Hyperdrag is your own personal gender,
exactly as flashy as you want it to be in the moment,
and you can dial it up and down almost at will....
Emulating my early hauls gives you a sense of what the "common hyper" was originally supposed to be: deliberatelly dated to 2020-2021 in a four season mix.
Typically a series of small, budgeted shopping sprees grows the hypermale part of an ex-guys
closet in fits and starts. Rep brands, bands, TV and Movies YOU like along with callbacks to your
favorite science fiction, fetishist, and cosplay outfits; but pick things in hyperish patterns or things
that could easily be treated later.
I like concealable warning colors that reveal way too much about me, but can vanish under a jacket or sweater in an interest.
2… Continuity of Self
Most hypermen already have a set style they're coming from, and it's usually a good idea to start by cautiously blending items into your existing wardrobe and looking for older stuff from the back of your existing closet that can be worked back in. Many people have sentimental items that don't work with the present style, but which can be easily reintroduced in transformation.
If you used to be a punk, goth, emo, metalhead, or even a "trenchcoat and fedora" type,
pull out your OWN old gear and start working it in.
Also call back to the long abandoned looks and properties associated with ur parents, longtime friends,
high school and college scene to shout out your own personal heroes and the lifelong passions they inspired,
like the leathers my first slave gave me in my fatter days or my own lifelong love of tie dye
and bleach craft.
Typically a series of small, budgeted shopping sprees grows the hypermale part of an ex-guys closet in fits and starts. Rep brands, bands, TV and Movies YOU like along with callbacks to your favorite science fiction, fetishist, and cosplay outfits; but pick things in hyperish patterns or things that could easily be treated later.
See my Hypermale Facebook Group for a full post of my Vegas Fashion Haul. Yeah, I really DID spend $1200 at Ross, but I bought quality stuff, and I suggest you run out and get yourself some new duds before hypebeast styles go out of fashion.
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I love to rock Nightmare on Elm St. II Jock /Coach looks. |
Often you can personalize common hyper by choosing to emulate favorite characters:
some of us wanna be Cameron Dallas, others Jean Baptiste Emanuel Zorg,
or Ruby Rod or even LeeLu herself. Some people wanna be Gambit,
others prefer Storm or Phoenix. Drawing inspiration from the common part of the
culture and making it your own makes it liberating and personal to you in a way that
simply having everyone be a "2015 Marty McFly jr clone" wouldn't.
As you grow bolder and more committed, start hypering up older pieces with an
arts and crafts mentality: adding tie dying, bleaching, paint spots, cut holes, straps
and epaulets to give "classic you" pieces a permanent hypermale makeover along
with some of the new gear that was chosen for adaptation.
3… Fly Your OWN Flag
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Nonbinary flag (unofficial hyper default) |
Part of being hyper is PRIDE and being SELF AWARE. Gay and Trans culture have handily provided
a system of flags that can be drawn upon to express the diversity within the movement.
Emulate the color and pattern schemes of relevant flags, then use the ensign as inspiration
for accessories. Conveniently many flags share Black/White/Blue or Purple, so it's possible to "flag drag"
by switching from say, yellow to red accessories as you add leather, or adding yellow
to an "asexual" coded outfit to suddenly switch flags to "nonbinary" as you feel sexier again.
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I also sometimes flag leather or rubber |
Some hypers have more gender and sexual orientation flexibility than others,
so if you are less into gender bending you can use leather, bear, twink, rubber,
and pup pride flag inspiration to express fetishist affiliation; Gay, Straight, Bisexual,
Pansexual, Polyamory, Trans, etc flag colors for sexual orientation; or Demi-boy,
Pangenger, Nonbinary, Genderqueer or Genderfluid flag colors and patterns for
gender flexibility. Again, you can flag-drag these things back and forth such that
demi-boy and demi-girl might alternate by changing scarves and hats.
Likewise, country/state/provence/city flag inspired looks from your own and admired cultures.
Whether you are from Colorado, Missouri, or Arizona; or British Columbia or Quebec…
find the symbology and colors of your favorite flags and build your look around the color schemes
and traditional vs modern looks for the places you come from or love; and drag em back and forth
with your national flag colors, or your gender/sexuality flag colors instead (New Mexico, Rubber,
non-binary, and Gender Fluid, perhaps? Magnolia in hair + Missouri-flag colors, = gender-fluid
and bisexual, though you could swap to Ace or Nonbinary at a whim with an accessory change)
Likewise, rep YOUR team: hyperish fashion versions of many different teams already exist and can be bought easily in toe early 2020s: high school and college colors and logos, jerseys for famous players who went to your school, company pride gear for your present and past favorite workplaces, favorite characters and performers, etc.
Religious symbols from your own religion; recovery movement stuff, etc. Hyper is a pluralist movement and we love being political and dressing provocatively to create conversation around teams, causes, favorite artists and media properties. And all store shopping these things leads to very interesting hyperdrag possibilities like running to the bathroom to take off sweats and coming back with both a different team and a different gender for the next game!
4… Ethic pride and Cultural Appropriation
Be who you are, admire who you admire. If you wanna rock a Sari, Kilt, Dashiki, kente cloth. Kimono, or even an outright Hijab or Burka GO FOR IT. We are proud of our diversity and love to mix and match our pride gear to rep friends, influences, etc. And hyperfamily values include a degree of deference to your elders tastes. Using old photos, I can create a callback look on stage to represent a dear friend who I used to be married to; or wear cherry blossom out of season to celebrate this very special spring moment with Trent.
Hypermen are respectful of source cultures and generally believe in a degree of "respectful appropriation" that's different enough from the source that you would read as foreign and "doing your own thing" with it. Generally, its wise to remember that our gender values demand you look up how your source culture feels about such things as China, Korea, Japan, India, Greece, and Italy tend to take emulation as a compliment; while many African, Native American, and Polynesian cultures see it as straight up offensive. Our way is to respect the wishes of the source culture 🙏 (example: Hawaiian traditional dress is off limits, but "tourist Hawaiian" stuff is more tolerable for them.)
Of course, it's not cultural appropriation at all if it's your OWN culture you're riffing off of, so often flying your own flag is enough to erase the charge entirely. Plus, majority cultures tend to have much more imperialist tendencies and view it as assimilation, rather than appropriation.
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5… All Weather hyper
Remember, a gender is something you live 24/7 in every season, mood, and circumstance.