Boy Oh Boy
Only once have I deliberately dressed as a man.
I loved fancy dress as a child. Once, when I was eight or nine, a friend and I decided to pose as husband and wife.
(I assume in hindsight that I decided and she went along with it, so she could wear my grandma’s dress.)
We were snapped side-by-side: me in my black pants and cardigan over a white shirt, she in a flowing turquoise gown with elbow-length silk gloves. My black school shoes and short bob gave the illusion of a young man in a dress suit. All that remained was to pencil in a moustache and, voilà the happy couple!
That was probably the only time I can recall deliberately playing the part of a boy. But there have been many, many times I have been mistaken for one; each time burned into my childhood psyche, coloured with embarrassment and shame. And for every time I have been mistaken for a boy, there are at least two occasions where I’ve looked at photos of myself and thought, “That’s not how I pictured myself.” In my head, sometimes I am glamourous and feminine, but the camera shows a different picture — kind of a scruffy, headstrong angular person wearing an incongruous floral dress, or with incongruously long hair. Or possibly a boy. Depending on your prejudice.
It’s a strange thing, to perceive yourself as one gender, and have people, or even the camera, perceive you as another. It’s also strange when perceptions change, depending on the angle of the light, what you’re wearing, how you’re standing.
“Are you a boy or a girl?”
Boy, I’m glad I never have to hear that question again. My peers are too old to ask it. They know better now. But they didn’t then.
As a child, if I wore a baseball cap and a loose fitting t-shirt, other kids got confused. Other girls could pull that off without a hitch. But me, I looked like the male of the species. I remember being on holidays in a row boat with another girl I’d just met, when she popped the question (the boy-girl question) while we were half-way down the river, far from the water’s edge. I would have given anything to run away there and then. But we were trapped. And so I answered the question. Then I folded my shoulders inwards and looked down while I silently, clumsily rowed us to shore.
Even my grandfather was fooled from time to time. Mum proudly showed him photos of the day I joined girl guides. My hair was pulled back and only my fringe was visible. His first, confused question — ‘who’s that boy?’ (note to grandpa: in 1992, by definition, there were no boys in girl guides.)
It doesn’t happen so often now. I’m comfortable walking the line between masculine and feminine. I’m quite happy when someone refers to me as ‘mate’ rather than ‘miss’ or ‘ma’am’. ‘Sir’ I draw the line at. (It happened. Once.) On the rare days they say ‘miss’, I wonder what weird elixir of girlie youth I’ve swallowed that morning: usually it’s not an elixir, but a short skirt. On the days they say ‘ma’am’, I try not to glower at them and make a mental note never to wear that outfit again (or to save it up as a disguise, for use when necessary).
The point is, though, it took me almost twenty years to get comfortable with the way things are; with the way I am; without wanting to label it or ‘fix’ it.
To my dear, grown-up, gender non-ambiguous friends who are only just learning that gender is fluid, and who are getting all excited about the concept; I am way ahead of you, mate. And this is why.
