In Her Own Skin

I am a girly girl but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except that I have three older brothers.

I remember the day I became aware of the shamefulness of my condition. Before then, I had been ignorant. I did not know that if I liked pink, I fit into the abhorrent stereotype. And I loved pink. 

I also loved to play dress up—donning a fluffy pink dress with roses perched on puffy sleeves. The sleeves released a rich scent when fluffed, like an old-fashioned perfume bottle. I didn’t mind that the scent was the mothball kind that prevails at rummage sales. Once I put on that aromatic dress, I was a princess. Turquoise high heels and a glitzy gold purse were the last touches of royalty. Then, of course, I would click downstairs in a stately manner so that everyone could admire me, which they obediently did.

Of course, as royalty, I also held many tea parties with my subjects and fellow princesses. I did not have to drink tea as long as my sugar water and snow-white slice of Styrofoam toast were in a pretty teapot or plate. 

Yet I knew that my tea table would never be complete until an American Girl Doll also presided at it. So I prayed every night that God would send me an American Girl Doll, and when I was six, blue-eyed Kirsten arrived in a white cardboard box at Christmas. 

Here at last was a friend who understood me and my need to care for somebody! I dressed her in many outfits and learned how to give her every hair-do imaginable. I didn’t explain to her why I did this, but her blue eyes blinked understandingly.

But one day, all that changed. When I was nine, my family visited some friends in Florida who had two children. The girl, Naomi, had dark hair that dipped into her face, and she always beat me at basketball and checkers. I had just lost another game of checkers to Naomi when her brother Johnny came grinning up to me.

“I bet,” he said, “you’re the kind of girl who plays with dolls.” He scrunched up his eyes and giggled, and a drop of drool trickled from his lips.

“Johnny, be quiet,” Naomi ordered, too late.

“I do not,” I replied, offended by the accusation. 

Technically, I only do Kirsten’s hair these days, so I’m not lying. 

But I was.

Johnny’s words were a lightbulb. Suddenly, I understood that I was not just a girl, but a girly girl—the kind who lost at basketball and checkers because she played with dolls. And, while no one would snicker at a boy playing with a toy truck, everyone would wink and point if they saw me with a doll. I couldn’t be myself if I wanted the world to like me; I needed to pretend to be somebody else. 

So after I got home, I took Kirsten upstairs to the attic. She didn’t reproach me. She just blinked understandingly.

Next, I trained myself to despise pink. It became a color as bad as a curse word. Then, because I heard my mom tell someone that I wasn’t very athletic, I decided to change that too. I got my brother to teach my how to hit a softball. I tried to climb trees like my tomboy friends, but when I was ten feet off the ground, I always froze. Fearful that I was still a girlish weakling, I jogged in barefoot circles around our local ball field, chasing after an elusive identity. Perhaps if I were less like a girl and more like—what? A boy? A proud, muscular, and fiercely independent girl? A boyish girl? I wasn’t that, but I tried to become that anyway because wise people like Johnny respected them. I forgot the admiration of my obedient subjects in my princess days. I didn’t really listen when, as I watered my brother’s comforter, he told me he was glad I wasn’t a boy. I didn’t really see the Bible verse that claimed that “God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them” (Gen. 1.27, English Standard Version). Instead, I kept running in circles, building my muscles and endurance so that when I crossed that finish line at summer camp, the right people would notice me. Johnny wouldn’t be laughing anymore.

The right people didn’t notice. In fact, nobody noticed. I had given up my real body and was running as the ghost of someone else. No one was laughing, but then no one was smiling either.

Then smiling Aunt Pat moved in next door. She was the sort of feminine figure that feminists despise: quiet, humble, and servant-like. The more sand she swallowed, the more pearls she spewed. After her grandbaby was born dead, she got on her knees. After her twenty-one-year-old son died unexpectedly, she kept smiling at others. And after her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, she kept popping out-of-doors to see who else had burdens she could lift. This lady didn’t pretend to be someone else; she was comfortable in her own skin. Her quietness didn’t cower; it towered like iron. She did not need to obtain bigger muscles to fight for her rights because her spirit could lift more than a heavyweight champion.

As I watched this strange new neighbor, I relaxed. If having the strength to smile and lift others is what it means to be feminine, well, then I want to remain a girl. Perhaps playing with dolls is not so much a sign of domesticity as it is a sign of caring for someone besides oneself. 

Eventually, my spirit found my own skin, and she donned a hot pink sweatshirt without blushing. Then, later, she mounted the attic stairs and carried a doll down to her bedroom.

The doll’s blue eyes blinked understandingly.