The Lobster Dance

Let’s wrap this all up with this heartwarming piece about Halloween and being trans. Addison Rose Vincent’s (they/them)  “What Halloween Means to Me as a Transgender Person” gave me life this Halloween season:

I was so excited to put on my costume, and a friend across from my room invited me in to do my makeup. She finished, and when I saw myself the feeling from the year before immediately came back: I felt like I found myself again, a beautiful reunion.

And this time, that reunion was celebrated. The shipboard community embraced and cheered me on, my friends affirmed me, and the cute guys who gave me looks of disgust in my everyday drag were now doing double takes, asking “who is she? I haven’t seen her before…” It brought me joy to be seen as the femme that I am, and their reactions made me feel safe and confident enough to explore it more, and to do so very publicly.

I spend a lot of time thinking about gender as a costume and about costumes as gender. I’m sure it won’t surprise any of you to know that I also experimented quite a bit with gender, both femininities and masculinities, for Halloween in my teens and 20s. Of course, the problem when you’re nonbinary and dress as a hyper-feminine or -masculine character often means you get praised for “doing it right” if the costume matches your assigned gender at birth; this is about the same reaction I get re: formal wear. 

Remember, if you’re cis or questioning and want to play with gender, it’s never okay to use a costume to make fun of trans people or femmes. Sophie Labelle of Assigned Male wrote a nice comic about this here.

See also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBKpXHB0e_U

Happy Halloween, readers!