the agony of not being a girl: my first trip to claire's
i used to wonder: when did i first become conscious? now i know: it was the day i realized i had been assigned to be a boy and there was nothing i could do about it.
when i was 6 years old i sat paralyzed with the devastating realization that there was nothing i could do: i could never be a girl. this awful knowledge struck me over and over again throughout the coming years of early elementary school: when i was carpooling and sitting beside a girl; when i was at school and saw the girls gathered near the swings at recess. i dreaded each haircut when i would not be able to express what i wanted. a haircut was like an all-male sports activity or a group of boys being instructed in manhood at church: a process for imposing an artificial identity upon me, and i could feel how i walked around each day as if trapped in some other life.
i would sit and listen to music and imagine: i am a little girl with long blonde hair that i can tie up into pony tails; i am a little girl with dresses and skirts and tiaras on my head. i never knew what my face looked like. i only ever saw the curling blonde hair locks which came flowing down my back. and each time i saw myself like that in my mind, i was cut right through the heart with a crippling certainty: i could never have the things i truly wanted, and there was no purpose in their pursuit.
i have wondered sometimes: when is it that i became conscious? and i think it was when i first realized that i was a boy and there was nothing i could do about it. i was trapped forever by boy haircuts, boy clothes, boy styles, boy activities, and no matter what i did in those early days to be included with the girls, my attempts were already interpreted as nothing more than a fumbling crush from a boy who was so uncomfortable with his inability to move his body in a girly way that he wore sweatpants to school each day rather than opt for boy jeans. but my attraction to girls was not an innocent crush: my attraction was a reaching out for friendship.
there was no one i could discuss these feelings with. i was living in a fundamentalist evangelical bubble, and i understood early on that the gender identity imposed on me gave me a special role i would one day need to fulfill: the role of the man, “the head of the family as christ is the head of the church.” my body, i was told, was a gift to me from god, not my own, and neither was my life my own: i owed all to god, and if god had seen fit to make me a boy, then i must honor him by somehow being a boy. as was made abundantly clear to me by my parents and sunday school teachers, i would burn in hell forever if i did not follow god. i was a boy, and there was nothing i could do.
it was always a struggle to be a boy. i was aggressive and often in middle school i was suspended. at night in eighth grade i would go down to the basement and watch the powerpuff girls. i loved to imagine that i was blossom. i loved her red hair and i loved her bow so much. her attitude and her demeanor appealed to me. when i watched the powerpuff girls, i could sometimes immerse myself in the show to the point that i almost believed i was blossom. but i was 14 by then. these fantasies were clearly that: fantasies. once commercials struck or the episode ended, i was devastated.
not only could i never be blossom. i could never even dress like blossom, wear bows like blossom, talk like blossom, express interests like blossom, move like blossom, connect with other girls like blossom. even if i could not put it into words: girlyness was the key to my emotional contentment, but girlyness was inaccessible to me.
i felt so hopeless about my existence. when one of my teachers assigned us a career project at the end of eighth grade, i tried to say i was going to be “a homeless person.” when forced to change my perspective, i said i would be a british soldier (i am an american). declaring my intention to be a british soldier was at least a way to rebel against one imposed identity i could easily see as fabricated: my nationality, while soldiering maintained my shaky masculine image and it was the only thing i could imagine a man really doing in his twenties: going to war.
my desire to go to war was a suicidal one. i watched many war movies to catch glimpses of the gruesome ways i would die at 22. these war movies were like instructional guides to being something i did not understand but was supposed to be: a man. men love war, right? i often heard men talk about weapons. i often saw them reading books about war, watching movies about war, celebrating the deeds of vicious people, itching for their politicians to bomb more countries. i often told my boy friends how i hoped to die in a ball of fire somewhere out in the middle east, and that was true. i did not want to survive the war and grow old and have kids. i wanted to die.
i had a crush on a girl who sat next to me in class and who i also wanted to be. she had highlighted brown hair with a distinctly different texture from many other girls. hair obsessed me: i loved to look at girls and observe their different styles of hair. i loved to watch how they moved their hands through their hair. i was always racing between crushes because there were so many distinct girly aesthetics pulling me toward them. i told myself i really did love these girls romantically (i often believed i was deeply in love when i was 12), but the crush itself served a protective function: a crush on a girl is a normal behavior for a boy, and so is buying her things. the intense love i felt for these girls was not romantic love: it was something more complex: love, envy, jealousy, a yearning to emulate, a fervent dream to be.
my dad dropped me off at the mall where i would go to claire’s and purchase a gift for my “crush.” i had walked by claire’s so many times, sneaking peaks inside but never daring to enter the store. often while walking by claire’s other boys would make fun of what they saw there. boys were always physically recoiling from girly things, as if the merest blotch of pink could eliminate their masculinity. i found myself joining them in their mockery if only to keep them as people to hang out with. besides, i knew what they would call me if i seriously shopped at claire’s. i knew i’d have no friends.
i went into claire’s and thought nothing of what my crush might like. i was consumed with desire for the magical mediums forbidden to me: makeup kits, bracelets, glitter, scrunchies, pink sunglasses, girly accessories to dangle from my schoolbag. there were earrings, ribbons, and butterflies; there were nail polish sets, jewelry kits, and so many little hearts. all of it was so shiny and glamorous: at claire’s i saw the means by which i might turn myself from soldier to princess.
i bought my crush a plain silver-colored bracelet with a heart on it. i gave her the gift in class. she liked the heart, but once she had it, i wished i’d kept it for myself.
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(photo my own)
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This was gorgeous 💖