Why Beauty Has Been the Safest Space to Explore My Gender Identity
For years, I’ve been trying to parse out what, exactly, the word “gender” means — both in the overarching, philosophical sense as it relates to society and, on the most individualized level, in how it pertains to me. There isn't an easy answer, but the longer I've searched for one, the more comfortable I've become with the uncertainty of it, and the more freedom I've felt to explore it. For Allure's partnership with Ulta Beauty on our new series, See Yourself, See Each Other, I wanted to delve deeper into why beauty can be such a remarkable space to explore one's gender (in addition to how selfhood relates to one's skin, hair, representation, and body image), not simply for myself but for so many other folks, too.
From a young age, I knew I was queer: I was attracted to boys and girls, and, later, people outside of binary identities — that is, who don't identify their gender as male or female. I was fortunate to have attended a high school where there were many openly gay and queer students, myself included. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something innately frustrating about my body. Without going into too many specifics, there was a certain uneasiness that I developed upon — well, upon developing, so to speak. With the onset of puberty came wider hips and larger breasts, and an increasing level of anxiety over those changes accompanied them, too.
To distract myself from the aspects of my appearance I didn't feel OK with, I played up the ones I could control. I wore neon makeup, dyed my hair every shade of the rainbow, and got piercings on my face and body. At 18, I started getting tattoos, often impulsively, which is a habit I have yet to slow down with even at 29 years old. And yet, there was a lingering pressure to fulfill a specific type of feminity — to be pretty, soft, thin, hourglass. To be hair-free except for the hair on my head, which I felt obligated to keep long throughout most of my life in order to retain my adherence to these expectations and standards.
It wasn't until college that I began looking through message boards that I stumbled upon online communities of people who voiced feelings like mine. It was on those boards that I first learned terms like "genderqueer," "gender nonconforming," and "nonbinary," which all have somewhat different meanings (and vary person to person) but in the simplest terms are used to describe identities outside of the gender binary of male and female. I had heard the term "transgender," but because I didn't identify myself to be male at the time, it didn't feel quite accurate for me. (It's important to note that there are many gender-nonconforming people who identify as trans and nonbinary; eight years ago, though, I had been under the impression that being transgender meant identifying as either male or female.)
One of the most important things someone can do in order to be a good ally to any marginalized group is to independently do your own research whenever possible. While headlines about how the Internet is fraught with cyberbullying and fake news, it’s nevertheless a wonderful (and plentiful!) resource for discovering information about identities — gender, sexuality, race, religion, and otherwise — that you’re unfamiliar with. And beyond this, it may actually lead you to discover things about yourself that you never knew, which is precisely what I experienced upon going down those messageboard rabbit holes all those years ago.
Gender identities and presentations outside of the "norm" aren't passing trends, nor are they phases that individuals go through. That said, it's integral to our understanding of gender that we allow room for all people to experiment, examine, and evolve — and to me, that's where beauty comes in. While not all LGBTQ+ folks enjoy coloring their hair, wearing makeup, or playing with fashion in a way outside their culture's conventions, there are countless instances in history of queer and trans people using beauty to relate to one another and to explore their own identities. Look no further than the vibrant history of ball culture, created and popularized by gay, trans, and nonbinary Black and Latino people in the '80s and '90s. Spaces such as these are not only significant to the LGBTQ+ community, they've also made huge impacts on beauty and pop culture as a whole.
This openness doesn't just benefit the queer community, either: Everyone, including those who are straight and cisgender (identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth), deserves to be able to wear whatever they want, whether that's a bright blue cat-eye and neon glitter lips or just a touch of sunscreen with zero makeup. To me, this is what makes projects like See Yourself, See Each Other so important. Each of the folks I was lucky enough to interview has a unique story to tell, a distinct perspective shaped by their experiences, and a totally personal sense of style.
Ericka Hart, for instance, is a sex educator and activist who has used her voice to speak out about the issues facing black and brown transgender, gender-nonconforming, and queer people. Closing the (huge) gap in representation for these marginalized identities is a goal prioritized by Hart, who previously shared her story about having a double mastectomy with Allure — another issue that black women and femmes are disproportionately affected by.
YouTuber Trinity Anne, whose BeautyWithTrinity channel has amassed over 140,000 followers, uses her platform to not only offer incredibly helpful advice to young people exploring their own identities but to deliver fun, playful makeup tutorials that anyone with a penchant for palettes will love. For her, beauty is both a creative outlet and a means to educate viewers about transgender identity — something that made her a perfect candidate for this project.
Education is of the utmost importance to Ali Medina, a teacher and model. In our interview, they revealed a particularly amazing conversation they had with their class of middle schoolers about pronouns (Medina prefer the gender-neutral they and them pronouns, just as I do), and recalled one student later thanking Medina for helping them realize their own gender identity and preferred pronouns. It's no secret that kids and teens are subjected to narrow standards and ideals of beauty, but the pressure to maintain gender-specific expectations of their presentation is less visible. For example, parents pushing the idea on their kids that long hair is for girls and short hair is for boys, or school dress codes that require female students to wear dresses to prom and male students to wear suits — and, in the cases of many trans or gender-conforming students, insisting that whatever gender the individual was assigned at birth is the gender that dictates how they're "supposed" to dress. By giving kids these gendered divisions and constraints in how they look and what they wear, we're prohibiting them from making their own beauty and style choices. And to put it plainly, that isn't fair to them.
Medina, too, has found comfort in experimenting with their appearance. For them, this came in the form of a super-short haircut from a Brooklyn barbershop — of which I am also a client — that allowed Medina to feel more at ease with their own appearance, particularly because its an intentionally safe space for the LGBTQ+ community. "Going to get my hair cut at [this barbershop] helped me feel so much more comfortable on how I wear my hair," Medina says. "I go there every week to get my hair done — it's almost ritualistic." Hair, of course, is one of the biggest aspects of beauty tied to identity; be sure to check out our hair edition of See Yourself, See Each Other series, led by our esteemed hair editor, Jihan Forbes.
Model Jari Jones, whose skyrocketing career can be seen on her Instagram, wants to expand the definition of what trans people look like, since not every transgender person is trying to look conventionally male or female — a takeaway that I cannot agree with or emphasize enough. While it's important to acknowledge the privilege of "passing" as cisgender and the unique (and often dangerous) difficulties that trans and nonbinary folks face on a daily basis, it's also valuable to recognize that in an ideal world, no one would feel that pressure in the first place. A femme trans person who likes their chest and leg hair shouldn't feel obligated to remove it simply for the comfort of others (Jacob Tobia, a genderqueer author and model, once told Allure that their five o'clock shadow makes the perfect natural contour, for example), just as a cisgender woman shouldn't feel like wearing makeup is a "necessity" — a philosophy that Allure editors hold very dear to our ethos.
It's been nearly three decades since I started playing around with makeup, and almost a decade of asking myself the question, "What does gender mean to me?" The most definitive answer I can come up with? The absence of a one, and that in itself makes the future beautiful, flexible, and fluid.
Sam Escobar is Allure's deputy digital director. You can follow them on Instagram and Twitter.
