How Conventional Beauty Standards Hurt Trans People
Confronting and expanding our society’s narrow ideals of beauty is crucial for true trans liberation.
In n 2013, Skylar Kergil set out to make a photography project about the different expressions of masculinity he saw in the trans community. Described as an “on-going photography project focusing around the day-to-day lives of trans-masculine identified individuals,” Kergil asked his participants to use disposable cameras to take pictures of themselves in their everyday lives, along with their family and friends, and then send them to him for display. More than 20 transmasculine people were featured in an exhibit later that year, and the photographs were then gathered in a book to share.
I’ve thought of this project a lot since the start of 2017. I profiled it when Kergil first began collecting the images, and I used his project as a way to figure out what it meant to be transmasculine, both in and outside the confines of surgery.
These issues are still with me today as I continue to work in trans studies — but they seem even more pressing than ever before.
