From around age 7 to about 12 most of my friends were boys. If you had asked me at the time why that was the case, I probably would have told you hanging out with boys was just easier because I had an older brother, and I just couldn’t imagine hanging out with girls who did “girl things”. I couldn’t tell you exactly what “girl things” were but I can tell you what I absolutely did not want in my life:
I was definitively a tomboy, and will freely admit that for a period of time, I went through a “Not Like Other Girls” phase. To differentiate myself from mainstream girls, I became a hater. No pink, no pop music, no diaries with colorful pens or T-shirts with rainbows. If you ask me now, I’d say my disgust with “girl things” was much more a reflection on me than it was on girls: I was afraid that I would be found out - that I was not performing femininity in the same way that they were. I would be a fraud, and it was much easier to pretend that I didn’t like femininity than to discover that it was femininity that didn’t like me.
Imagine my surprise today, International Women’s Day over a decade later, when I looked around (virtually, of course, we are still in a pandemic) and realized the sheer number of women in my life. Women ARE my life. They are most of my friends and most of my day-to-day coworkers. They are my confidantes, my encouragers, and my support system. It’s women who read what I write, who tell me I’m pretty, who remind me of my value, who make me laugh.
I have changed in a lot of ways since the time when most of my friends were boys, but I don’t necessarily have a better relationship with womanhood. What I have is an understanding that things I like are neither “boy” nor “girl”, that I am not like other girls, because no girls are like other girls, and that we are all performing all the time. The binary is made up, the genders are performative, and the points don’t matter, who knew.
My thoughts on womanhood and gender identity don’t feel radical to me, and they aren’t meant to be. They’re not even original. Instead, I’m truly just taking the time to muse on group identity. I am no more woman than I am Black, I am no more Black than I am someone’s child, or sister, or friend. But today, I can only express gratitude that I have carved out a space in the world that is uniquely my own and that the women and nonbinary people in my life have found me there. They met me where I was at and loved me anyway and most days that is more than enough.
