"Whenever she imagined her child,
grown up without interference from a judgmental world,
she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other,
and as being secretly, almost magically powerful."
-- Kathleen Winter, Annabel
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| Self portrait 2-3-14 |
"When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines
traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times,
drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women,
who somehow feel invested in how you behave,
as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood."
-- M.E. Thomas,
Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me:
I am a free human being with an independent will."
-- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
The very first photograph ever taken of me was in the hospital just after I was born. Its black and white, and in it I look like a just-hatched baby bird that's tumbled from its nest. My mouth is stretched into a grimace, my puffy eyes are jammed shut, my tiny fists are clenched. And stuck somehow onto my fuzzy tuft of spare hair, is a ribbon.
I'm sure my overall angry appearance in this photo was the result of just surviving the rigors of birth and having bright lights shoved in my face, but I like to think I was just really pissed about the ribbon.
I'm sure my overall angry appearance in this photo was the result of just surviving the rigors of birth and having bright lights shoved in my face, but I like to think I was just really pissed about the ribbon.
I once asked my mother, "Why the ribbon?"
She said, "To show you were a girl."
Hoo, boy.
Fourth grade. Halfway through the school year my family moved and I went to a new school. A girl who would eventually become my best friend asked bluntly, "Are you a boy or a girl?" Having a gender-neutral name didn't help matters. If Mrs. Allison had introduced me as "our new student, Monica," it would have probably eliminated some confusion.
Should have worn a ribbon.
Dinner at a nice restaurant with my family, I was about 12 and sporting a pair of sparkly new birthstone earring studs -- rubies -- and my earlobes were still swollen and stinging from being pierced. (Pierced ears were my mother's idea, natch.) The waiter worked his way around the table taking orders and eventually came to me, asking, "And what will the young man be having?" What was he, blind? Couldn't he see my ruby earrings? Couldn't he see that I'd had metal posts shoved through my tender skin as an outward display of femininity? While my family tee-hee'd and ha-ha'd at the waiter's gaffe, I turned as red as my rubies, burning with the futility of it all.
Should have worn a ribbon.
My natural tendency, my sort of set-point, has always tilted toward the boyish. My face, my body, my hair, my interests. All of it. But I can look like a girl when I want to, or when I have to. I have a whole box of paints and crayons and pencils and brushes and colors for just that purpose. When I have to go to dinner or the theater or someplace "nice," I don't rely on earrings to do the trick. I smear on foundation and shadows and liners and glosses and powders and, as I tell my kids, "turn myself into a girl." I have all the right costume pieces -- the dresses, the shoes, the undergarments. I've even rocked a set of silicone boobs. (They were gross. They just got really sweaty.)
Sometimes I enjoy it. Sometimes I tolerate it. Sometimes it's a monumental pain in the ass.
Mostly, I just like to be who I am and wish we didn't all have to concern ourselves so much about what other people see, or what other people think, or if other people are comfortable when we color outside the lines. Why can't we just color?
Who put the the fucking lines there, anyway?
That guy?
Oh, it's a girl?
Should have worn a ribbon.
