Drag

I remember being put in dresses all the time as a little girl. This was probably because I was born the only female in a family of boys and my parents were happy for the break in monotony. My room was painted pink and I got dolls for presents a lot but I those are not the things I have the most vivid memories about. What I remember is the debate I consistently had in my head about dresses.

To wear a dress was to be like my mother but unlike my brothers. There were times I thought it was cool to be like this important grown-up lady, but in truth I wanted my brothers' approval over almost anyone else's in the world. So, dresses were a drag, something to throw a fit or sulk over.

I have found myself thinking of the dress-thing since finishing the book She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan. It is the memoir of a writer/professor who describes his life and the events leading up to and through his sex change: James to Jennifer. I found it an interesting read, especially Boylan's poignant telling of childhood and adolescent experiences, but the story lost me at a point. When asked by his wife and his closest male friend to express what becoming a woman means to him, Boylan says things like, "This is who I am already." He points out that he is not a cross-dresser, but a woman in a man's body. Someone in need or anatomical reassignment. In deed, Boylan describes the experience of sneaking into women's clothes since his childhood. He describes how shaving his legs, getting into a skirt and putting on earrings made him feel great. But then it wasn't enough anymore.

This left me wondering how I define my own experience of being female. Clearly not the clothes, but is it the breasts? Is it my reproductive system? As simple as genitals? As predictable as a hormone shift? Or is it something even more than that?

I don't mean to debate Boylan's experience. The author makes it clear that she is finally at peace now that she is a woman. She has managed to salvage her relationship with her wife and retained a loving relationship with her children. What I mean to ask is does medication and surgery make a woman? Do I really believe that with a similar procedure in a different direction I would be a man? Or would it make me something else?

All I know is that the notion that it is so -- that a medical procedure can truly make a man a woman -- makes me feel underestimated. It makes my experience seem reduced to a moment in the womb when things went the way they were supposed to, no mixed up gender message here -- all the parts came out to line up under "girl." But what I know is even with the pink room and the dolls, I wanted to be like the people I loved and admired, my brothers. I found out that I could wear their hand-me-down jeans, play their games, eat the same supper and hope for the best.

But it makes me remember two moments that taught me something else early on. First is the morning my mother sent me back upstairs to put a shirt on. When I asked why I had to wear a shirt all of the sudden, she told me it was because I was growing up and girls never walked around topless. It made me silently wonder how I had grown-up over night and why five years old was the cut-off. The second was when my older brother called me down from the monkey bars to tell me I couldn't climb like that in a dress. When I asked why, he informed that he could see my underwear, and girls were not allowed to show boys their panties.

It is true, dressing like a girl isn't enough. It is the messages that teach us how to feel about the body we've been given, the gender we know we are. It is the life of a girl that made me a woman.

I am a woman science can not create.