Ginger HawthorneSpend some time around trans folks, and you’re likely to hear us talking about our eggs and how they cracked. It’s a simple metaphor, where our egg is our life before discovering we’re trans, and the crack is the moment that manifested that discovery. We all have our story, and this one’s mine.
I could (and probably will) write a whole separate post about all the little things, the signs I might’ve picked up on, but didn’t, because I didn’t have the freedom or the vocabulary to understand what I was feeling. That’s a whole, long list on its own. But I will give a little lead up-to the moment, and what I did with it.
Growing up, I never really liked thinking about clothes. I didn’t like shopping for clothes, picking them out, even getting dressed in the morning. It was just a chore that I had to get through. Sometimes I wore sweatpants and other baggy clothes, other times it was jeans because that’s what everybody else was wearing. The closest I got to feeling comfortable in clothes was when I wore t-shirts with pop culture references on them. At least those could be conversation-starters.
Time went by, well into adulthood and years into my marriage. My wife started watching Project Runway, and I started to enjoy some of the designs they’d come with. Not for me, of course, but as a work of art. Sometimes I would lightly complain that there’s no equivalent fashion design for men. Yes, there’s formalwear that’s distinct from casual clothing, but that formalwear is almost always some form of a 3-piece suit or a tuxedo. They could look good, I guess, but there was so little variety, and so little beauty to be found. I just wanted men’s clothing to be more adventurous, more colorful, more luxurious, more beautiful.
That wasn’t when my egg cracked, but it helps explain that it didn’t come out of nowhere. We stopped watching Project Runway or any other fashion shows. Mostly cooking shows and regular scripted TV, and I basically forgot about my fashion complaints.
One day, my wife was just looking through some red carpet from the Oscars the night before. She found this picture of Billy Porter in a Christian Siriano gown and tuxedo jacket, and showed it to me.
Readers, when I tell you that my mind split open and all of my preconceptions fell out. That photograph, that dress, the way he carried himself in it, every bit of it had my brain firing in every direction, all at once. It gave me a glimpse into a world that I once dreamed could exist, where men have the ability to wear beautiful clothes that don’t look like everything else.
I finally felt free to explore. Billy Porter gave me permission to play.
I started looking at dresses and skirts, trying to find anything specific that I could latch onto. I didn’t find anything, and I t took me another year before I took any action on the thoughts that had been flying around my head since I saw that photo.
During the fall of 2020, my son was getting bullied at school because he had chosen to get his fingernails painted, just like his mom had been doing. I told him not to listen to the bullies and that anybody could wear whatever they want. And to make the point, I vowed to get my fingernails painted, and I did.
But I also realized that all I was showing my son was that anybody could paint their nails. If I wanted to seriously show him that anybody could wear whatever they wanted, I knew I’d have to face my own fears and act on what I’d learned that Billy Porter photograph.
So I ordered my skirt. It was nothing fancy, but it was an easy way for me to play with fashion and my gender presentation. I put it in, and it was love at first swirl. I almost immediately decided not to wear pants ever again.
I’ve done a lot more since then, and I continued to nail down my gender. I didn’t fully come to terms with being a trans woman for a couple more years, and some trans folks might say that my egg didn’t really crack until I had that final revelation. But the reality was mostly a lot more gradual. There fits and starts, and detours that I had to discover along the way. But that was all just incremental change.
The true epiphany, the mind-blowing revelation, was seeing Billy Porter at the Oscars in a Christian Siriano gown. That was the moment my world opened up beyond what I had ever known, and I started to see my future, and myself, in a whole new way.
That’s the moment my egg well and truly cracked.