silkidelic

I had a whimsical early life full of elves and cats and homemade costumes. I loved glamour and colors and textures from day one.

Now that I’m letting go of many rules and expectations, I love femininity all the more, not less. Gowns and lashes and styled hair still feel like glamorous costumes, because to me, they are. 

They’re an attempt to reveal a glimmer of spiritual energy that can never be fully expressed visually.

When you zoom out and realize how much of the current moral panic is about CLOTHES, it’s almost laughable. 

I can’t imagine how difficult life would have been if I’d been denied the fun, harmless safe haven of playing dress-up as a child. I am lucky. My childhood did not prepare me for how cruel the world can be. 

I was, however, given a sense of independence that has helped me survive as I slowly realized that to much of the world, I wasn’t Laura or Silki or even a human. 

I was A Girl, a special item defined from the outside in. A blazing eye atop a control tower turned its gaze on me and I became a goal, a mirror, a vessel, a tool. Anything but human. 

I encountered this watchful eye in girls’ magazines of the 90s, encouraging me to make myself thin, to dress in this specific feminine way but not this way, to only like boys, and to like them to the exclusion of all else in life. 

And yes, I also encountered dangerous people on the road. All of them were straight, cisgender men, not BECAUSE they were men, but because abuse thrives when one group has too much of the power. 

Dresses, glitter, makeup, and rainbows are symbols, but our freedom is what they want. 

Fear makes the symbols of our freedom all the stronger, and we are scorching their eyes out with our light. 

I look back to this younger time for fantastical inspiration, because I know that magic is real. A safe creative environment, one that isn’t heavy on gendered expectations, is a powerful spell in a world of danger. 

Today I am fortunate to wear SHE as a word of my own defining, as a mystical armor that I don – and it’s not always visible to the naked eye. It’s not clothes, it’s spirit. 

She is my breastplate, her is my dagger. Hers is my vengeful breath of fire. 

These are magic words for anyone who wishes to wield them.