What Norah Discovered by Disguising Herself as a Man for 18 Months
Do women have it better than men?
In the early 2000s, Norah Vincent, a 35-year-old journalist, disguised herself as a man.
She hired a make-up artist to create a stubble by shredding braided wool into bits and gluing it onto her face.
She bound her breasts with two small sports bras and weight-trained to build muscles in her back and chest.
She wore a prosthetic pen*s. To sound and move like a man, she trained with a Juilliard coach for months.
Then in 2005, she chronicled her 18-month journey as a man in her book, Self-Made Man. It became an instant best-seller.
But something was happening to Norah. A week after her last stint as a man, she had a depressive breakdown and checked herself into a mental institution.
She wrote about it in her next book, Voluntary Madness. There she detailed her decade-long history with “treatment-resistant depression.”
Then July of last year, Norah died via assisted suicide in Switzerland.
