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My Coach Told Me I Couldn't Wear Bows
NEWSLETTER
6/4/20262 min read
I have a style memory I revisit sometimes.
I was a rower in high school and college. One day I showed up to practice with my team shirt sleeves tied up with little bows. My coach noticed and made it clear: we don't wear bows in rowing. It wasn't a rule. It wasn't against anything official. It was just that bows didn't fit the image of what a rower was supposed to look like in their mind.
I remember sitting with that and deciding not to give in — at least not right away. I kept wearing the bows for a while. Eventually I stopped, but I didn't fold immediately, and at the time I felt conflicted about it. Like maybe I was being difficult. But also like I needed to stand up for myself.
Years later, I feel genuinely proud of that younger version of me.
Because what that coach was really doing — even in something as small as asking me to untie my shirt — was asking me to cheapen my own self-expression. And it does cheapen it. The message underneath was: bows are silly. Bows aren't strong. It tied my character to my clothing and decided they were incompatible. It simplified style into a narrow set of rules about who gets to wear what, and didn't allow for all of the different natural combinations that happen in reality.
And here's the thing — it didn't change how fast I was on the water. If anything, being made to feel wrong about how I showed up to practice probably affected my performance far more than two little bows ever could have.
It's the same logic that says corsets are only for a certain kind of woman. Or that wearing something feminine means you can't be tough. Or that if you wear this, you must be that. That kind of thinking is limiting. It's exclusionary. And it flattens something that can be beautiful dynamic.
Fashion tends to go one of two ways. One is built on exclusion — the idea that certain clothes belong to certain people, and everyone else should fall in line. These are the ideals we often see in designer brands and on the catwalk. The other is built on inclusion — the idea that style is a form of self-expression, and that there's space for everyone's different version of it. That second path is so much more interesting. So much more powerful.
Moments like the one with my coach can seem small. But they're not. They shape how we see ourselves and whether we feel permission to show up as we actually are. In those moments of judging style, you have a choice to include or exclude someone.
This memory is one of my reminders of which side of fashion I want to be on. Feel free for it to be reminder for you today too.
