Pink Musings

I remember the first time I allowed myself to wear pink. It wasn’t the first time I’d worn pink; after all, I was assigned female at birth in the mid-90s. Between first breaths and the first time I heard that something was “for boys” or “for girls”, I bet I wore every colour of the rainbow. I have no memory of those simpler times.

I remember that pink shirt. It leaned more edgy than girly, the black trim convincing me that my “tomboy” self could wear it. I was roughly six years old.

Antique pink is such a pleasant colour. The gentle hue reminds me of warmth and brings to mind rose gelato, kitten noses, and the delicate notes of a fruit long forbidden, finally tasted.

I never wanted to be considered a girl — I still don’t. If you ask me what my gender is, and you’re not a government form, I’ll sit and contemplate for a moment before realising that I don’t have an answer. It’s a good thing nobody asks anymore. After all, I read as a cis female and douse myself in rosy hues. What else could I be?

Do I even know?

At around age 17, I became fed up with assumptions. I tired of bras and blouses. I no longer wanted to be grouped with this feminine gender. A caterpillar in Spring, I cocooned myself in scratchy binders and button-down tops and felt my heart emerge on new wings.

Every now and again I find a picture of myself, where I’m wearing my favourite button-down over my best binder, my hair dyed in the six shades of the rainbow flag. A genuine smile lounges across my lips, my rainbow-painted fingernails splayed against my forehead. I remember being so happy. I was myself.

I struggled so much to assert that part of me.

What changed? Nobody knows. Maybe I hit a feminine phase in my genderfluid cycle and never looked back. I had grasped freedom and truth while identifying as trans masculine, and this time gave me the energy to examine the truest version of myself. Perhaps that’s where I gave myself permission to embrace the colour pink. Oh, such a pleasant colour.

It’s so hard to explain how liking pink as a presumed-female-person is a radical act. Liking pink while assigned female is a societal norm, but one I had to fight to claim for myself. I fought so hard to convince myself that pink didn’t have to be antithetical to my identity just because people associated it with the femininity I didn’t want. I still wonder if people think I’m lying; that my trans masculine moments were a phase I grew out of, rather than the growing itself.

I really like pink. I like fit-and-flare dresses and wearing makeup. That’s who I am. But when I look at photographs of my younger self, I don’t see a different human. He was me, I was them, and ‘she’ sits comfortably right now. These are not contradictions.

And yet I feel like I took an easy road out. Be born female; never correct people if they call you a woman. Maybe I am slacking, or maybe I just took the strife into my heart instead of leaving it outside.

Maybe I just lack the passion. I’m tired. I can’t fight anymore, can’t fight for people to call me by titles and genders I can’t even identify.

If you still have that passion, that drive in your heart, let me commend you. Our future needs you. The transgender children, the nonbinary children, the kids whose titles still linger unspoken on the tips of our tongues need you to be brave and strong as long as you can.

There came a day for me when I’d answer the question but never bring it up. We who sit as elders in our easy chairs at the ripe age of twenty-six do not want you to join us here; rather, we hope we forged a world kind enough for you to last a little longer before your joints grow weary and your heart can’t take the strain of forging your place in this world. We hope you rest in comfort as you are, not wondering what could be.

But I’m not unhappy. I’d wager myself quite happy, quite content in the corner of the world that I’ve carved for myself. And yet, when the conversation turns to gender, it feels like an out-of-body experience. The words I fought to speak now feel forbidden to my lips. Is it not my place to speak on transgender experiences anymore? I don’t know. I feel like I still have a story to tell, but there are voices stronger and younger than mine that aren’t as tired. Voices that fit the narrative we need, the narrative of truest selves and confidence. Maybe in the future I’ll find my breath again.

Perhaps this right here is that future. I’m typing on a candy pink keyboard, writing the narrative of a life not yet over. Maybe I’ll find who I am some day yet. Maybe a bright eyed youth will approach me and speak the name for what I am, a name I’ve never heard. For now, I’ll sip my coffee from a pink kitty-cat mug, and assert my truth not through a single phrase, but through my story.

I may not know what I am, but I know who I am. And I like pink.