Notes from a Former Tomboy
Finding Yourself through Femininity

A Personal Essay by Kayla Suess

That feeling made me want to recluse myself into some remote cave where I couldn’t be found. Even though I looked like a stereotypical boy at the time, my gut twisted every time

I was mistaken for one. I had short, straight hair that fell right to my ears, and only wore baggy clothes—usually a t-shirt three or four sizes too big, paired with either basketball shorts or boot cut jeans. I liked wearing anything sporty or camo, and graphic tees from the boys section at Walmart. When I got to the age where I started dressing myself, I strictly stuck to pants—never skirts or dresses. My shoes were either giant, clunky DC skater shoes, slip-on Vans, or anything from the Airwalk line at Payless. I also loved to wear those plaid khaki shorts that fell right above the knees, always paired with a graphic tee of the same color combo. I didn’t like to go outside of my comfort zone. I thought as long as I was wearing a big t-shirt, no one would notice me.

It was 2007 in Southeastern Michigan. Chunky highlights and side-swept bangs were all the rage, Rihanna’s “Umbrella” dominated every radio station, and Britney Spears had her iconic meltdown that nine year old me was just so fascinated and appalled by. My mom was a collector of every gossip magazine there was—InTouch, People, Style, Us Weekly.

I spent a lot of free time scouring her magazine drawer: Who wore it better? Who put on a few pounds? Who had had an affair with whom? Growing up reading these types of magazines shaped my worldview. From an early age, I knew no matter what you did or what you looked like, you would be judged. You would never be able to appeal to everyone. Even the most beautiful women in those magazines were scrutinized for wearing an ugly dress or for gaining ten pounds. How could I, a little girl from Westland, Michigan compete with that? If everyone thought these women were unattractive and overweight, I must’ve been too.

The first time I was nine years old,
playing on my cousin Whitney’s trampoline with her friend, Becca, who I had just met. They were three years older than me and I thought they were the coolest pre-teens on the planet. They wore eyeliner, straightened their hair and listened to Paramore and My Chemical Romance. They wore skinny jeans and drew hearts on their converse. They had Myspace profiles adorned with glittery skulls and animated Invader Zim icons. I wanted to be like them; and I tried to emulate their style in any way I knew how, but I felt so much younger and ill equipt.

Their clothes were a bit different from the stereotypical “girly girls” that I knew I would never look like. Their fashion was more of a costume than anything, an attitude, a way of living. I loved how their hair basically covered their entire face and how they wore bracelets stacked to their elbows like armor. I knew I would never look like the girls in the magazines, but I could be like Whitney and Becca. It seemed a bit more realistic to me. I could wear eyeliner, tease my black box-dyed hair, and scavenge Hot Topic for clip-on bows, but I couldn’t get myself to wear a mini skirt from Hollister paired with a lace trim tank top and flip flops.

You look just like your dad.
I thought I would look weird if I tried to look pretty in the classic sense. I thought of the goose statue my grandma had on her front porch. She’d dress it up according to the holiday—usually in some kind of frilly colonial style dress or lace bonnet. There was something unnatural about it. Cement in the shape of a goose wearing a petticoat. It just didn’t look right, and if it was sentient, I was sure it would be uncomfortable.

I felt a lot like that goose.
After meeting Becca and wanting her to think I was cool enough to hang out with them (a few hairflips should get that point across, right?), she said the words that felt like a knife through my chest, You sound like a girl. I looked over to my cousin for help, pleading with her telepathically to say something, She IS a girl, silly. We all laughed and continued to jump on the trampoline anyway, but those simple words hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew I was getting to the age where I would have to be perceived. I would have no choice but to be judged like the women in the magazines. I’d have to start thinking of what people thought of me. I heard from my mom and her friends that I was only gonna be a kid for a little while longer. Soon enough I’d get my period like them. I’d have to start watching my weight like my mom does. Eventually I would be saying, I’m starting my diet on Monday, at the end of every week. I’d have to start wearing makeup and wearing high heels like the ones my mom would wear out to the bar. Secretly, I’d try them on whenever she wasn’t home, walking around the house, seeking to explore femininity only in private. I knew I would have to start preparing myself for the inevitable public scrutiny that went hand in hand with womanhood.

Being raised by a young, and conventionally attractive mother, showed me a side of femininity that, at the time, seemed so far out of reach and unattainable to me. I was told time and time again, You look just like your dad. Simultaneously my mom would be in my other ear giving me a sympathetic look and saying, I wish you looked more like me. As a kid, I felt like I had no other choice but to be boyish, as girlhood had seemingly slammed its door in my face for not looking the part.

I wasn’t the most conventionally attractive looking kid. I had distinctive features like big bug eyes, a couple snaggle teeth, and a big round head that I had not quite grown into yet. I was bigger than all my friends in both height and weight. I never had a flat stomach, and had clunky knock knees that gave me a wide gate when I walked. I was hunched over half the time trying to hide the lumps forming prematurely on my chest, desperately attempting to find solace in any female role model that I could remotely relate to. I looked at the Jenna Jameson poster my mom hung up proudly in the basement as an almost overt display of peak femininity. In my child brain I thought, Is this what I’m supposed to look like? It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that Jenna Jameson was an adult film star. It made a lot more sense as to why she was naked on that poster.

The other time was a few months later at basketball camp. “Basketball camp” was more like daycare at the YMCA where we watched Space Jam and learned how to do layups. I was one of the only girls in my fourth grade class that had to wear a bra already. Having a single, preoccupied mom that was seemingly unconcerned with anything involving my brother and myself, made me feel incredibly lonely in the never-ending uphill battle of getting through puberty. I didn’t remember talking about this absolutely normal aspect of growing up to anyone. At the time it seemed so passé, something you went through on your own. Hopefully you came out unscathed on the other side as a jaunty teenager, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, excited for what life had in store.

One day a boy asked me,
Are you a boy or a girl? That same feeling hit me again. The embarrassment of knowing that I didn’t look like a girl diminished any self esteem I had left. The weight of those words sank in. Did people really not know that I was a girl? Was I doing something wrong? I could hear my mom, I wish you looked like me, and I would say, defeatedly, Me too. I didn’t know any better but to hate the way I looked. In 2007, every example and idea I had of womanhood was intrinsically paired with your appearance. You’re too fat,
too skinny, you’re a whore, you’re a prude, you’re too brash, too quiet. I knew I didn’t fit the mold of what a cute, spunky girl in fourth grade was supposed to look like. Instead I was boyish, chubby, tall, awkward, loud, annoying, and abrasive. I didn’t know where I belonged in the grand scheme of things. I wasn’t feminine enough, nor masculine—I was somewhere in the middle.

The very next day I showed up to the Westland YMCA wearing a hot pink Happy Bunny shirt that probably said something snarky and sarcastic on the front like, “It’s all about me. Deal with it.” I wore this in protest, to somehow signify this as my white flag in surrender with the words “I’m a girl!” splayed out on it. That way, I wouldn’t get asked that stupid question ever again.

Maybe I would never figure out how to be a girl in my nine-year-old brain,
but as a 26-year-old woman I found that it wasn’t a weakness to balance the feminine and masculine sides of yourself. I continued to try and relate with the drunk girls in the bar bathroom, still not feeling quite feminine enough as they all reapplied their lipstick, talking about their relationships with one another. At the other end of the sink, I existed as some sort of spectator, a cement filled goose wearing a bonnet. At the same time, I found myself becoming more in tune with my feminine side, almost as a way to prove to my younger self that the act of being feminine didn’t have to be linked to your appearance, it can be a form of confidence and self expression. Younger me would shudder at the thought of wearing a simple mini skirt paired with a lace trim top—she would rather see me in basketball shorts and an oversized t-shirt, hunched over and hiding.

She’d be appalled to see that I had garnered the courage
to walk with confidence even knowing that I could be silently judged by anyone I crossed paths with. In passing, mom would point to a lacey v-neck top at the mall, and say, Why can’t you wear something like this? I’d look at her with disgust and disappointment, thinking she’d see me in hell before I wore something like that. I didn’t know what she would think knowing that I succumbed to mom’s idea of femininity, parading around in what she would deem girly and clownish. The reality was that I felt most myself in both the mini skirt and the oversized t-shirt.

I could say that I came out on the other side of puberty just
a little more jaded and a bit more traumatized, but more sure of myself in the grand scheme of things. I stopped staring at myself in the mirror, overanalyzing every angle of my face, every blackhead, every pore. What I couldn’t tell myself then, because she just wouldn’t believe me, is that you learn to accept things about yourself that you didn’t before. Eventually you’ll have poise and certainty, even with your insecurities. You’ll always be that tomboyish nine-year-old girl, just a bit different now.

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