Imitation
By: Dena Rod
Tags: LGBTQ, Gender Identity, Nonbinary Identity, Memoir, Creative Non Fiction

previously published in MetroWeekly July 30, 2020

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

My six-year-old body was consumed with desires I didn’t have language for yet. I was obsessed with mirrors, which I viewed as portals to another world. You see, there was always a huge chasm from how I saw myself to the truth reflected back at me in the cool silver panes that always beckoned. However, it wasn’t just mirrored closet doors I sought or the bathroom cabinet; any reflective surface would catch my eye.

I swiftly learned how bodies of water could serve me; puddles after the rain, the short-lived Jacuzzi that was in our backyard, the baby blue chlorinated water of the swimming pools where I took my swim lessons. I would examine the way my eyebrows curved and connected in the middle, the soft creased lines under my eyes, push my nose up so I could see the distinct hairs clustered inside. There was a foreignness to my body and appearance that I was seeking to understand. By foreign, I mean that inhabiting my body, this vessel of flesh, felt ill-fitting, untailored like I had unhemmed edges and broken zippers.

I didn’t look like how I saw myself. We were the first immigrant family in our white suburban neighborhood. I didn’t look like most of our neighbors. At six years old, the way I posed in the mirror was inspired by Kelly Bundy from Married with Children and I viewed her as the peak example of a woman and femininity. I felt so far away from her bright red lipstick, tight short skirt wearing self. I remember rolling up my denim skirt higher so that it would be shorter and tucking in the bottom third of my t-shirt inward to reveal my midriff. Later in life, I would note this experience as gender dysphoria, dressing in a feminity that didn’t feel earned or that belonged to me. My budding self only liked my appearance when I would have free reign to dress myself, with oversized flannel t-shirts pulled from the men’s section at Cocsto with large overalls that engulfed my body.

Windows especially enticed me. If the sunlight hit the white-hot concrete of our backyard just right, you could see yourself reflected back in the window outside. After the sun had set, our indoor lights provided enough illumination for me to stare at myself in our sliding glass doors.

The clamshell compacts in my Maman’s vanity felt even more magical, gilded halves that would satisfyingly click together between my hands after I would attempt to fine-tune my cheeks with blusher.

What perturbed me about my appearance was how everyone other than yourself could see you, how you looked, if there were stray hairs out of place, if your tongue turned red after a savored lollipop. The fact that you couldn’t look at your own visage if you didn’t have one of these magical objects seemed unfair. Why would humanity be cursed like this, where everyone can see you clearly but yourself? I tried to correct this by always staring at my reflection whenever I saw it, no matter what, a child Narcissus forever leaning towards themselves. Whenever I would come home from school, the first thing I would do is run to the mirror in my bedroom and see how I looked. My unkempt hair would puff up, made frizzy as I carelessly wound my fingers through it as the day passed. After all, Peter Pan lost his shadow and needed Wendy to sew it back to his feet to leave for Neverland. Who was I if I lost my reflection?

Ultimately, this obsession with my reflection was stamped out by my Baba who vehemently despised the way I would be distracted with myself. By dinner, I would pose in a presumably attractive manner, attempting to eat that evening’s meal in the ways I would see models and actresses eat in commercials. Of course, I understood this wasn’t practical but I was willing to make sacrifices to imitate the femininity presented to me. By age six, I knew how important it was to the world that I looked good. Otherwise, I would be relegated to a punchline, a joke that would cue the laugh track at my mishaps. Looking back, I realize this was one of my first attempts at assimilation, to blend in inconspicuously as to not attract any more undue attention to myself that my already hairy, brown body attracted in our white suburb. Yet, my Baba only saw his child growing up to be vain. My Baba thought that vanity was unvirtuous as evidenced by the way he would exalt my Maman who didn’t wear a lick of make-up on their wedding day. Clearly he didn’t see my Maman on her days off, furiously plucking the black hairs sprouting from her face in her magnified mirror. Vanity only existed if it was witnessed.

As I would sway and flip my hair in the reflection of the sliding glass doors in front of our dining table, my Baba would command me to stop. Harshly. His own eyebrows arched and connected in the middle like mine but not in an experiment of expression, but disconcerting discipline. But each and every time I dared to look above the rim of my dinner plate, I would see my fork sparkle, twinkling at me shifting under the light of the chandelier. I was happy to lose this battle of wills to my reflection and honestly, I would feel relief in the way that my reflection would dance to match the shimmy of my own shoulders. I was real because I could see myself.

My Baba had seen enough and was completely fed up with me and my defiance. Good little Persian girls didn’t disobey their fathers. If only he knew I wasn’t a girl this whole time, how I was trying to reconcile the image of what I saw of myself and how I felt inside. If only he knew that what I really was trying to do is find some trace of femininity that felt right and good and not like a costume that was bought for me off the rack. He commanded my Maman to pull the blinds over the sliding glass doors and the dull plastic didn’t reflect any light back at me, much less myself. Deflated and wounded, a tear snuck its way out of my eyes. As an only child, my reflection was the only constant companion I had, not including stuffed animals or dolls.

My relationships with mirrors evolved to be something more parasitic as I grew older. The mirror could be a friend, a confidant who would never lie to your face. But I soon learned how the mirror could also worm its way into my psyche and whisper all the ways in which I wasn’t enough of a woman. My shoulders were too broad to be a woman’s, as the delicate shoulders that a bra strap would slip down in an Oil of Olay commercial showed me. My shoulders sprouted the same black hairs that appeared under my arms and dusted the top of my thighs. These hairs made their way in between my upper lip and nose, crawled up to my navel from the waistband of my shorts. I didn’t want to bare my midriff any longer or roll those skirts up short like Kelly Bundy. The shame crawled in and I wanted to hide from mirrors, so I couldn’t see what I was turning into with these lumps on my chest and blood running in between my legs. I wasn’t enough woman and too much woman at the same time. Who did I think I was, playing at this game when I had barely figured out the rules?

I know who I am now, not man or woman, but a blend of both and neither at the same time. My relationship is fraught with mirrors as they don’t reflect who I am, but instead what the world sees when they see the expertly applied eyeliner and lipstick that I’ve mastered for camouflage. There’s safety in blending in but also danger in being in a body that is perceived to be woman. As I’ve grown rounder, the attention is lessened and tempered by the wedding ring on my finger but it only takes one full face of make-up to attract the heat of predatory eyes again. If only they knew that I was an imitation.