face/time
When I was young, I wanted to be in movies. I think it was because the idea of being in movies seemed to offer an escape from both the turmoil of my inner life and the constant conflict in my home. I lived in Los Angeles, after all. I saw the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame. I went on the Universal Studios tour. I saw film shoots happening in my neighborhood regularly. I was a kid who wanted to be somebody other than the person I felt like I had to pretend to be all the time. I couldn’t be the person I really was, so pursuing opportunities to slip on other identities seemed like the natural thing to do at the time. In the 1990 film Captain America, I appear for a moment, a sad-faced boy who sets some dishes on a table. Back then, it wasn’t terribly uncommon for female friends at school to tell me that I would have made a pretty girl, and though I pretended to be embarrassed, there was something validating about these moments, a feeling that those who looked closely enough could see the truth of who I was shining through, and that maybe someday everybody would be able to see it.

Redford in his early 30s in Barefoot in the Park
On Friday night, I went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Robert Redford is in the film, an actor who figures into some of my earliest memories of the movies. My mom loved him and she loved baseball, which is probably why I was dragged along to a screening of The Natural; I didn’t follow the story but the film’s imagery left a powerful impression on me. Years later when I first read The Great Gatsby, I’m pretty sure that I cast Redford in the title role, not even knowing that there actually was a film in which he’d played Gatsby. His brand of generic handsomeness just seemed to befit the illusory Gatsby to me.

Now, time has taken its toll on Redford’s face, and I actually think he’s much more interesting to look at as a result. Whereas before, there was nothing there in his face for my eyes to settle on, now there are lines everywhere. He looks like someone who has some stories to tell.
I’m still young, relatively speaking, but time has taken a different kind of toll on me. Because of time, because of all those years that passed between my early teens and when I was finally able to begin my transition, my face tells stories that I sometimes wish it wouldn’t. When I walked into a clothing store yesterday, a greeter directed me to the men’s section–ridiculous, I think, given that I have long hair, was wearing earrings and makeup and, you know, have breasts. I understand that part of the reason this bothers me is because I’ve internalized some bad values. I’ve put a premium on the experiences of cisgender women and those transgender women who are perceived as cisgender. For me, for a long time, my goal was to be “stealth,” to be perceived as cisgender by just about everyone, and even though I’m now proudly openly trans, and intellectually I know that my experiences as a woman are as valid as the experiences of any other woman, emotionally, I haven’t entirely put those bad values aside. I still don’t like being reminded in face-to-face situations that some people see a man when they look at me, at least partially because it makes me feel like less of a woman.

Before, this was something that weighed on me every minute of every day. Now it’s something that happens in moments here and there. But I still hate that I carry these feelings around inside me at all. Sometimes I’m comfortable with how I look now–sometimes I like it and want to celebrate it–and sometimes I still feel like my face obscures more of the truth of me than it reveals. I definitely feel like I can reach people more directly through the written word than I can in person.

Today a friend asked me if I wanted to FaceTime–something I’ve never done before–and it brought up all these feelings. People use it all the time as a way of connecting, but I still often feel more connected when my face is left out of things. I’m weighed down by the feeling that, because of what time has done to me, the truth of who I am can shine through more clearly when I can’t be seen. I’m trying to change this.
Notes
saraclemens liked this
mashatupitsyn said: You are young! Everything is still coming.
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