To Be Or Not To Be (a girl)
Animation by Briaanna Chiu
When I was younger I wasn’t told much of anything, but I’d play the part of the wallflower and observe. I took note of the way preteen girls held their pencils, how they sat up at their desks with perfect posture, the inflection of their voices when they giggled and said, “Stop!” I took note of the smudged blue eyeshadow and pink gloss, the tapping of pencils on bright, plastic binders filled with unnecessary rainbow tabs. I memorized the dirty look from a girl I used to go ice skating with at Blade Runners on Friday nights the same way I memorized Social Studies flashcards.
In middle school the supposed Elle Woods of the world wore tie dye tank tops and short shorts while the boys pretended to be interested in kickball. I was too ugly to be seen like that. But there were eyes watching, always, even if it was just the watcher inside of me. I found comfort in staring into space and pretending the girls I wanted to be weren’t there, while relishing their company anyway. Bubblegum was a big deal back then, especially when it was made into a vape flavor that clouded our eyes as we walked to our school buses in predetermined groups. Bubblegum and vape made you look at mouths.
I had yet to grow into my own face. To make up for these inconsistencies I turned my bedroom, the one with sweet childhood mementos scrawled all over the walls that carried memories too personal to touch, into a personal photoshoot. I was excited to go home so I could put on makeup before it all melted away, two black lines smudged under feckless eyes and one swipe of mascara clinging to my lashes. Hang a turquoise linen sheet off of the closet door for a basic backdrop. Use the lamplight from my empty bunk bed to emphasize the wideness I didn’t have in my eyes. Short, straight-ironed, and sizzling hair is swept from one shoulder to hang over the other. Chin turned down so it wouldn’t be so obtrusive. Ignore the uneven nose. Pout seductively. Smile shyly.
A popular girl would acknowledge these selfies on Facebook once in a blue moon, but other than that fleeting pin of validity they tumbled away like a paper bag, occasionally bumping into abandoned shopping carts. Nobody would compliment my wood brown eyes, but for good reason. They were full of both spite and longing, unattainable.
It was all very parsimonious, very restrained, very if I breathe too loudly they’ll look at me, and not in a good way. That was my greatest fear, to be caught at a bad angle. So I straightened up my back and took dance lessons and paid careful attention to the way my hands folded in my lap.
And that was the nectar of femininity for thirteen-year-olds. Getting the perfect picture. Catching your crush’s eye before it wanders over to another girl. Aeropostale and Hollister and VS Pink plastered on every article of clothing, making sure Mackenzie had nothing to make fun of. Pretending not to be appalled by the prospect of blowjobs, pretending the lesbian suspicion didn’t exist amongst anybody you knew, unless it made for insidious lunch table gossip. People compare school cafeterias to zoos, but they’re more like abattoirs.
I played the game in seventh grade, dodged the arrows and stones and tomatoes, all the while trying to make something pretty out of my tempest-tossed face. Skin-tight black leggings with the pink waistband shoved into Uggs. Asking my mom to buy me a thong from Kohl’s. Shaving armpits, legs, forearms. But by eighth grade, the blitz was over and I was angry at the fallout. Still an outcast, a pariah, a boorish painting in the Salon des Refusés. My supposed girlhood was even further away from me, so I kept it there and tried the new flavor of tomboy. I ditched the dance lessons for ice hockey and the coy smiles for bilious scowls. I spoke at the bottom of my voice and stopped straightening my hair.
The irony is this: the year prior I had exhausted every effort to make the girls look at me in envy, the boys look at me in yearning, to no avail. Only when I dropped the charade did the foxes hunt the rabbit. My brittle dream of being their object of desire was scorned, and instead, I adopted the role of the elusive prey. And come after me they did! I chewed up femininity and spit it out at their feet, and I knew I’d pay for it.
These vicissitudes of bending over backwards to be pretty only to rip it all apart pervaded my formative years. Being a girl wasn’t safe, but neither was being anything else. The danger settled beneath my bones, making my own body a battlefield. I’ll never be able to sit still.
When I was a junior in high school I once again made it my conscious mission to look at ugly as possible. Rage against the patriarchal machine, like all good sixteen-year-olds do. Hoodies and sweatpants every day, unkempt hair, bags under my eyes, don’t even think about talking to me because maybe I’ll bite. BEWARE OF DOG written all over my face. I grew tired of keeping track of the eyes, so I kept mine to the floor. Eliminate my peripheral vision with a hood, cover my calloused hands with the sleeves. Make the onlookers uncomfortable. Eschew the performance. That was the idea.
Except this time I was not as ostracized. This time I had a doting audience. I was in a girls’ chorus class when I had my first panic attack at school, after Maddie told Lily she missed a spot shaving. I rushed to the bathroom, slammed the stall door shut, hung my head in my hands. They watched the spiral, they came into the bathroom and knocked on my stall after hearing staggered breaths. I sounded like a pig lined up for slaughter. But who was holding the shotgun? And how could I tell them that I could never relate to lilting soprano voices or floral skater skirts or charming chelsea boots? I wore them, still, the way a wolf wears sheepskin.
College was different. I was magnetic. No longer did I have to exhaust every effort to make people pay attention to me. I had finally grown into my face, and they all took notice. Neon nights out in Chicago, Furious Spoon ramen, cramming into shady clubs with shadier promoters all too willing to hand underage girls vodka cranberries. We got bottle service at Cuveé and after downing three glasses of $300 champagne, the club promoter grabbed my waist. My breath caught in my throat before I could twist away from his wretched fingers, deaf to the shrieks of my friends berating him in my defense, and once again found myself hyperventilating behind a bathroom stall.
I knew then that I wouldn’t be able to adhere to the stickiness of being a girl. I’d peel right off. Not to say that womanhood looks like femininity and long lashes and painted nails and getting harassed by sweaty men; no, being a woman can look like anything. But it couldn’t look like me. Not all the way. It didn’t tell the full story. It picked me apart the same way a faux Christian picks apart the Bible. It preached the convenient parts and silenced the rest.
But I also didn’t know how to not be a girl. How do you separate yourself from your lifelong performance, where you’ll always be the starring role? How do you look at yourself in the mirror and realize you’ve never seen that color in your eyes?
When I lost my virginity I stayed in bed for seven hours. Paper Bag by Fiona Apple over and over again, broken record brain. Hunger hurts, but starving works. I knew I had stuck around too long, tapping my fingers waiting for the cavernous pit in my gut to go the fuck away. I wanted to start living like a lightning bolt, here one moment, gone the next. But girls are always kept waiting.
Some things stayed the same in college. Every year I’d flip between looking pretty and looking like something the cat dragged in. Everything was different but the cycles were the same. You’re told to really find yourself in college, but I was trying to abandon myself. My body as a vessel. My body as a haunted house. A cocktail of neuroses made me hang a towel over the mirror every time I showered, because if I didn’t I knew I’d just stare at it for too long, and then there would be shaking and stuttered breaths and clawing at the skin I was in. I didn’t learn the term gender dysphoria until junior year, and I still gaslit myself into thinking I was just stone-cold crazy.
The story doesn’t end badly, though. At the beginning of senior year I told my friends they could use ‘they’ pronouns for me, and holy shit, gender dysphoria who? When Prince said, I’m not a woman, I’m not a man, I’m something you’ll never understand, I felt that!
Because I didn’t even understand it. I still don’t. To be or not to be pretty. To be or not to be a girl. To say to Hamlet’s father, yes, I will avenge you, while ignoring Ophelia six feet under. To give people something they can chew or to close the curtains, it’s our final show. Thank you, and goodnight. A curtsey, a bow. That’s all I got, folks. That’s all I can give you.
