That is So Fetch! The Plastics of Morehouse Have Balls

Last year Morehouse, the all-male college in Atlanta, enacted a strict dress code policy. No caps, sagging pants, do-rags. Also banned: Dresses, pumps or purses. The college said it decided to outlaw female attire because of "five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men.” Many found the new rule discriminatory, including Diamond Martin Poulin, one of the five students the college was referring to. The 20-year-old spoke with Vibe.

"Morehouse wasn’t ready for me,” says Diamond, who has the word “unbreakable” tattooed on his collarbone and the acronym C.R.E.A.M (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” coined by rap group Wu Tang Clan) wrapped around his right wrist. “I’m about freedom of expression. I’m about being whomever you truly are inside. I came to Morehouse because of all the historical leaders that attended and impacted the world so heavily. You know, I really wanted to follow in their footsteps. I don’t think Morehouse believes that someone like me—someone who wears heels and dresses—can uphold that reputation. But they’re wrong.”

Although it has never been officially confirmed, it’s not too far off the mark to believe that those “five students” at whom the appropriate attire policy was directed included Diamond and his crew, the Plastics. The group is loosely made up of seven or eight former and current Morehouse students, some of whom share a modest townhouse in Atlanta. Their name is a nod to the A-list crowd depicted in the 2004 movie Mean Girls.

The Plastics all assume that the recent appropriate attire policy was aimed directly at their personal freedom of expression, which sometimes includes foundation, cross-dressing, and even taking female hormones.

“I’ve always been into clothes, shoes, hair and everything,” says Diamond, who was born and raised in Providence, R.I. He says there’s a good chance he’ll transition into a woman at some point. “My mother says I always played dress-up in her clothes, my grandmother’s clothes. I’d even get my brother to do it sometimes. That’s just always been me—pushing the envelope of what I’m supposed to be as a man.”

So does Diamond really consider herself a man? At the question, he groans. “Yes, I refer to myself as a man, you know, to relieve any confusion. Sometimes people don’t understand the whole androgyny thing. There’s always the question: Well, what are you? Yes, I’m a man. I like women’s clothes. And yeah, I’m gay. But I don’t want that to define me. How come people can’t just see me as a person?”

Diamond, pictured, left Morehouse after the ban and is now majoring in fashion marketing and design at American InterContinental University, where he and the Plastics are letting those other bitches have it and making fetch happen, of course.


Update: The students of Morehouse react to the article and we think they're not happy. Sidebar: How all y'all doin' and alllrrriiiiiggghhht!



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