Clothes That Help Me Express Myself

Finding clothes that make me feel comfortable and confident is rather rare. I don’t necessarily mean that ‘fit’ of clothes are wrong, but the message. We express ourselves through our clothes and I’ve felt a major disconnect with my clothing expression and the expression I wanted to portray for the majority of my life.

Then I found out about a company called FLAVNT.

Entering their site, you’re greeted with “Changing the world one LGBTQ life at a time and
looking damn fine doing it.” In a nutshell, that’s exactly what they do. The founders, twins Chris and Courtney Rhodes, are both a part of the queer community and working diligently to provide the LGBTQ community with “a brand to call home.”

With shirts reading “PRETTY BOY,” “GENDER ROLES ARE DEAD,” “FLAVNT YOURSELF,” “WISH YOU WERE QUEER” and more, they have created a queer-inclusive brand that allows individuals who don’t identify within the cisnormative, heteronormative standards we live with today to feel confident and, well, flaunt themselves.

Not only all that, they choose different gender non-conforming individuals every couple of months to sponsor. They help individuals raise funds for their gender-confirming surgeries/transitions (i.e. top surgery, HRT, etc.). During their sponsoring, 15% of profits go towards the special queer person’s fundraiser. They have successfully helped two individuals save enough money to get top surgery, and are currently sponsoring an FTM guy named Tyler to save up for bottom surgery.  If you order something, be sure to add “TYLER” to the comments at checkout to help support a great guy’s gender-confirming surgery.

So, why am I writing about this on a suicide prevention blog? To tell – and show – you all that there is hope, and there are people out there who care about people just like you. Also, for me, flaunting myself in my “PRETTY BOY” tee makes me feel the most confident I’ve ever been. That’s a feeling that comes rarely for me.