How You Become a Girl by Lauren L. Cisneros

cw: body image, fatphobia, homophobia, homophobic slurs, misogyny

You are ten and your gender is fat. You are five foot four inches and wear a women’s size 12. Remember this is the last year of the 2000s.  The girls in your class shop at Justice while your mother buys you bras at Lane Bryant. Soon, she will give you clothes from her closet that will make you look like a receptionist at a physical therapist’s office.

Currently, your wardrobe consists of Bermuda shorts and sarcastic cartoon tees. You despise dresses because they mean you can’t sit like your older brother, legs wide with your left calf resting on your right knee. You will be told to sit like a lady. It is the time in your life when the people around you take interest in making sure you become a lady.

You have been made aware that you are not pretty. The two girls from church that you run around with both have nicknames: Flacita, skinny, Muneca, doll. You are neither of these things, so you remain unchristened by platitudes. Until one day after being called into the house from playing outside, your brother looks you over and calls you mangy.

The only boys who like you are the ones who are called girls by the other boys. You do not care about boys, but it feels like their attention is something you should want. You get the sense that people are displeased with you for not being on the receiving end of the stares and compliments some other girls get, most of all your mother. She is watching you closely, and you don’t quite understand why.

The two of you are clothes shopping for the new school year. You are entering fifth grade and the Kohls fitting room is the worst kind of panopticon.

“Is there anyone you like?” she asks while you are trying on a pair of black culottes. You think they look more mature than Bermuda shorts, cooler.

You think of Anne-Laur, the exchange student from France your friend’s family is hosting. She is fourteen and uses peroxide spray in her hair to give herself highlights. She smokes cigarettes by the pool when Lydia’s parents are busy, and whenever you come over you watch her, the sun-bleached strands of her hair.

“Not really,” you say.

“You and David are always together,” she replies, trying to sound nonchalant.

David is a boy from church you have gotten close to. He is probably your best friend. He stood up for you when one of the girls who has a crush on him calls you an annoying, fat bitch. You tell no one about his admitted crush on Jake T. Austin from Wizards of Waverly Place.

“Oh, I guess,” you respond. Your mother starts speaking again before the last word leaves your mouth.

“Do you like him?” She pauses, but not long enough for you to answer. “Someone told me they saw you kissing.”

You have not kissed David. No one knows you’ve already had your first kiss with Anne-Laur, although it was just a joke and probably didn’t count. You know it is not in your best interest to tell your mother this, so you just reply.

“Who told you that?”

“Jasmine’s mother.”

Jasmine is the name of the girl who called you an annoying fat bitch.

“Why did she say that?”

“Never mind that,” your mother presses, “Did you kiss him?”

You hesitate for a moment, but you realize it would be easier for everyone if you lie.
“Yes,” you answer, hoping it sounded true.

Your mother does not sound angry. To your surprise, and for a reason you don’t understand yet, her voice sounds relieved.

“Thank you for telling the truth.”

You feel a new kind of shame. It is not the usual warm flush of embarrassment. This shame is slow and creeping and tinged with guilt. This shame makes you feel like a dog eating their vomit and it will follow you for the rest of your life.

You step out of the fitting room. The pants fall past your ankles and are large enough to hide your shape. You don’t mind them.

Your mother looks you over and her mouth thins into a familiar line. “You know,” she says, “We should get you some dresses. You want to look good for your friend, right?”

You say nothing but know something has begun that you cannot stop.

***

You are ten and you are wearing a floral abomination. A knee-length cotton dress with a ditzy, pale print and capped sleeves. It is “modest” enough to be appropriate for an Assembly of God Pentecostal church in Central Florida, but the neckline shows a hint of cleavage. You are the only girl you know with cleavage; it gets you looks you do not want, and it makes you want to shirk all the more.

“What’s with the get-up?” Flaca asks. She is sitting next to you in the Sunday school class meant for teenagers. The two of you are not teenagers, but are not babies either. You consider yourself mature for your age because people tell you that you are.

“It’s not a get up,” you respond, trying to keep your voice low, so the thirtysomething former marine who leads bible study doesn’t hear. He makes you uncomfortable because he stares but never smiles.

“Chico’s looking at you.” Flaca snorts.

Chico’s real name is Stephanie. She is two years older than you and called Chico because she always wears sports jerseys with the cargos sagged so you can see the colorful boxers underneath. She doesn’t mind being called Chico, and although the two of you aren’t really friends, you can see she is looking and smiling at you.

You smile back. Perhaps the dress isn’t that bad.

You don’t remember what was discussed in bible study. All you think about is Chico and her smile. When it’s over, you walk away from Flaca and try to catch up with Chico just outside the door. You are called back by the hard-eyed ex-marine, who you didn’t realize was watching you as well.

“This look suits you better.” he says, “Now everyone can tell you are attractive.”

Attractive. It is not something anyone has called you before. In fact, you are aware it is not a word that people thought when looking at you. You are still ten years old.

You do not say anything. You let the words hang in the air and hope the inappropriateness of them will register. You will come to realize that it never registers.

Your eyes wander to Chico, alone right outside the hallway.

“Are you friends with that girl?” he asks.

“I haven’t really talked to her,” you say, your arms instinctively crossing.

“Good.” He leans closer to you. “Because that girl has the spirit of lesbianism in her. Do you know what a dyke is?”

It is 2009 and you have unrestricted internet access. Of course you know what a dyke is. He thinks he is teaching you everything, and you know it’s best to play along.

You shake your head.

“Something you don’t want to be. Something your family and God will reject.”

You want to ask him what’s wrong with being a dyke. You’re so angry you want to tell him you might be a dyke too. That you kiss girls and only like boys when they remind you of girls. But you don’t want God or your family to reject you, and you don’t want people to talk about you the way they talk about Chico.

When you finally step outside and see her, you greet her with a slow, pressing hug and hope the man is watching.

You are silent on the car ride home. Your mother asks you what’s wrong, and you tell her you don’t want to go to Sunday School anymore. You tell her what the man said about Chico. You leave out the part about the dress, thinking she might blame you for the cleavage.

“That was wrong of him,” she said. “You can’t make assumptions like that based on how a girl dresses.” She sighs, hesitating before she speaks. “People say the same things about you, you know. “

“They do?”

“Yes, but so many people came up to me today to tell me how pretty you look.” She meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. “People used to make fun of me, you know. For being big, for my frizzy hair…” Her voice is tight, and she sounds like the girl she used to be. “I don’t want that for you.”

You don’t like seeing your mother upset. And while you, in your childhood wisdom, know that anyone genuinely happy with themselves and not in fear of what they could be could ever fix their mouth to call you fat or ugly or a dyke, you still want to avoid rejection, you want to want the attention your dress got you. You want your mother not to cry.

So you wear dresses now, and you endure the ex-marine’s comments and his hand on your shoulder. You go on baby food diets and juice cleanses with your mom, but neither of you become skinny. For Christmas, she gets you a manicure kit.

“My daughter is a really good girl,” she tells her friends. “She stays out of trouble. Boys like her.”

That winter, you watch Black Swan in theaters. On one of the weekends he has custody, your father buys you tickets to the ballerina movie and leaves fifteen minutes in to wander the mall. It is a film about a girl who kills herself trying to become a beautiful princess. There is a scene between Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, and Natalie Portman and Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis, that pulses in some unknown part of you and you think about a woman’s mouth between another woman’s legs and Nina’s stomach full of glass for weeks.

Nina’s last words before dying: “I was perfect.”

You know you will either grow up to be a woman or dead.  There are perhaps other options, still unknown to you, harder than becoming a woman and perhaps even harder than dying. Trying to be good at being a girl is easier than both for now. It will make being in the world easier, even though you know that whatever you’ve made yourself won’t last forever. Being a girl or a woman feels like a role you were destined to flub. You will never truly be either of these things, but people for the most part acknowledge the effort.

Something inside you begins to turn hard and angry. There is something about being a girl that feels violent. Everyone always expects you to be pretty, to be nice, to smile and take it. But girls like Chico, who flaunt themselves in the face of shame and disapproval, make your heart quicken with hope. You love the mangy girls, the butch girls, the rude girls, the fat girls. You honor the dyke, the whore, the cunt, the bitch. You start to defend them, thinking one day you’ll learn to join them.

You’ll learn you do not have to be good at being a girl. You know good girls don’t live. You know good girls can’t survive.