Edited by Alloe Mak

androgyny is a tricky term that contradicts itself. it is the absence of feminine and masculine traits, it is a combination of both. it is anything suitable for either sex, it is the reversal or obscuring of gender roles. it is something i strive to embody—an ideal i barely comprehend.

aristophanes’ myth of androgyne describes humans’ forgotten third sex, made up of two: man and woman. completely round, with back and sides in a circle; they had four hands each, as many legs as hands, and two faces, exactly alike, on a rounded neck. between the two faces, which were on opposite sides, was one head with four ears. zeus split them out of fear. love, aristophanes says, is our desire to return to this original form. androgyny is a gruesome primordial unity.

in 1970s photography, androgyny was soft cheekbones and shoulder pads, wide collars and narrow hips, white skin under studio lights. there was always a suit. not a working man’s suit, but a high-fashion contradiction: tailored to slimness, made for gazing. i once printed out a photo of david bowie in a silk blouse and hung it on my wall like a beacon, as if his image might alchemize me—make me luminous and untouchable. i wished to be the perfect imitation, but brown skin does not bleach easy. androgyny is a silhouette sketched in whiteness.

i’ve been told i look queer (meaning gender-nonconforming, meaning not-girl-enough) in ways that never sat right on my skin. it’s always when i wear oversized shirts, when i cut my hair short, when i bind my chest and walk with my shoulders squared. never in a dress, never when i cry and smear my eyeliner. there is a script to this neutrality, and it leans masculine. but i do not want to hollow myself out just to fit the frame. i want to be large enough to contain multitudes. androgyny is meant to be contradiction.

some days, the mirror is fogged up, and i cannot make out the lines of myself. what’s soft is too flimsy, what’s hard feels like drag. it’s fine line between femme and butch—both severely gendered, both somehow ill-fitting—and i tumble off on both sides. it doesn’t feel like embodiment. it feels like curation. like i am dressing a mannequin named after me. androgyny is a finish line that keeps moving.

sometimes it gets to be a quiet kind of home. when i am not trying. when the lights are dim and i am laughing in my own voice. when i see an old photo of myself, and recognize the same gaze in my eyes now. it’s the place i keep coming back to, again and again.