Treat Yo Self - Jewelry and Gender Edition

It’s always a good day when a delivery arrives from Ariana Victoria Rose. And today’s new addition got me thinking about something.

When I’m feeling more feminine, it’s usually fairly obvious. It’s flashy. It’s a dress in a bold print and bright colors, with full circle skirt over layers of petticoat. It’s a necklace and earrings and smokey eyeshadow and a bright red lip. Boy oh boy do I love my red lipsticks.

Conversely, my masculine self is more subtle. I’ve only recently started shopping for “menswear,” preferring instead a standard unisex teeshirt and sweats. That or a sweater and jeans were my uniform throughout middle and high school. I’ll never forget the day that I arrived with my hair straightened and wearing a dress for senior photos, and a friend proclaimed in what was, in part at least, genuine surprise, “Oh my God, Rachel’s a girl!”

(Sometimes I think these people knew before I did, even though none of us really had the words for it.)

Along with that dress, I wore the marching band championship ring I’d gotten during our undefeated season my sophomore year. Ordering that was the first time I got sized for a ring, and the first time a stranger questioned my taste in jewelry. See, I had long been enamored of my father’s high school class ring. I loved it’s texture, the raised letters, the cut of the blue stone in the center, the weight of it on my finger. I’d always wanted one just like it. But what they presented to me was a tiny chip on a delicate band. I tried on the sample. It wasn’t… me.

My parents were fully supportive and ordered me a “mens” ring. At the time it was just a part of my high school experience. In hindsight, I’m eternally grateful for their acceptance.

Sometimes I wore the ring properly on my ring finger. Sometimes I wore it on a chain. Either way, it wouldn’t be unusual for someone who adhered strictly to heteronormativity to ask me if I was wearing my boyfriend’s ring. “I wish,” is my answer; “Don’t have one of those. No, this is mine.” These days I get the same question about my watch; I wear a 45mm “large” size face, despite pairing it with the smallest band size available. It’s just what I’ve always been drawn to. It’s my normal.

So today I got a new AVR ring to go with my ever growing collection. It was an impulse buy from her latest Lunar collection, and it looks stunning next to my Lunar Shield ring, also an AVR original design. The Lunar Shield is large, almost the same size as my championship ring from high school, but somehow distinctly feminine. This new addition, which Ariana called the Lunar Surface ring, is smaller, finer, a simple band of textured silver, and in that same somehow way is masculine. They weren’t made as a set, but for me, they represent the perfect duality.

All this to say that for this edition of my Treat Yo Self series, I encourage you, dear reader, to make that impulse purchase that just calls to you. And as an artist, treat yourself to making that new unusual thing, that unique piece that only you can bring into the universe. You don’t know what it will mean to the person who will see it.