? Up until the age of about six years old, I didn’t understand the concept of being a “girl.” I hated dresses and the color pink, but I loved playing in the yard and collecting bugs with my best friend, Jonathan.
One year at my little brother’s birthday party, my mother, unaware of the traumatizing experience she was about to lay on me, forced me to wear a dress. It was not just any dress, but a tight, frilly, flowery one with five different shades of pink roses; it was the worst thing it could possibly be.
That was the day I gave up and gave in. Not right away of course, but eventually. At first I cried, kicking and screaming, but within the hour my temper tantrum had worn me out, and finally I succumbed to the humiliation.
By the time I was in the dress and petticoat I felt so defeated I hung my head in shame and let her adorn me with ruffled socks and little girly shoes.
I felt as if a twenty-year war had been raging, and the losing country had just toppled onto my six-year-old soul. The moment I realized I had lost my own little war, I also realized, quite deeply in fact, that this was the end of an era.
After that day, I no longer played with Jonathan. I know it might be hard to believe, but I’m into instant gratification. I decided then and there that whether I liked it or not my life would change.
As an elementary friendship swirled down the drain, I found myself being urged to take ballet classes and “pose like a princess.” I did both, and so much more.
Something in me was altered forever and I decided to try to be what I thought was proper for a “girl.” Sixteen years later I have come to realize I am never going to be exactly what a “girl” (or “woman”) should be.?
The signs were there when after a few years my former ballet instructor informed my mother that it was really just pointless for someone so uncoordinated and extremely awkward to even try. I had no natural grace, which showed when I tried to dress myself.
Where I grew up in South Africa I attended a school in which uniforms were required, so hello disaster when around age 11 I tried to piece together a suitable outfit for a public event; all I can remember is cringing upon seeing myself in those baggy black jeans with a glittery green star centered on my shirt.
When I moved to America my experimental attitude toward femininity forced itself out. I tried other (later cringe-inducing) things, such as bright blue or white eye shadow-depending on what matched my clothes. I dated boys long before I was ready to even consider what that meant and ended up being a pretty wild and delinquent teenager.
At thirteen (when I moved to the U.S.) I had an inkling I was not portraying who I was inside; by seventeen I knew it for sure. I did not abandon the mirror, but instead stood beside my makeup-dabbing friends wondering when exactly I would feel like I fit in.
After high school I ended up living with my senior year boyfriend, who was then the sole breadwinner in our attempt at a home. It didn’t take me awfully long to figure out that I was unhappy. I had no desire to hang out with friends, or even him, and ended up drinking with my cat on a daily basis.
The guy wanted me to clean the house, cook dinner every night and stop gaining weight because it was not helping the trophy wife image he desired of me. Before I knew it I was back with my parents, ready to start college with a clean slate. With disillusioned experiences behind me, I wanted to pave a completely different path for myself; a path on which I would never find myself with a bottle in one hand and a broom in the other, questioning the cat on where my life went, waiting for the oven and the doorbell to buzz.
It’s been a long road and a mental struggle, but after analyzing the situation regularly it has become my second nature to question gender. Where did these concepts of girls and boys come from? Why is one supposed to define femininity and the other masculinity – one passive, one active? More importantly, why do half the people I know feel uncomfortable trying to fulfill these socially constructed roles? Why are there only two universally accepted “okay” options?
I’ve been taking women and gender studies classes for a while now, and I’ve been working on finding a happy medium for the amalgamation of my pre- and post-six-year-old personalities. In some ways I’m a “girl,” in some ways I’m a “boy,” but in most ways I now see that I am actually neither. Really, I’m just a human with a biologically-defined body that has nothing to do with the fact that sometimes I wear dresses, but mostly I just play in the yard.