Are We Starting at the Wrong Place With Gender?

The affirming care we all need

I was born the second of what would become eight, the only female among a brood of boys. With the exception of my kindergarten year in which my mother bought all my shirts and pants in pink and turquoise, I wore flannel hand-me-downs and corduroy pants with holes in the knees. When I was old enough to have an opinion about my clothing, we shopped at thrift stores. I picked out baggy t-shirts and oversized sweatshirts, converse sneakers and jeans.

I remember my face burning in embarrassment standing in the middle of the store around eleven as my mother pinched the fabric of my pants so see if they were baggy enough to not draw attention to my thickening thighs and hips. I remember standing in the church foyer at twelve overhearing our pastor’s wife call me “chunky” at a size six.

I remember asking my mom if I could wear makeup. “Ask your dad,” she said, and I tiptoed to the top of the basement stairs and whispered, “Would it be okay if I wore some make-up, just like nail polish or lip-gloss?” My dad looked at me and laughed, saying, “No, but you can wear toilet-water.” I ran away sobbing, convinced now for sure that I was worth nothing more than sewage.

My aunt helped me pick out my first bra, a middle school friend helped me sneak a bic razor into our house when the dark hair on my legs was half an inch long, the same friend sat on my bed and laughed with others about my big nose and acne. I laughed along with them, with their shiny hair and straight teeth and dainty bodies and pretty shirts. I pretended I didn’t care. I pretended I liked being one of the boys, dressing like them, playing with them, coming home dirty like them.

Recently a friend and I were talking about midlife and sex, the strangeness of the peri-menopausal body and the frustrating newness of it all. She, happily married to a man, said, “I’ve never been wholly attracted to the male form in general, but I find the female form curious and beautiful.” “Me too,” I said, also happily married to a man, “Always.”

“But I think,” I continued on, “It was because I was conditioned to hate and hide my own female-ness, my form and shape, the soft and suppleness of breasts and hips, the beauty regimens, the attractiveness of what a female could be and the danger of her beauty in a world of men. The total femaleness of others has always fascinated me. I have envied them, not as though I want to own them themselves, but as though I have wanted to be them, to know what is it like to feel at home in femininity?”