I Was Just Ken

I was recently clocked by my seventeen-year-old niece.

Clocking: a term originally used to express the act of figuring out that a person is transgender.

When not applied to trans people, it generally has the connotation that the person you clocked doing whatever thing didn’t really want to be seen or that they thought they were being sneaky about it.

- Definition from Reddit User, peripesto

The conversation between me and my niece went something like this:

Niece: “I used to think you were gay when I was younger.”

Me: “Why did you think that?”

Niece: “Because you used to play as a boy character on Fantage and you always played as Ken instead of Barbie.”

Me: “Well, I’m bisexual.”

Niece: “That makes sense.”

Having a niece that is less than eight years younger than me, means that she got to experience the tail end of my days playing with toys and engaging in virtual world websites for kids.

And even though she was very young at that time, her memory did not serve her wrong. When it came to playing pretend with toys, I preferred Ken over Barbie or really any boy doll over the girl dolls. My personal favorite happened to be a figurine of Jim Hawkins from the movie Treasure Planet, which came with one of my Happy Meals in the early 2000s.

And my love for pretending to be a boy didn’t stop there. When me and my cousins would play House, I would take on the male roles, either as the dad or the brother of the family (which was the role I preferred). And as a kid, I rationalized it by stating that someone had to play those roles. How could we play House without a brother? (Even though in my family, I only had sisters). Or without a dad? (Even though my cousins didn’t actually have their dads in their home). Someone had to play the male role and why shouldn’t it be me?

I continued down this path of subtle dragdom by creating male avatars on virtual world websites like Fantage, Club Penguin, Planet Cazmo, and IMVU. I created new male names for myself and an entirely new identity that fit the idea of what I felt a boy was.

(Sidenote: my display name on Planet Cazmo was even “Unisek_Baby” — because I couldn’t use the word “sex” on a kids’ game — as if that wasn’t the biggest giveaway that I was a girl behind the screen).

In the real world, my fascination with masculinity translated itself into the kind of clothes I wore. From a young age, I had a strong aversion to dresses and skirts or any kind of clothing that frilled or overall just appeared too “girly.” I was not a fan of the color pink; I much preferred blue and when many of the girls my age were jumping rope or playing hopscotch at recess, I found myself gravitating towards the boys playing kickball, basketball, and football.

I distinctly remember in first grade, a boy coming up to me and asking “are you a boy or a girl?” In that moment, I was offended but I answered him saying “I’m a girl.” The next day I showed up to school in a pink shirt that frilled at the arms. My stint with feminine clothing didn’t last long, however. Soon enough I was back to wearing hoodies and T-shirts.

Then in fourth or fifth grade, I had a curious moment. I always watched movies and TV shows where boys would walk around their houses with their shirts off and no one batted an eye at it. And I thought to myself, why can’t I too?

I wasn’t confident enough to actually walk around my house shirtless and I was more than aware of my developing breasts (because no one would let me forget them), but as I sat in the basement of my house watching TV alone, I decided to take my shirt off. The A/C hit my chest and caused goosebumps to rise on my arm but I didn’t put my shirt back on. There was something freeing in that moment. Unfortunately, my older sister happened to come down into the basement shortly after that and when she questioned me about why my shirt was off, I simply stated “I don’t know.” She then scolded me and reminded me once again that “you’re not a boy!”

I created scenarios and stories in my head and in my imagination, I was always seeing the world from a male’s perspective.

As a child, there was a simple word for someone like me that made my behavior acceptable: tomboy. Many girls went through a tomboy phase. It was all over TV and those girls eventually grew out of it. The clothes that I liked to wear also weren’t “boy clothes,” according to my mother; they were unisex. These terms watered down what I was experiencing and made it okay for me to be a masculine girl in a heteronormative, Christian environment.

The truth was that I wasn’t just a tomboy and my gender expression wasn’t simply just unisex. I was queer AF. But I didn’t have the language to express that and once I did, I knew that those words were unacceptable. “Tomboy" and “unisex” were safe. Liking Ken dolls was safe because Ken was only important when linked to Barbie — a girls’ toy. Playing as boy characters was safe, as long as it was make-believe.

Hiding in the safety of acceptability made me come to terms with my sexuality later in life. Where many people become vividly aware of their sexuality in middle school or high school, I didn’t come to the realization that I am bisexual until I was twenty-three, only two years ago.

And looking back on my love for Ken and my overwhelming interest in seeing the world through a boy's eyes, there’s probably a deeper conversation that needs to be had in regards to my gender identity, but being that I just started accepting the term “bisexual,” I’m not ready to unpack that quite yet. For now, allowing myself to explore the possibilities without the need to do it in a way that society finds acceptable is “Kenough.”

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Thanks for reading!

-Chanté