It always feels worse in the summertime

For me, at least. Although I don’t think I am alone in this. Summertime is less. It is a time of taking things off. It is a time of undoing. When I have worked so hard to do myself up. In winter I can layer, and these layers can shape out a body of my choice, can conceal, can create. Heavy coats and thick scarves and beanie hats which can make me unidentifiable to the gendered eye. Who are they, they wonder. What pronoun would I use if I had to verbally defend them in the street? Summer is a different beast. As the weather turns I am peeled open. Onion-like, I take off layers until the first thing you see of me is my body with its feminine shoulders and small, but present, breasts, and oval hips spilling out like they have something to shout. A man once told me, before I cut all my hair off and declared myself un-woman, that if I cut all my hair off I would still look like a woman. Something about your face, he said. It’s shape, it’s softness. Inescapably woman, he said. Whatever people think of my face, it is my body I am most often looking at. I look down at myself. I see pictures of myself. At an event where I saw myself rectangle, all non-binary lines, the camera sees me curving in and out. This body challenges every edge of me, redefines self-image, reminds me I will always be unfamiliar with a body I look away from. I don’t wear skirts or dresses anymore. When I first cut my hair, I thought it would help. I thought it would help with these feelings that I had every time I wore a dress or a skirt. I thought it was about looking visibly queer, and short hair, I knew, would do that for me. It would be enough. Once I cut my hair I didn’t want to wear anything like that, all that swooping fabric. I dressed like a teenage boy because I was a teenage boi. I lived in baggy T-shirts designed by mates and tracksuits that the baggy T-shirts didn’t reveal the waists of. That is when the pronouns started. And my friend and I would sit in my too-hot, sun-soaked room and I would say things and they would say, “Yes. Yes, that’s gender.” The next house was all queer when we started, and very quickly all non-binary too. Something in the water. Something about understanding that we were held and accepted in this space, whatever we looked like and wore. Gender and presentation undid themselves somewhat. But that isn’t all of the world and it still didn’t make skirts and dresses feel better. Where am I now? Winter feels like the safest territory. I sculpt my own shape. I run my hands over a bulky body stuffed with fabric in all the right places. Summer remains hot. There are parts of my body that I dislike and these don’t have anything to do with the gender binary, although plenty to do with the patriarchy. There are parts of my body that I dislike because of the gender binary and they are unchangeable and uncuttable. It helps when they are loved, it helps when they are looked at, and held with a love and a recognition that exists, outside of gender. But it doesn’t fix anything. I am attached to a body that I must strive to live with because no form will fit me. With and without, this body will always be off the mark. Sweaty summers remind us of what we cannot take off, what we do not want to undo, what lies beneath. And the ache it runs through us.

First Published in Penumbra Online: Summer 2023 Ungendering Gender

A reading of the piece is available on Penumbra here.