Are You Wearing It or Is It Wearing You?

You hold the hanger in your hand. It’s 6:48 pm. The shirt is small in a way that should not be heavy, but your wrist feels it.

You know the one. Two inches of fabric below the bust line, then nothing, then the small of your back where the air from the window reaches you. It’s the kind of garment that takes four seconds to put on and forty minutes to decide about. It lives on a single plastic hanger near the front of your closet because the front of your closet is the only place that will hold it without you having to think.

You think anyway.

The mirror is across the room and you cross to it the way you cross a street — fast, eyes forward, hoping you don’t have to look too long. But you do look. You stand there and you look. The shirt sits on your shoulders like a question you didn’t mean to ask. Your stomach pulls in without your permission. Your breath goes shallow for exactly three seconds before you remember to breathe again.

The light in your bedroom is not kind. It is the overhead fluorescent you keep meaning to replace, the one that makes everyone look like a witness. You turn sideways. You turn back. You do the thing where you lift your arms and let the fabric fall, just to see how it sits when you move, just to know if it will betray you in front of someone you have not seen in three weeks.

It will betray you. That’s what clothes like this are for. They are for being noticed. They are for being misread. They are for the moment between “she looks confident” and “she looks cold.”

You bought the shirt three weeks ago, in a moment you still don’t fully understand. You were scrolling. You were half-watching something. You were the kind of tired where your thumb moves on its own. The photo on the screen was a woman in golden hour, leaning on a railing, smiling like she had somewhere to be and was very glad to be going there. The shirt in the photo was the shirt you are now holding. It arrived in a plastic bag that smelled like a warehouse in a country you’ve never been to. You opened it on the kitchen counter while you were making pasta and you tried it on in the bathroom with the door locked even though you live alone.

You wore it that night for twenty minutes in front of your full-length mirror. Then you folded it. Then you put it on the front of the closet. Then you didn’t think about it for nineteen days.

Tonight you are thinking about it.

The text arrived at 4:17 pm. “Hey — still on for 7:30?” You read it and your chest did the thing it does when someone confirms a plan. The chest thing is not a feeling you can name. It is the half-second where you are relieved and also terrified that you are relieved. You replied “yes” with the lowercase y and no punctuation, the way you reply when you want to seem casual, the way you have replied since 2014 to every person who has asked you to show up somewhere.

Then you put your phone down and stood in your bedroom and the apartment got very quiet. Outside, a dog barked. A car door slammed. Someone was dragging a trash can across pavement three floors down. The city was going about its evening. Your evening was waiting on a hanger.

Here is the part you don’t say out loud. You are a person who knows how to have a normal Tuesday. You can go to work, you can answer emails, you can laugh at someone’s joke at 2 pm in the break room. But the second someone asks you to put on a specific shirt and meet them somewhere at a specific time, you become someone else. Someone whose palms sweat. Someone who changes her shoes twice. Someone who stands at the window and watches the street and thinks, for the first time since middle school, I wonder if I am allowed to be wanted.

I know this is dumb. I know this is a piece of fabric. I know you have worn harder things to harder places. I know your body has done more interesting things than stand in front of a mirror holding a hanger at 6:52 pm. I know. I am just saying what is happening in the room.

What is happening in the room is that you are trying to decide if you are allowed to take up space. That is the actual question. The crop top is not the question. The crop top is the surface of the question. The question is below the fabric. The question has always been below the fabric.

You put the shirt on.

You stand in front of the mirror and you look. The mirror does not say anything. The mirror has never said anything. The mirror is the most honest object in your apartment and also the cruelest. It will show you every flaw you have ever worried about, in fluorescent light, at the exact angle you did not want to see.

You turn. You look over your shoulder. The back of the shirt ends two inches above your navel. You can feel the air on your skin. The air is not warm. The air is the temperature of a building that has had the AC on all day. You get a small chill. The chill is not about the temperature.

The contradiction is this: you want to be looked at and you do not want to be looked at. You want to walk into the restaurant at 7:31 pm and have his eyes widen for half a second. You want to know that you are worth the second. You also want to be invisible. You also want to be in a large sweater in a dark booth in the back of the room where no one can see you, where no one can have an opinion, where you can just eat a piece of fish and laugh at the right moments and leave at 9:45 and go home.

You cannot do both. You have never been able to do both. The crop top is the part of you that has chosen, today, to be looked at. The sweater is the part of you that wants to be excused.

You put on the jeans. You put on the shoes. You do not put on the second shirt you almost put on, the long-sleeved thing that would have made the crop top disappear. You leave it on the bed. You leave it there on purpose. This is the part of the evening that matters. This is the part where you chose.

What are you choosing?

That is the real question. Not does this look good. Not is this flattering. Not is my stomach flat enough. Those are the questions the magazine wants you to ask. Those are the questions the photo on the screen was selling. Those are the questions the entire industrial complex of small shirts depends on.

The real question is: do you want to be in the room tonight?

Because here is what no one tells you. When you walk into a restaurant wearing a shirt that exposes two inches of skin, you are walking in with a flag. The flag says something. The flag says I am here, I am here, I am here. The flag says it louder than your mouth will say it all evening. The flag is the part of the date that is already decided before you sit down.

And here is what is also true. The flag could be wrong. The flag could mean she wants something. The flag could mean she is performing. The flag could be read in seventeen different ways by seventeen different people in the room. You have no control over the reading. You only have control over the flag.

So: do you want to be in the room?

You look at the mirror one more time. You see a woman in a small shirt. You see a woman who has spent forty-five minutes deciding about two inches of fabric. You see a woman whose chest is still doing the thing it does when someone confirms a plan. You see a woman who is trying, very hard, to be the version of herself that the photo on the screen promised. You see a woman who knows that the photo on the screen was a lie.

You see a woman who is going anyway.

You pick up the keys. You walk to the door. You pause with your hand on the knob. The doorknob is cold. The doorknob is the temperature of the air outside. You stand there for four seconds. You breathe in. You breathe out. You remember that you are allowed to leave the apartment. You remember that you are allowed to want to be seen. You remember that wanting to be seen is not the same as needing to be approved.

Then you open the door.

The hallway is empty. The light in the hallway is the same yellow light it is every evening. The stairs smell like someone’s dinner. You walk down the stairs. You feel the small of your back against the air. You feel the air move as you move. You feel like you are carrying a flag. You feel like the flag is heavy.

You get to the parking lot.

The parking lot is at 7:14 pm on a Tuesday, the small one behind your building, the one with the cracked asphalt and the orange cones that no one has moved in two months. The air is cooler than the air in your apartment. Your skin tightens a little. Your arms cross over your chest before you can stop them. Then you uncross them. Then you put your hands in your pockets. Then you take them out of your pockets.

You are not cold. You are doing the thing that women do in parking lots at 7:14 pm on Tuesdays. You are rehearsing.

What are you rehearsing?

You are rehearsing the moment he sees you. You are rehearsing the half-second when his eyes go to the shirt. You are rehearsing the smile you will give him when he looks back up to your face. You are rehearsing the joke you will make about being early, about the parking lot, about the cones. You are rehearsing being a person who is at ease in her own body in a public place. You are rehearsing being someone who is not thinking about her own stomach.

The rehearsal does not work. The rehearsal never works. You get in the car anyway.

You drive. You go three blocks. You park. You turn off the engine. You sit in the car for thirty seconds. Your palms are sweating on the steering wheel. Your stomach is doing the drop thing, the roller-coaster thing, the thing where your body decides to skip a meal even though you ate an hour ago. Your breath is shallow again.

You are, suddenly, fifteen years old. You are standing outside a school dance in a shirt your mother didn’t pick. You are wondering if anyone will talk to you. You are wondering if your hair is okay. You are wondering if you are allowed to be there.

You are thirty-two. The school is gone. The dance is gone. The shirt is different. The wondering is the same.

The question the crop top asks is not do you look good in this. The crop top does not care how you look. The crop top is a piece of fabric. The crop top has no opinion. The crop top does not know if your stomach is flat. The crop top does not know if your shoulders are too broad or your arms are too soft or your back has the pimple you’ve been ignoring for four days.

The crop top asks: do you want to be in the room?

Do you want to be in the room tonight, in this body, with this shirt on, with this person across from you, with this evening ahead of you? Do you want to be the kind of person who walks in and sits down and orders a drink and laughs at the right moments? Do you want to be the kind of person who is allowed to want?

You have answered this question before. You answered it when you moved to this city. You answered it when you applied for the job you have. You answered it when you ended the relationship that was making you small. You answered it every time you opened a door that someone else would have left closed.

You are answering it again.

Here is what I want to say, and I want to say it without telling you what to do, because you have had enough people telling you what to do. Here is what I want to say:

The shirt is small. The evening is large. The two inches of fabric are a comma, not a period. The two inches of fabric are the part of you that decided, on a Tuesday, in a parking lot, at 7:14 pm, that you would rather be uncomfortable than invisible. You would rather be misread than not read at all. You would rather have someone form an opinion about you, even the wrong opinion, even the opinion that hurts, than have no opinion at all.

This is not brave. Brave is a word for people who do not sweat. This is just what showing up looks like, on a body that does not want to show up, on an evening that requires a flag.

You are allowed to want to be seen.

You are allowed to want to be seen and also to be terrified.

You are allowed to want to be seen and to put on the second shirt at the last minute and walk back up the stairs and take it off. You are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to change your mind seven times. You are allowed to get in the car and then go back inside. You are allowed to drive to the restaurant and then sit in the parking lot for fifteen minutes before you go in. You are allowed to do any of these things. You are allowed to do none of them. You are allowed to do exactly what you did.

You get out of the car.

You lock the door with the key fob. You hear the small beep. You walk toward the restaurant. The restaurant is half a block away. The restaurant has string lights in the window. The string lights are the kind of light that is meant to make everyone look better. You walk under them anyway. You let them fall on you. You let the two inches of fabric be two inches of fabric. You let the air touch your back. You let your stomach be whatever shape your stomach is. You let your shoulders be whatever shape your shoulders are.

You walk in.

He is already there. He is at the table by the window. He sees you. His eyes do the half-second thing you rehearsed. You sit down. You put your bag on the chair. You pick up the menu. You say hi. You say sorry, parking was weird. You say what’s good here.

The evening begins.

The evening is not about the shirt.

The evening was never about the shirt.