Self-Made Boy

By: Justine Axelsson
Posted In: News

Friday morning I left my house a girl. That wasn’t exactly the case an hour later when I returned home. I had short blond hair, thick eyebrows, a patchy beard and sideburns. I pulled in my driveway and was met by my roommate, who could barely walk or talk upon seeing me, and who remained hunched over and hysterically laughing even after I ran inside the house and closed the door.

By this point it was only my face and hair that had been transformed. I was still wearing my pink and gray sweat pants. After looking at myself in the mirror for about 10 minutes, I decided it was probably a good time to put the proper attire on. Thanks to a guy friend who willingly let me borrow jeans, a sweatshirt, and shoes, I went from looking like me to looking like my little brother’s 15-year-old skateboarding friends. I conveniently referred to myself as Justin.

In recent weeks I had been hearing a lot about Norah Vincent, and her book Self-Made Man (Viking). Vincent left her job as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times to write a book about the experience of disguising herself as a man to explore the male world from an inside perspective.

During those 18 months, Vincent, who called herself Ned, joined a bowling league, went to strip clubs, and even took other women out on dates. She wanted to learn what goes on in the lives and minds of men. What she found, however, was not everything she had expected. She saw men at their worst and at their best. She had empathy for them and admitted that they have it a lot harder than she thought.

She learned that men aren’t always the macho, sexist, competitive creatures that society stereotypes them as; in fact she learned that from a young age boys, “have the sensitivity routinely mocked, shamed, and beaten out of them, and the treatment leaves scars for life. Yet we women wonder why, as men, they do not respond to us with more feeling. Actually we do more then that. We blame and disdain them for their heartlessness.

And we aren’t the only ones. Men are at the center of their own conflict. They, as much as anyone, toughen each other in turn and often find no fault in it.”

Despite her new found respect and admiration for men, Vincent says that after being one for 18 months, she is fortunate, proud, and just glad to be a woman.

When looking for a story with a different perspective for a journalism class, my professor brought up Vincent’s book and suggested I do something similar but on a much smaller scale and try to get an idea of what it might feel like to dress and act as a man and observe how other people reacted to me. So I did.

Now, it is important to understand that from the first mention of doing this story, my mind immediately starting racing with questions about gender and identity, both of which I know are socially constructed. I know that ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman are conditioned in our minds from the time we are born until the time we die.

We learn what gender norms are and what is acceptable and I was just about to go against all of them. Everything I do in my daily life is a reflection of the way I’ve been taught to live as a woman. I shave my legs, wear make-up, douse myself with perfume, avoid burping in public, and cross my legs when wearing a skirt because that is what women are supposed to do.

That is, according to society. I am very aware of my femininity and I know that culture has shaped my every action. The question was, could I push aside all those things that were so routine, comfortable, and just plain female to become a male?

I couldn’t pass for a guy by just throwing on a wig and some baggy clothes. With

the help of make-up artist and instructor Joe Rossi, I went into Mercy Hall looking like a 21-year-old woman and came out an adolescent boy. The application of the wig and make-up took about an hour and when everything was finished I was mortified at the thought of walking to my car and having someone see me. Then I realized it was only the beginning of a long day of laughs and embarrassments.

Looking back now, I realize that my shame and awkwardness were results of the way I internalized violating the laws of gender. Gender codes are so strict and we can spot the people who break them from a mile away and I didn’t want to be recognized as one of those people.

Since my friends reacted to me the way did, even though they knew me and knew about the story I was writing, I couldn’t bear the idea of strangers passing judgments or “catching” me breaking those gender norms. I was literally terrified. I was me, but I wasn’t me.

My first public appearances took place at Barnes & Noble and PetCo in Middletown. I was accompanied by three friends, two men and one woman, and it was here that I got to act like a man to the best of my ability.

To me, this meant hunching my shoulders, walking with my legs apart, deepening my voice, containing my excitement over the cute little rodents in the pet store, and even pretending to be turned on by the more than half-naked women that appeared on the pages of Maxim, while browsing through the bookstore.

The next stop was at a friend’s house who took pictures and between bouts of laughter, tried to help me find my best male voice and posture. I practiced saying, “I’ll have a coke please,” numerous times before we were all confident that I could go out

to dinner and order without giving myself away. Dinner was our final destination and I wanted some reactions.

We chose to go to dinner at the Restaurant “99” because we knew it would be busy but also low-key. I thought I might be able to get some reactions, but I was so nervous to order and interact with people because my voice wasn’t deep enough and I had trouble taking myself seriously without laughing.

The waitress didn’t act like I was suspicious and it felt like a normal dining experience except for my paranoia and awful attempts at changing my voice, Oh, and that I had to use the bathroom but couldn’t decide whether to go to the ladies’ room or the men’s room, so I decided to wait until I got home.

I had to keep looking up to see whether my friends were laughing at me. Since I had no way of knowing if the waitress thought I was a man, we decided to ask her after we paid our bill.She said she thought I was a girl. I guess she couldn’t see the stubble from where she was standing. She must have thought I was a tomboy with a bad hair cut.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was hoping to convey to an audience by walking around dressed as a member of the opposite sex and then writing about it. I guess I was hoping to notice obvious differences in how I was treated and reacted to. But the whole time I was dressed as a guy I couldn’t let myself ignore the girl.

I couldn’t push aside all those meaningless actions I am aware that I do as a result of society’s influence. So much of who I am centers on my role as a woman. By putting on facial hair and baggy clothes and choosing to write this story, I was hoping to reject the notions of womanhood to try and be a guy, but I just couldn’t do it.

The experience wasn’t what I had intended it to be. I didn’t get many strange

reactions or stares. I don’t know if this is because I pulled it off and passed for a guy, or because people have become more polite and accepting and avoid things such as staring or passing judgment.

I did learn however, that despite being comfortable in my own skin, changing the way I looked and acted changed my confidence. Or could it have been because my old boyfriend saw me dressed as a man? Either way, when the assignment was over it felt good to put my mascara back on.