Our culture often demeans and devalues the work, the pleasures, and the contributions of women and feminine people. This is, in part, why beauty culture is dismissed as unimportant and frivolous. Janet Mock Read Quote
I learned to hide aspects of my personality. Playing with girls was fine, for example, but playing with their Barbies was something I could do only behind closed doors. Janet Mock Read Quote
To say that I loved school would be an understatement. It was my oasis, my sanctuary. Janet Mock Read Quote
I was in the seventh grade when I first began to identify as trans and express my gender identity as a girl. My social transition began with growing my hair and wearing clothes and makeup that made me feel like Destiny’s Fourth Child. Janet Mock Read Quote
When I was a high school freshman in Honolulu, I would sit with my girlfriends on the bleachers of the school amphitheater every morning. We’d meet in the same spot and chat for an hour before homeroom began. Janet Mock Read Quote
Toughening up, performing masculinity, pretending to enjoy things I didn’t enjoy all enabled me to dodge the gender policing of the adults around me. But the way I really was – the swished hips, the Double-Dutching, the hair flips – seemed to always prevail and attract Dad’s disdain. Janet Mock Read Quote
Throughout the day, I like to spritz my face with a rose water for extra moisture. Janet Mock Read Quote
Movies have always been spaces of refuge for me. For a few harmonious hours, I could escape my reality of being a girl living on the margins. Janet Mock Read Quote
