7. The whole point.

A collaboration with Lizzie Glover-Jones.

It was something I never questioned nor overthought. It didn’t even strike me as something to think about, because I was 4 – set on wearing trousers for my first day of school. My mum helped me with the buttons, giggling because I was just like a little boy. Sometimes I wish happiness these days was as simple as putting on a pair of trousers, and maybe sometimes it is.

Aged 14. I knew I was beautiful or at least I thought I was because people had told me so—and no, not just the creepy bus driver or the weird Year 7 teacher who really shouldn’t still be teaching, but my friends, the friendly shop cashier, my parents. I’d been catcalled more times than I could count, every single time while dressed in my school uniform. And also, I loved my best friend. Correction: I was in love with my best friend. Who was a girl.

As a child, I remember wishing I was a boy, just so I didn’t have to explain myself all the time. Sometimes I’d fool people with my clothes and my unruly hair, so they would refer to me as such and I’d go to bed with a smile on my face.

Through my teens, the silly boyfriends I had just made me feel as if I had pulled the short straw and had to be the girlfriend. It was as if I had to fit into a role that I didn’t even mean to audition for. I knew I’d have to readdress the truth as to why I wanted to hug the girl at the park just a little bit longer, and why I was always so concerned with making sure the older girls watched me play football. I didn’t wish I was a boy; I was just gay (and a bit of a show-off).

My mum insisted my bisexuality was just a phase. A few years later, I was still being catcalled, still being labelled with names like slut and bitch. I started to wonder whether I was the problem—or if it was my gender. I mean… wouldn’t everything be easier if I were a boy?

Referring to myself as either masculine or feminine seemed like putting a label on something that is neither, yet somehow both. Identity is something so abstract that I couldn’t even begin to explain it – and to me, that is the whole point.

I joined an LGBT+ youth group, and everyone there had pronouns I’d never even heard of before, but I quickly educated myself. And maybe, just maybe, that was the solution to everything. Men can’t call me a slut if I’m a fellow man, right? No one can say “she’s such a bitch” if I use they/them pronouns.

My peers tried so hard to understand themselves and label their identity. I considered myself quite lucky that I had been called a ‘tomboy’ all my life, and it felt like a second name used as equally as my first.

I played football with the boys at lunch because there was no girls’ team, so I was already halfway there anyway. So why not cut my hair, dress more masculine, change my name? … I stopped myself, quickly realising that my gender was not the problem, but the way society perceived it. I should not have to change myself or put my femininity into a neat box in order to be accepted.

It was just before starting secondary school when I decided it would be easier to just fit in and act more like a girl. I experimented with whatever jewellery I could get away with, every now and then I’d even do something different with my hair and actually like it. I began using heavy makeup (the reality of which was minimal eyeliner). Me and makeup have never really got on – I blame it on my lack of patience, skill and the need to constantly touch my face, so I never gave it a proper chance. Over the years I’ve learnt that that’s okay, not that I even cared much in the first place.

I learnt to find power in my femininity. I learnt to love my curves, my breasts, my curly hair. I learnt to fight, rather than quietly accept misogyny. I wrote poems about the sexism I had faced, which I later self-published in an anthology.

Throughout puberty, I thought it was so cool how my hips grew wide, and my waist dipped in, my chest now needed a bra. I remember thinking what a treat my 20s would be, excitedly imagining that by then I’d be a proper woman. I felt sexy in a way I hadn’t fathomed before, and it was totally liberating. I was chuffed to be me. I switched from trousers to pencil skirts, and it felt good. I knew I could switch it up whenever I wanted to – I could do both.

I am a bisexual woman. I love women and men alike. I can play football and lift weights and arm-wrestle. I can like the colour pink and jewellery that sparkles and lavender that smells like my grandma’s garden. I do not need to change myself or conform to anyone, and neither do you.

I forget there are people who perceive me every day. All I’ve known is ‘Georgia,’ and that is simple enough for me. It was my girlfriend, Amelia, who outrightly pointed out her love for the blend of traits I possess. The fact she acknowledged it all made me want to acknowledge it too, and in turn, myself.

“Sometimes I wish happiness these days was as simple as putting on a pair of trousers, and maybe sometimes it is.”