Today I got a haircut. It was a trim, really. My instructions were “asymmetrical Christian Slater”. My hairdresser did it. This is the most basic haircut I’ve had in over 20 years. Although it’s a very “normal” one, for me it is also groundbreaking. Being comfortable having long hair is complicated.
I remember dreaming about having a shaved head or some other punky hairstyle when I was young. I hungered for something impactful, vibrant, artistic and sculptural, something personally revealing like green spikes, or daring and artistic like modern-architecture-as-hairstyle. I had no idea how to ask for something like that. So much was wrapped up in it. I didn’t have the language or the confidence, and it was beyond me.
During my high school years I literally took an hour (or longer) everyday in the bathroom just pulling the front sections of my hair back with two small elastics. Over and over again, I would be practically crying in frustration and dismay each time I got them in because my hair was never “perfect”. Spoiler alert: perfect was 3000% unattainable. This was how I saw my hair, my body, my clothes, my makeup (if I bothered to do makeup, which was usually only when I couldn’t bear to look at my face without it), and any other sort of “styling” choice I made. I would never be recognized for or treated as the person I was inside, so it seemed the least I could do was try to pass as the thing people (and to some extent I) assumed I was.
Passing only intensified my anxiety throughout the years though. It reinforced others’ feelings of comfort, assuming I was cis/femme/girl/lady/miss/Mistress/mrs… Passing cis meant I was automatically interacted with according to femme/female social standards and codes. I’ve never wanted nor appreciated that. What were my options though? That was the world I lived in. It stank and I held my nose.
In my second year of college, at acting school, I was cast in the role of a woman with cancer. There was a scene where I removed my wig, revealing a head bald from chemotherapy. My hair at the time was quite long, halfway down my back. It was decided I would wear a bald cap during the show. I showed up to the opening performance having bic’d my scalp the night before, telling no one in advance of my choice. I was afraid. I felt liberated.
It was the first time I’d been given a get out of jail free card concerning the trappings of femaledom, especially within an industry which defines and judges people by how they look. I took it, and wow! So many unfathomable lessons were learned in the following days and months and years with not a strand of hair left to hide behind. It definitely proved a blunt and immediate crash course in understanding who valued me for being a “pretty girl” and who considered me an interesting human being.
My career as an actor for the past 30 years has been an opportunity to be seen as something more and other than I appear. It’s also a double sword complete with threats from the same industry—if I wasn’t passable or pretty enough I’d never work. I pierced my eyebrow on the last day of college in reaction to this. I’ve built an entire career self-producing and cultivating artistic collaborations, articulating all the queer and questioning things in my heart and mind instead of maintaining an artistic voice that appears “legit”. I’m not interested in playing it straight onstage, and the acting industry isn’t interested in queers who want careers built from parts reflecting queerness.
For decades I chose oppression and self-repression in my personal life over the innovation and creativity I showcased on stage. I didn’t believe I deserved more than that. I didn’t believe anyone would respect my wishes if I announced them—which did indeed prove true a number of times. To my mind other people were truly trans. I just built a career playing with gender on stage. The real trans people were deserving of accurate pronouns and hormone prescriptions. For a long time I held onto the belief that people who were “naturally” read as more masculine than I fell into this privileged category. Butches. Androgynous-without-trying dykes. People who didn’t contend with all these hourglass curves. People who got “sir’d” regularly, and who looked masculine in straight-cut clothing instead of uncomfortably stuffed into shirts and pants from the wrong section of the store. I was jealous and broken-hearted when the bois would gather at Dyke Nite or drag rehearsal and bitch about their everyday adventures with misgendering. I didn’t have those stories and I wasn’t invited into the boi’s club anyway. In retrospect (especially knowing how many of those people have come to identify as trans in the last several years), I’m sure for many of them it was a humblebrag, an early indication that they were capable of pulling off passing trans one day too.
I was told on no uncertain terms by many of these very bois that they, “just didn’t see me as butch, they just saw me as a girl”. Even in “queer” circles (and I air-quote queer because my definition of queer is not based on sexual orientation, but measured by how comfortable one is believing people when they self-identify rather than attaching arbitrary labels, expectations, prefabricated identity boxes, or gate-keeping definitions of queerness) there was no place I was allowed to call home.
I remember at some point realizing I didn’t hate my body as much when I dated female people and women, but then again when I did so I also felt much more comfortable expressing myself androgynously, masculinely, and not second guessing my choices when I felt like wearing a dress. I love dresses and skirts and pretty femme clothing. I like wearing attractive, flattering, fun, and luxurious feeling things. I just wish I was read as a pretty boy/creature when I do.
Clearly it was not empowering for me to pass as femme/female for so long, yet I was lost about how to change. I remember repeatedly laughing off my discomfort of the ways people appreciated/objectified/”complimented” my body over the years, hiding my own dismay with the repeated chant of, “well, it seems my maker had one thing in mind when my body was made”. I was referencing these extreme curves, my broad hips, tiny waist, huge ass, and large nipples. That thing the binary maker had in mind was decidedly not that I should be seen as a tomboy, Sir, imp, creature, one of the guys, or a clearly they/them human being. It was an impregnateable she/her, culturally “sexy”, woman-object thing.
I love women.
I love being part woman—especially when it’s not how I’m primarily categorized, treated, or seen.
A lifetime of passing cis and being treated femme has kept me out of clubs I want to explore and away from company I want to be recognized as part of. I still don’t know how to approach some of these communities and feel safe or welcome. Gay and bisexual leatherfolk, to be exact, are the people I feel my sexuality aligns most closely with. I’ve been to The Eagle in a number of cities across the country, but I haven’t been to the one down the street in Providence where I’ve lived for two years. The desire to go is there. Fear of rejection, violence, or feeling as though my presence is negative or disruptive keeps me away. Passing has also kept me in circles I feel stupid, failing, and limited within. Passing has compounded my feelings of dysphoria and amplified depression.
Passing doesn’t really work, even when it offers some community along the way. The community passing helps one build usually doesn’t also help one feel strong on their autonomous journey outside of those same passing norms.
I don’t renounce my experience within the strong, intelligent, resilient, and hard working legacy of being woman, even if I do have a clear desire to renounce being physically recognized for so-called “womanliness”. My experience of being part woman is a brilliant part of my story, socialization, frustrations, meaning making, creative instinct, and how I navigate the world. It has shaped parts of who I’ve become and who I’m proud to be. I absolutely renounce being a girl and have since youth. I renounce being considered woman first, primarily, or automatically. These are important intersections of my own notion of self.
I am also trans.
I am also boy.
I am also a creature through and through.
I am also just me.
I am nonbinary in that I reject the binary, not in that I am not trans. I was socialized to accept treatment as a person I am not. I am becoming the person I long to be.
I am a creature, an imp, a femboy. I am a human who rarely wants to wear clothing, especially a shirt when the sun is warm and shining. I am a feline sort who loves the comfort of languishing, cuddles, and pretty much never spending time in the mirror making myself up. I’d rather skip the hours of self-criticism and dismay trying to figure out what I should wear due to who I’m meeting, what they expect from me, and how I’ll be read in whatever environment I’m bracing myself to enter. I loathe being judged for my appearance rather than my character and actions. I dislike having to wear clothes at all, and femme standard clothing like skirts and stretchy things are waaaaay more comfortable on my random cartwheeling and dancing body than stiff collars and ironed slacks. Femme clothes tend to flatter my curvy figure more than cuts found in the “men’s section”. What I am wearing will never indicate that I want to be confused for or treated as a girl-identifying-person-thing.
I don’t want to be objectified for my masculinity either. The binary really messes with people’s heads when it comes to these types of expectations. Just because I don’t want to go shopping doesn’t mean I want to watch football. I like hikes and good food and making art. Sometimes I have to go makeup shopping for work, and sometimes I enjoy football parties for the socialization and snacks. I hate the mall as much as I hate jock culture, but I love quality makeup products and I’ve loved individuals identifying as jocks.
One of the main reasons I’m taking a break from performance for a while is to spend time enjoying the person I see in the mirror these days. I need time off from stressing out about how I must comment on or translate my looks for whatever character I’m playing onstage. Hormone replacement therapy has ushered me into an era of self love and appreciation in a way I’ve never experienced. This moment is important. It’s healing. It’s an incredible gift to feel this way.
I feel free.
I feel like me.
I don’t want to pass.
I just want to be truly seen.
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
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