A Different Kind of Passing...

When I was a kid there was a Double A hockey team that played out of Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up.  My Dad being from New York, insisted we have season tickets.  So multiple times a week from October to March, we would head out to Broadbent Arena, sit in section 232, and cheer on the Louisville Ice Hawks!  After each game, we would go to the greet the team as they came of the ice, at which time if any of the players had broken a stick they would hand it over the little barrier to some deserving kid.  I noticed pretty quickly that that "deserving kid" usually turned out to be a boy... and, well, I wanted one of those sticks.  So, for the first time, I started to "pass".  I slicked back my hair, wore a cap, loose jeans, and a big black Ice Hawks t-shirt.  It kinds of became my uniform.  Now, trying to "pass" for this reason (to gain a privilege that your current gender doesn't allow) has many cultural implications about privilege and assimilation, but I will leave that to the academic theorist; for purposes of this story, I was a kid, who wanted a broken hockey stick, and in doing so found a more comfortable identity.

Robin Hood..  I think may Mom may have
curled my hair to offset the mustache

I can't say that's where it all started.  I was never a "girl"...  but it was at that point that I really grasped that dressing up like a boy was freeing to me AND as a bonus the "doing it to get a hockey stick" line, kept my parents at bay at least for a little while.  So, I started to dress-up like a boy when I had an excuse...  I went as Robin Hood the next year for Halloween.  And when we went through the local Fire Station Haunted House, a volunteer grabbed by Mom's foot and I felt brave enough to say "Get Off of my Mommy!"... you see Robin Hood was portrayed as brave in the Disney Cartoons, where all the princesses were busy being saved.  (Of course I have learned now that girls can be just as brave as boys, but my 9 year old brain only had Disney paradigms to work off of.)  Dressing like a boy made me feel like the best version of me.

Summer uniform: Polo and shorts

Fast forward...  So now I dress "like a boy" all the time.  Current daily uniform: khaki cargo shorts and polos.  In the winter: khaki style pants, and V-neck sweaters.  It is pretty simple.  I wear vests and ties when I have to dress up.  But as I got older, I stopped "passing".  I don't know if it is because my face no longer looks like a 12 year old boys, or what, but unless the person is in kindergarten (I insist that children have a better handle on gender than adults do), people barely ever recognize that I am not female.

So I have had an obsession with "passing" as a not pregnant person for as long as can.  It is not that I am not proud to be carrying our baby... because I am.  It is important work, and I get that.  But, to me, it is an interesting social experiment, as well as a way for me to bow out of the "Mommy" culture, where people are constantly reminding you to not pick-up heavy things, and take sit down breaks as often as possible.  Obviously, our close family and friends know that I am the "belly parent", as well as anyone reading this...  But I want to maintain as much anonymity at work as possible.  I work in an environment where as work policy dictates, a biological child, would be treated differently than a non-biological child, and so it is important to me to keep both of those words (bio v non-bio, which I DETEST anyway) out of people's brains.  If I could move to the mountains and never let anyone know who carried this child, that would be my druthers.  But we don't live in a vacuum, and so I have decided to be open with those people I am hoping will be understanding, and just maintain some belly parent ambiguity for those I don't feel comfortable engaging in conversation on the subject.

So here is the interesting thing... I have no idea if it is working.  We are currently 21 week, 6 days along, and I am certainly different shaped than I was 5 months ago.  But larger polo shirts do wonders.  I am aware of the ways that I stand that make things more obvious...  Amy and I currently play a game called "chubby guy/pregnant guy", where I stand in different ways and Amy tells me if I just look like I have just gained weight, or if I look pregnant.  I am still in that stage, where I feel like I just look like I have a beer gut, and no one wants to ask someone if they are pregnant, when it might be that they have just been indulging in a not so healthy food regimen.  I also think my masculinity will keep me in the clear for a while as well... because most people's brains don't process the gray area between male and female, and so being "male-ish" is not compatible with "baby carrying".  I am depending on people's ignorance in this respect, and maybe I will be surprised.

And I know it is just going to get harder.  This little bit is going to keep growing (I have been reminded), and at some point, I will probably no longer be able to hide it.  So my plan is to stop hiding the baby from people, and just start hiding from people altogether.  Luckily, I work in an office of 2-3... and I am thinking I can find creative ways to not need to go to our main office for large gatherings... where people may feel the need oogle.

My other current "passing" trick... I am growing a beard... and a nice one at that.  I grow facial hair naturally; when we were trying to get pregnant, I had my hormones tested left and right because the Doc was SURE I had too much testosterone that was causing me to grow such nice facial hair ("such nice facial hair" are my words, not her's)...  turns out I am just an anomaly.  Ever since I was about twelve, I would sneak into my Dad's bathroom and use his shaving cream and razor... I don't know if that promoted hair growth, or I willed it to grow with my mind.  But it is a nice thick dark little goatee.  It is my theory that people will be so caught up looking at my beard, that they will completely forget to notice anything else.  If that doesn't work, well, at least I think it looks good.