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Ok so today’s episode of Ghost Anne Overshares on the Bird App is mostly just going to be me throwing words at Anne Bonny, her aesthetic in Black Sails and why I’m so compelled by it (You can blame @RaisetheBlack3 for poking my brain with a great wardrobe question)
TW, maybe, for some personal experiences with gender identity, femininity, and other stuff; I know I have a pretty diverse TL and if you’re struggling with dysphoria or this may bring up some stuff. Keep your headspace comfy first and only read on if you’re up for it 
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Also, I’m only speaking for me here, and my personal relationship with these things. It’s different for everyone, as unique as we are. I’m not trying to speak on Anne as a character so much as myself and my experiences. Essentially, I’m gonna project some stuff onto her for a sec
The first time I saw her slip out of the gloom, she was a hat and a coat and a gleaming eye and some daggers. And that eye was so beautiful, a very feminine eye. And then she stabbed a guy to death. Not Charles or Jack. She’s the kill shot.
And I’m gonna leave what she does out of this from here on out. It’s the look of this character that struck me first, and I’m finally starting to hone in on why the costuming just nails something to a wall for me
Clara Paget is beautiful, and she’s been considered so in contexts both historical and modern. She’s a model. She sits well within how the male gaze defines the word “feminine”, and for some she’s probably the paradigm of that.
And everything about her costuming subverts that. Not her beauty. She’s still an objectively stunning actress chosen for this role. And they put her in these clothes that refuse to allow you to comfortably objectify the femininity that’s so latent there despite the costume
You’ve got this hat, this coat, these blades, this hair, this look that dares you to deny what our society has coded as female beauty - what the straight male gaze defines as female beauty - and simultaneously warns you that you acknowledge it through that lends at your peril
I’ve never found a place in myself where my concept of my gender, and what I consider to be my identity, actually intersect. I have no term for this; none I’ve ever encountered fit me as well as Anne’s coat fits me
These things just sort of sit here, coexisting in the same space like coworkers who have never spoken and may not even know each other’s names. And then I see Anne, and my brain goes, “yes, sort of that; perceive that.”
I don’t have a real takeaway, or a place to land with this, except that the costuming in a pirate show tells me more about how I relate to the idea of the masculine, the feminine, and the multitude of boxes that society tries fit these terms into than discourse itself does
I think that’s neat. I like that. I like that I don’t even feel compelled to land somewhere, with how I feel about Anne and her presentation or how I feel about my own relationship to all this stuff. I like that she’s just there in the show, looking like that and being who she is
I like how all these things visually intersect in this character. It’s warm and fuzzy and relatable. It doesn’t cover the full scope of Me, a human, but it’s a pocket I sit in comfortably. My Anne Bonny costume feels like the best kind of old sneakers to wear
This entire thread has been brought to you by a “cosplayer” with no photography skills and whose costume you rarely see and I’m not unaware of the irony here btw lol. But this is a bit of an origin story of why I have it, I guess.
Anyway - that’s out there, now, for what it’s worth!
