My Dress. Tribute to Justice RBG
Justice Ginsberg:
I am 38. I am black. I am a man who lives in Chicago, and today, I bought my very first dress. It’s nothing flashy, a polyester cotton blend, black with white polka dots and exaggerated, coiffed shoulders. I searched through pants suits and rompers, but ultimately I decided based how it made me feel. Since women have more variety and excitement in the cut, style, length, and textures available to them, my shopping took longer than I thought it would. There is more fashion buffet to try when compared to the typical lot of men’s garments. However, I like my dress.
As I strummed my hand across all the fabrics and textures in the department store, confronted with a few curious looks and raised brows, I could not stop thinking, “what happens when we lose our great leaders, those who fought so hard; those who endured and changed so much for the rest of us?” After all, many of us simply reap the benefits of the labor and tears that were never seen by our icons and role models. “Where does the legacy of great leaders end up?”
“Can help you,” an inquisitive and completely sincere store manager asked me. “Yes, actually, I want to try on that dress and I want you to tell me how it looks on me. To my immediate shock, as I prepared for questions and a mild interrogation, her reply, “absolutely, you can change in any dressing space that is open.”
Was there egg on my face? The joke had to be on me, naturally? An almost 6-foot black man in gym clothes and a hoodie, in the middle of a women’s department store, full of mothers and their daughters; impatient men waiting for their dates to just decide on something; and a few sales associates scattered about… as a dressing room was being prepared, for me? A dressing room right beside all the others, no doubt— not some shameful corner draped in plastic and tattered cardboard in back near the break room. Right out front, in plain sight. “Where does the legacy of great leaders reside?”
As I suspected, the dress fit very well. A few women friend of mine often say that when they see the dress they want, it somehow has found them instead. I understand more of that now. I spend a lot of time at the gym. Suffice to say, I have a mannish figure: sinews and certain fullnesses in areas that my cis-female counterparts cannot recognize upon themselves. But also suffice to say, I am no Herculean form. I’m barely 160 pounds, lean, athletic, and many people have thought that I am a dancer. “How does it fit?” a gentle voice from the other side of the changing door asked. “I like it. I will take it,” I replied all the while still silently concerning myself, “where does the legacy of great leaders end up?”
Before I changed I mentioned to the manager that I would like for her to take a picture of me in the dress after I bought it, in front of a group of bare and naked mannequins that were being liquidated, a group of about ten or twelve. “Oh. I can’t do that.” And there was what I thought would be the limit of this manager’s patience with the whole ordeal— a man, a black man, here in this department store causing a scene, causing anxiety, causing a ruckus, causing some system that we rely on for conduct to turn completely on its head. As I began forming my senate-worthy counter argument— you would be pleased— more egg on my face? More depth to this callous joke being secretly waged against me, as I anticipated a sudden and cruel punchline? “I’m not a very good photographer. I will have one of the other associates meet you by the mannequins,” she explained. I replied with a somewhat confused but grateful, “thank you.” I gave her my credit card and walked across the store in my new dress. There waiting, an eager and friendly associate asking me how she should compose the shot. As I framed a few shots to example, she obliged. I could not stop thinking, “where does the legacy of great leaders end up; on whose shoulders does it fall?”
I posed. I presented face, legs, arms, hips, and an eye that smoldered as much as it could without makeup. Business as usual for the other ninety-eight percent of the store, nothing to see her, no man in a dress being photographed in front of fifteen naked female forms. The associate produced a true cornucopia images for me to pick and choose. In fact at one point she shouted, “try it with your hands higher, and swing your hips.” It was my turn to oblige. We concluded and I changed back into my gym gear. The manager returned, gently took the dress from me and folded it neatly into a bag. “Do you need anything else today,” she asked? I told her that I did not and that my first dress was enough. She giggled, “you taught me a few poses today.” I laughed and so did the associate handing me my receipt. I left. I left knowing exactly where the legacy of great leaders lives. I left knowing that it lives, in us— upon the shoulders of all those who follow.
There is a part of me that guesses how difficult it must have been to leave our nation particularity during this period of spurn with all her sores revealed and aching, and particularly, on the cusp of an election. I sense that you held onto that judicial seat for as long as you could whether all your faculties were there or not, and I sense you did it for us and for the America that you helped carve, build, and include. I bought my dress, really only to wear it that one time. It’s already folded and placed into storage. I bought it to push against realities that sometimes we are told we must or should believe. I bought my dress in the spirit of knowing that leaders like you remind us that when you are no longer here, there is no torch that is symbolically passed— because the embers and its fire have always kindled within each of us all along.
#RuthBaderGinsberg #GoodTroubleJohnLewis
[Dress photo available on Instagram]
—
[ photo, originally color: Clair Anders ]
