Tough and Beautiful: Queer Fashion and Community Care at the Food Pantry

Happy Pride from the Love Wins Food Pantry! I hope you enjoy this special essay honoring one of the traditions that makes our food pantry unique.

Local drag performer and volunteer Betty UBTTM. Photo by Joana Toros.

As a child, I did not like dressing up for church. When I asked my mom why I had to wear slacks or a dress on Sundays, she told me that it was a sign of respect. I don’t go to church anymore, but weather permitting, I do dress up for the Love Wins Food Pantry every other Friday.

I’m not the only one who does this, and I wasn’t the first. When I started volunteering at the pantry during the summer of 2020, I wore plain clothes. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, and besides, I felt that I should dress seriously to reflect the seriousness of our work. 

However, the tough and beautiful trans and nonbinary volunteers at Love Wins changed my mind. Week after week, I worked beside Betty UBTTM, a local drag performer, as she stuffed grocery bags in six-inch heels. Week after week, I admired my fellow volunteer Claudia’s masks and dresses, which she embellished with feathers and flowers and glitter glue.

Volunteer Claudia

When I asked Claudia why she dresses up to volunteer, she replied, “I put [the outfit] together to make me happy. That’s the most important thing. And to show the people that we are happy, that we do it with the heart.”

I remember approaching Friends Tavern one day during a cold drizzle, and seeing Lesly, a fellow volunteer, standing outside in a pink dress, shielded from the rain by an umbrella shaped like a blossom. She looked like a flower herself, a flower growing under the noisy elevated track.

Volunteer Lesly. Photo by Joana Toros.

I began to volunteer in the clothes I had once reserved for parties and special events. New York City was locked down and I had nowhere to wear my nice clothes except the food pantry. 

I wore a pinstriped pantsuit, then an emerald-green vintage dress and matching bolero. One Friday, I wore a bibbed sailor dress and ripped the sleeve while lifting a box of cucumbers. 

Flame, who I’ve interviewed for this blog before, had a wardrobe mishap of their own while dressed in drag to go join the Marcha de las Putas (Slut Walk) after the pantry: “I wore a low cut dress and every time I reached down to grab a food box, my left titty kept popping out. The girls have a mind of their own.” Flame admits that “working outdoors in the summer's heat unloading, packing, and distributing boxes in high heels and a wig can be strenuous.” But they do it, they said, “to show the community that queer, trans and nonbinary people are contributing members of our society.”

Volunteers Flame and Jason

For a couple months, I spent my Thursday nights volunteering as a model for makeup classes hosted by Mirror Beauty Co-op, a trans-led worker cooperative. Then I slept on my back and arrived at the food pantry the following morning wearing whatever makeup remained, false eyelashes and all. 

At this point, the regular community members who waited in line for the food knew my face, if not my name. The older women, especially, greeted my looks with joy and extravagant praise. Their reactions were outrageous and sweet and reminded me of how drunk girls compliment each other in the bathroom at a club. 

Claudia’s looks receive similar reactions from the community. “Sometimes they are very quiet,” she says. “[But] most of them say, You look beautiful. Thank you for everything. God bless you. It makes me feel oh so wonderful.” 

Claudia and I preparing to collect tickets in a golden handbag.

At every distribution, Claudia and I stand at the front of the line and collect tickets. This means that we get a chance to interact with each individual on the line. Often, this exchange involves a flurry of compliments. It goes something like this:

“Ticket, please,” says Claudia.

“Thank you for waiting,” I add.

“Ooh, I love your scarf,” says Claudia, prompting the ticket-holder to blush and tug on the leopard-print cotton around her neck.

“You look pretty,” the ticket-holder says to Claudia, or me, or both of us. “Love your hair.” 

Then she steps past us to accept a bag of onions.

A loving interaction at the front of a food distribution line does not erase the fact that it sucks to wait hours for a resource we all need and deserve. It is dehumanizing and unjust. In a city as rich as this one, it is wrong that my neighbors don’t have enough food. The money is here - it is just not going to the right people. 

In a better world, Love Wins Food Pantry wouldn’t exist. But in this imperfect world, a loving interaction at the front of a food distribution line reminds us that we are human. We want to connect. We want to feel good.

At the start of the pandemic, read a book titled Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown. I wanted to believe brown’s central message - that activism can and should be pleasurable - but I couldn’t help feeling skeptical. After all, what little activism and mutual aid work I have done in my 24 years has been hard work. 

I know that countless people have been working much harder than me, for much longer. I am not an expert in either pleasure or activism. But I am learning to notice what feels good to me. I am learning to harness that feeling and make more of it. And when I’m collecting tickets with Claudia on Roosevelt Ave, I feel good.

In Pleasure Activism, brown claims that “pleasure is not one of the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human systems, are structured for.” I agree that we were built for pleasure, and I believe that capitalism tries to smother it. But the Love Wins Food Pantry creates a vessel in which joy and pleasure thrive. 

Claudia and I posing with my dad, Scott, who is also a volunteer.

It is hard work to maintain that vessel. When the truck carrying our food is delayed for three hours, it is hard to repair our community’s trust. When government programs withdraw their support, it is hard to figure out how we will afford the groceries for next week’s distribution. But this vessel is worth maintaining because, at the Love Wins Food Pantry, a different world is possible. 

I’m not saying that a nice outfit is required to do volunteer work. What a nice outfit does is say, I am not just here to work. I am here to celebrate. I am here to give and receive love. Like my mom said, it is a sign of respect.

To celebrate Pride month, please consider supporting Love Wins Food Pantry so that we can keep providing food, building community, and dressing to kill. You can help us out with a monthly donation, by contributing to our No One Stays Hungry fundraiser, or by joining us for one of our Friday distributions as a volunteer.