A lot of times I judged people who weren’t passable
or judged people who didn’t fit into the gender classifications.
And not because I didn’t like them as people
but just because I couldn’t understand what they were going through.
I couldn’t relate to how my cross dresser friend could feel comfortable
in women's clothing then go out as a man.
Like, oh you’re not trans.
You almost, you diminish people. I’m worth more than you because I’m passable.
The makeup and the hair, and the outfits, that’s not what it means to be a woman.
Those are men’s ideals of what it means to be a woman, not women's.
The main reason a trans woman puts themselves through that,
one, if they enjoy it. Or two, for safety.
Like, you’re keeping yourself safe from society seeing who you are.
When I transitioned from male to female, I started with the basis of drag.
Drag kind of gave me an opportunity to get to know myself on a level where I didn’t before.
I would say I grew up as a sheltered, heavyset, white kid in North East Pennsylvania,
with drunken parents who were like slightly abusive.
I didn’t think I’d feel powerful as a woman. When I put on drag for the first time I was like,
oh my God, like, I don’t feel like I normally feel. I don’t hate myself in this.
I don’t hate what I see in the mirror, I don’t hate the person looking back at me.
I just came to this point where I was like, I need to do me.
And part of doing you, I’ve found, is seeing parts of yourself that people don’t like.
Part of that was letting go, of all the costuming of what femininity is.
Women, cisgender women fall into that same pit.
I think they fall into the, I need to be like every other woman.
I need to have her breasts, her hair, her butt, her nose, her legs, and I don’t want to look like myself.
At the end of the day I’m still trans, at the end of the day I’m still fat.
There’s no inbetweens about that.
It’s like they want a specific look, in all industries really, even in my own in fashion.
They want a look, they want a certain presentation.
You put me with a bunch of cisgender women, and all of a sudden,
that’s a big bitch.
You have to be the perfect form of a woman or a man.
They should be able to kind of live and breathe within their own aesthetic
and not have to conform to whatever we want to make them.
I think seeing strong people who represent our community in a fashion
that is invested in something more than the clothing we’re wearing is so valuable.
If I were to see myself now as my younger self,
if I were to see who I was going to be,
I don’t know if I’d believe that that was gonna be me.
At twelve I thought I was going to be dead by eighteen.
And at 22, I thought I was gonna be dead by 30.
There’s a sensibility that I didn’t think I’d exist further to reach where I am.
I would cherish the thought that most of my traumas didn’t define my existence,
but were more a decoration on its very journey.
I wouldn’t be able to imagine the life that I have now, then.
And seeing myself would have given me a reason to want to keep going, I think.