On a few more occasions than I'd care to remember, I’ve been accused of dressing… provocatively (although it's rarely been phrased quite so politely). Call my clothes whatever you want – slutty, whorish, skanky – doesn’t matter, I’ve heard ‘em all. My personal favorite is “prurient,” though it’s criminally underused. Amidst all this presumptuous slur-slinging, I couldn't help but notice that I've never once been asked why I choose to dress myself this way. So today, for my own amusement, I'll answer the million dollar question no one's posed: why do I dress the way I do?

First and foremost, I like and feel comfortable in my clothes. If they were unpleasant for me to wear, I wouldn’t be wearing them – it’s as simple as that. That being said, while comfort is perhaps the foremost reason I dress like a “hoe,” it’s certainly not the only one, and arguably not even the most noteworthy. Truth be told, I use my wardrobe as a fail-safe against unwittingly surrounding myself with the wrong people - people who would only respect me if I were dressed according to whatever arbitrary standards they themselves personally deem "appropriate."

A common assertion from such individuals is that my choice of attire is indicative of a lack of respect for myself and for my body on my part, leading them to question why they should be inclined to respect me, if even I don't consider myself worthy of such esteem. As much as I hate to disappoint, this claim is erroneous. Having lived with an eating disorder for six years, I know a thing or two about what "disrespecting one’s body" looks like, and believe me when I tell you that clothes have nothing to do with it. If you ask me, assigning moral value to fabric is more than a little archaic for 21st century America. I don’t know about you, but I’d say that depriving oneself of vital nutrients and literally running one's body into the ground is far more self-abusive than donning a pair of Daisy Dukes could ever be. Call me crazy.

Another allegation I hear all too often is that I only dress the way I do "for attention." This isn't entirely untrue, and given that I'm a human being, I don't understand the not-so-subtly implied obligation I supposedly have to apologize for wanting people to pay attention to me. Wanting to be noticed doesn't make you any less "virtuous" than anyone else - it just makes you human. Man's craving for attention is actually an auspicious evolutionary adaptation: as infants, we would die without it, and it continues to play an important role in the formation of our identities (as well as the attraction of our mates) as we mature into adulthood, so begrudging one another the desire to be noticed is fundamentally untenable.

Therefore, while I wouldn't say that I wear what I wear for attention per se, I'm not about to sit here and pretend that I dislike all of the attention I attract. Some of it I could do without, of course, but I recognize that I don’t get to pick and choose who will react to my clothes, or how they will go about doing so. It’s not my responsibility (nor is it even within my power) to dictate how other people are going to respond to me. If some sanctimonious soccer mom wants to tell me to pull my shorts down, I can’t stop her. If some creepy dude on the subway wants to stare openly at my chest, I can’t guide his eyes upward through sheer force of will. The only person I can control is me.

And so, following that logic, I dress how I want, and let the chips fall where they may. My "fail-safe" isn't foolproof; sometimes I attract people (read: men) who hang around for all the wrong reasons. Here's the thing, though: even dressing like a character from Little House on the Prairie wouldn't protect me from that possibility. Case in point: the time I was accosted on an airplane by the man sitting next to me (whose behavior got so disturbing that the pilot was prepared to land the plane early, by the way), I was wearing an ugly holiday sweater and track pants. Sexy, huh?

Bottom line: I can never completely immunize myself against others' unfriendly intentions. I can, however, try to limit the number of toxic people I allow into my life. While I may think you wrong to judge me with so little information at your disposal, you are well within your rights to do so, and I wouldn't deny you that license. And hey, when all's said and done, if you’d prefer to judge me for the clothes I choose to put on my back rather than for the content of my character... we probably wouldn’t have gotten along very well in the first place.