CAKE, 29, NEW HAVEN, CT
Gender Projected
Where are you from? Where do you live now? Have you ever lived anywhere else?
This question is hard. Home feels like Old Saybrook, CT because I went through MS and HS there. India is also home because I was born and raised there until I was 10. Home home is Tibet, but I have never been there. And New Haven is home now.
How old are you?
29
How would you identify your gender, if at all?
It is always a big question mark. Every day would be a different answer. The closest thing I can get to is variant.
What presentation would you be afraid to wear on the street where you live now (if any?) Why?It would be in the glitter top and the tight pants. It is confrontational when you present yourself in a way that you want to and other people just don’t get it. You have to deal with really triggering effects of it.
What presentation would you be afraid to wear on the street in your hometown or around your family? (if any?) Why?
At this point, any one of the outfits would be cool with my family because I have fought and screamed and scratched so much at [my family’s] ethos on gender my whole life, and they have become more tolerant as a result.
Did you borrow clothes from your partner (or anyone else) for this project? If so, how did that make them feel? How did that make you feel?
I did borrow clothes, and it felt great. Presentation is a performance and not necessarily a wholeness, and who you are is so much more than your gender presentation.
Was there a gender identity/presentation that you wanted to try but hadn’t before this project but didn’t have the chance to do until this project?
The super masculine with the baggy clothes and the baggy shirt. I have always wanted to try that. I did it when I was younger with my brothers’ clothes. Tibetan New Years was supposed to be the new birth of a person. Every New Years, I always wanted to look like my brothers. So I would get the same shirt and same pants tailored to me as my brothers did. That always felt so cool and so right. Today, when I was in someone else’s baggy pants, I had that feeling of comfort.
Did you gain any perspective on gender identity/expression in yourself during the project?
When people choose to open themselves up and become vulnerable, there are all these points of connection. That is super brave and really scary, but it opens up these doors and windows for other folks to also step up and to speak their own truths. Since the beginning, [the project] has been like, “You can be however you want to be and you can be a mess right now and your messiness is great and we want to take pictures of that mess and put it on a wall.” We just want to be seen. And as folks whose suffering and pain has been invisibilized from the beginning of time, it is incredibly validating to have a camera pointed at you.
Do you dress a different way when you are trying to appeal to a different audience?
I think the biggest thing is work because there is capital involved. When there isn’t capital involved I am more at ease with my gender expression.
In your life, was there another time you explored/experimented with gender identity/expression? If so, what type of experience was it?
Yes. It started when I cut my hair short in 2006 and since then I have presented more masculine. I stopped wearing skirts and dresses. I started to be less binary. I started realizing it doesn’t really matter how I present. I played a lot with gender stuff, and since then, it has always been play because gender is irrelevant. One of the biggest threats to patriarchy is the irrelevance of gender.
What part of your body did you feel most secure about? Which presentations made you feel comfortable with that part of your body? Which made you feel uncomfortable?
I don’t like full-teeth smiles a lot because I have crooked teeth and that has been a really big focus of mine. Though I have had many chances to have straight teeth, I don’t really want to have straight teeth because a lot of my cousins in India don’t have straight teeth and a lot of third world people don’t have straight teeth and they have been fine. When I am my strongest, I say “forget straight teeth as a standardized ideal of beauty” because it is a very westernized ideal of beauty. But sometimes when I am photographed, I wish I had straight teeth. Teeth are an indicator of class.We always try to present, especially if you are poor like me, as not poor. And teeth are such an indicator of whether or not you are poor. They give you away.
Are there things you would be more willing to do now after modeling for the project that you wouldn’t have done before?
I probably would model again because there needs to be a representation of Tibetan people specifically in these gender variant identity roles. Even though I don’t represent all Tibetans, I think it is important for people like me to step forward and to do scary things like this.
What do you feel is the most salient aspect of your identity (the part that shows the most on the outside despite the clothes you are wearing)? How do you feel that this part of your identity was represented and/or misrepresented in this project?
I have been told that I am really confrontational, which was represented in the project. Part of the way I perform my gender has everything to do with the fact that I want to confront the boring normativity.
What do you feel is the aspect of your identity that you think about the most? How do you feel that this part of your identity was represented and/or misrepresented in this project?
I really think about my contemporary Tibetan identity. My immigrant Tibetan identity. Because I think that Tibetanness and queerness seem really contradictory. I think not paying attention to intersections to race and class and identity is a disservice to a lot of us rainbow kids. We don’t exist in these single celled identities that the world pushes on us. We are beyond that. But we do have to perform these identities. And it has always been a reality for us to have to perform in the face of power and conflict.
How do your gender identity and sexuality intersect, if at all? How was that represented/misrepresented in the project?
I have been struggling with that my whole life, and a lot of it is because I have been pretty hetero. That feels weird, but it is something I feel okay with. I come from a really conservative heteronormative culture, so I wonder if I am still performing that way.
How does your physical fitness or body weight play into your gender identity/expression?
Well, I am super petite and physically nonthreatening, and the default of the petite nonthreatening image is a feminine one because of the culture we are surrounded by. Regardless of how masculine I might present myself, I am always going to be categorized as feminine.
After seeing the photographs of yourself, what emotions do you feel? Do they look how you expected? Different than you expected?
It looked like someone I thought of myself to be and wanted myself to look like but could never capture. That is a brilliant thing about photography. You can capture these moments in somebody, and that felt really good.
Do you have anything else you want to say about your experience with Gender, Projected?
In a world that is increasingly more and more homogenous, it is really nice to have expressions of the other. As an Asian person, always being labeled as the other in this country, it is incredibly legitimizing to have that otherness portrayed. We are all the other, and a lot of us have always felt like the other. This whole project has been extremely visibilizing of that otherness. And how empowering is that? Speaking from experiences, it has been incredibly empowering to have that otherness projected and celebrated and okayed by a community.