Janet Mock Quotes

If I want to wear a dress, I'll wear a dress.

When I was really young, my mum used to make my clothes - I hated that. I liked the way boys dressed - I still do. I wanted to wear what they wore.

I'm not really one to go out in public in dresses too often. I definitely mix it up between masculine and feminine all the time, but wearing a dress goes a little bit too far.

My mother cared a lot about clothes. It was a point of friction because when I was a teenager, and I only wanted to wear my father's shirts, and I never wanted to wear makeup, she would say: 'Put on lipstick.' That was her thing.

I wear whatever I want whenever I want. I don't call it drag; I don't even call it cross-dressing. It's just wearing a dress.

I, like most women, I dress for other women, I think. If I was going to dress for men, I think in general I would be just wearing, like, a fitted black T-shirt and tight jeans every day.

I have a few girlfriends, but nearly all my friends are guys. I don't think I ever wore girl clothes. I wore baggy jeans, baggy T-shirts, sweaters, just to avoid the looks that everyone gives you when you're a young female in the world.

To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.

I'm feminine, but I wouldn't say that I'm girly in any way at all.

I want to be a guy, but I want to wear a lot of makeup.

We act as if that being of a man or that being of a woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply true about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from the start.

I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn't understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.

When people show me clothing that seems very, very feminine, it's hard for me to embrace that, because it just doesn't feel like me.

Gender is a way to hide from the simple truth we all tell: 'Hey, I'm here, I have a body.'

I don't have the panic I used to have, meeting people who are androgynous, but when you meet someone whose identity is unclear, that throws your own identity into flux because the way we treat each other is very gendered.

Nancy Drew was always changing her outfits. I despised girls' clothing, I couldn't wait to get home from school and get out of it. The last thing I wanted to read was minute descriptions of Nancy's frocks.

How strange, when your father's wearing women's clothes and platform shoes, that a pair of loafers looks incredible.

When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world.

I'm not 'one of the guys.' I don't want to pretend to be one on stage. I'm not going to dress like a guy or carry myself like one.

I dress like a boy most of the time because I like what's comfortable, so sometimes when I have to wear dresses and makeup, it's kind of comedic.

I like shocking people just because, like, I can wear a dress, too. Not even for people to go, 'Oh she's grown up,' but to show people that I'm actually a girl.

I would recommend it to everybody, every now and again you just put a dress on, see what it feels like, because it's, its interesting. A whole complex series of thoughts and feelings assail you as you look at yourself.

I waited my whole life to be a woman, so now my clothes are fairly tight.

Sometimes I think I still dress like a 13-year-old boy. It's not that I don't like feminine clothing: I just like a blend because it reflects who I am.

I saw my gender - and myself - as something of a construct. Like anyone who read one too many women studies' books in the 1990s, I aspired to both 'do' and undo my sex.