoped to get across

Dallas Delaney @DallasDelaney

You'll still never catch me in a dress!

On Wednesday night, I was ready for whatever Adree's response was going to be. At 9:34 p.m., she released her vlog.