From makeup to hair to fashion, since finishing high school I’ve gravitated towards all things femme. I obsessed over the empathy that femme people possessed, as well as with their innate sense for caring, loving, and nurturing. I remember growing up and always thinking to myself that those were the traits I wanted to convey… that no matter what, I’d be in touch with my feminine side.
It wasn’t until the age of 17 that I discovered I was non-binary. This was interesting because while it distanced me from masculinity, it also distanced me from my femininity. Originally, I identified as genderfluid (under the non-binary spectrum) for about three years, trying to maintain the switch between masc and femme. However, since I’ve started dressing more femme, I’ve found myself spending hundreds of dollars on makeup, and buying “women’s” clothing for the first time in my life. It’s the most comfortable I’ve ever felt in my skin, making me wonder why it took me so long to get to this point? Eventually, though, it became clear: I’ve actually always loved femininity, just not on my body.
When I first moved to the states from Liberia, my mother clung onto the health culture here for dear life. I have this memory of her telling me not to use any of my sisters’ body wash, and to stay far away from anything containing lavender. It would “make me grow tehteh,” meaning it would make me develop breasts (of course, now I’ve come to discover that studies at the time, later debunked, suggested lavender was estrogenic). My mother’s generation would often say things like this; things that brought down the power that femininity had to offer.
My mother would want my sisters to recognize their inner femme beings, but never relish in it. However, when it came to any other aspects of womanliness, my culture would demonize it if a cisgender woman wasn’t directly attached. The lavender memory never reigned significant in my young mind because I was gaining weight at the time, so I just assumed it was about my mom not wanting me to get fat. Sure enough, it was both. She’d say things like, “None of my brothers are fat!” followed with, “You’re meant to be tall and slim!” all coupled with, “Boy childs don’t have tehteh.” Once again, I let it all go believing it was simply part of the West African mother schtick—or their pièce de rĂ©sistance, if you will.
Jumping into my freshman year of high school, after years of fluctuating weight, I had successfully grown visible breasts. My body was pretty thick overall, but my chest was noticeably prominent for some damn reason. It bothered me, however, I always felt fine in my body—never at home—but fine.
I remember sitting in class one time talking over a substitute teacher when someone cracked a joke about how I should wear a bra because my chest was so big. Like a switch, I started crying immediately in front of all of my peers. They began to apologize, saying:
“I was only kidding!”
“It was just a joke!”Â
“They’re not even that big!”
Afterwards, I realized I didn’t know why I started crying or why I was upset, all I knew was that I would hide them at all costs. Even when I came out as genderfluid, I tried to hide them. Then it dawned on me: I resented my breasts on my “male” body, a body that I didn’t even want.Â
For about a year now, I’ve started accepting my breasts along with all the femme changes happening in my life. I realized that the transphobia combined with the fatphobia in my early life kept me from living my truth for so long—and that is so scary. These two bigoted belief systems are prominent in almost everyone’s life from a young age, and they’re molding minds to believe such features are unwelcome in our bodies. There are misogynistic undertones behind them, too.
It is crucial that we all know that femininity is beautiful. Your back rolls are beautiful. Your cellulite is beautiful. Your stretch marks are beautiful. Fat is more than what people make of it for you… after all, it’s a part of you. You can’t let societal boundaries reign you in, it’s your truth you’re living at the end of the day. Femme is fierce. Femme is kind. Femme is diverse. Femme is love.