When our expectations coincide with reality

Last week, the first week of school, was rough. There's a learning curve, getting back into teaching after two years away from the head of the classroom. It's also been so hot here that I had a three-day migraine, and ended up fainting from heat exhaustion (luckily not during class). My fashion plans have been thwarted by the heat, and it's made worse by the fact that the first week requires so much running around campus getting things one needs to teach, combined with awkward social situations and logistical nightmares.

Today was a much better day, but I still long for colder weather so I feel more comfortable in my clothes. Tights and cardigans and other layering devices are very important to my personal sense of style, so it is difficult to know how to dress professionally for the heat.

Here are two outfits I wore, one from last Wednesday, when I first developed my migraine, and one from today.

Top: Old Navy

Cardigan: Lane Bryant

Skirt: ASOS Curve

Shoes: Bass

Glasses: Warby Parker

This outfit demonstrates one thing about my style that I often take for granted, but which others always remark upon: color. I love color, and I love mixing colors together. My ex-wife used to call me an accident in a crayon factory. I admit this was a wilder outfit to wear on the second day of teaching, but I just got the shirt and the skirt from recent orders, and I thought it would be a cooler alternative in the hot weather than the black pencil skirt and black top I was planning on wearing.

This is what I wore today, which is more in line with the kinds of outfits I feel comfortable wearing to class.

Dress: Simply Be
Shrug: Evans UK
Shoes: Old Navy

Pardon the wrinkles. I took these after I got home and was sitting sweating in a hot car trying to find my keys.

I actually love this dress. I would prefer to wear it with black tights and maybe a different cardigan, or no cardigan at all, but when I went bare armed into the classroom on Friday, my students saw my tattoo, and got very curious about it, and wouldn't stop asking questions. The tattoo, pictured below, is a pretty obvious queer tattoo, and it's one I want to get covered up, because it seems very second-wave feminist to me, very gender binary, and I also got it when I was with my ex-wife, so while it was not a tattoo about her, it definitely reminds me of her.

The students, some of whom I suspect are gay themselves, were all in a twitter about the tattoo, and class was quite disrupted. I want to be a loud and proud queer, and I want to be open about my fat acceptance and my disability and not ashamed, but I also have an anxiety disorder, and since I already had a migraine, my number of spoons was depleted, and I simply didn't have the energy to deal with my students' probing questions. It seemed easier to just wear the shrug to cover my arms. I forget about the tattoo a lot of the time, but when my students asked me to tell them about it, I said, "I don't think that's any of your business." Which is true. But I fear that response gave them the wrong impression—that I feel there's something about my identity I need to hide. It's one thing to say I want to be open with my students, and it's another thing to face the anxiety of coming out to them. I know as the semester goes on, I'll have many opportunities to reveal my sexuality and gender identity to them in a manner of my own choosing, but I hate feeling a loss of control in the classroom, and this definitely felt that way.

How do you deal with explaining your body modifications in the classroom? Do you come out to your students?