Identity

To the everyday people I encounter– my parents’ co-worker, the friend of a friend, that one politics department alumni, and a handful of people in my extended family, Stop asking me what I’m going to do with my Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies major. 

I can’t bear
To draw self-portraits of myself.
I don’t trust mirrors
And I don’t trust my eyes.

I hated my mother for a long time. And right now, I cringe at the sight of those words on a page because I have never uttered them out loud, much less to another person.

Aethiopia, Abyssinia, Askum, Kush
All names thrown around by history books, by scholars 
Attempting to intellectualize, rationalize, standardize 
the place my parents call home 

3 interviews with UVA students to compare how they approach personal style 

I never thought I’d be able to say that I became best friends with a Scottish drag queen after winning a dance contest that had me death-dropping onto a sticky floor in a basement bar in Edinburgh. Enter Amy L’Amour.

When I was in high school, I looked very different. I had short, manic-pixie-dream-girl-esq hair after cutting my long, blonde waves to a bob in the middle of my sophomore year.

I have been wondering, lately, about my womanhood. It is not that I question the existence of the identity — I know I am a woman, and thank the universe every day that I was fortunate enough to be born in the right body. I embrace my “femininity” and feel the pain that comes with it. This much, I have a hold on.

Some of my earliest memories involve the My Little Pony franchise,

An interview with transgender students at UVA