Big Girl Undies

Don't come out until you've been wearing your big girl undies for more than a week.

My girlfriend, a mother of four, and I always joke about how compatible we would be if only we were gay. She doesn’t mind folding the washing, I quite like to cook and we get along like a house on fire. “We could just bring a gorgeous young Jamaican guy to come visit a few times a week,” she suggests playfully as we sip on our rose water tea and dream about our little shared shack on the beach. The thing is though, that I don’t really like men with Rastafarian dreads, and she doesn’t like them groomed and clean shaven. Pity about that. Though it’s taken me a lifetime of being in my big girl body to know exactly what I do and don't like.

So when a twelve year old comes out to her family and community about being gay, trans or cyber-gendered, I would suggest she return to the drawing board of her fertile imagination and wait a few years until she really knows who she is and what she wants. 

I have four teen and grown daughters of my own and I have taught twelve year old girls, and this is what I have observed. Most twelve year old girls love their girlfriends. Generally we fall in love (bond) with our mothers first, our fathers next (around the Freudian age of five) and then with our girlfriends (around puberty) followed by whomever takes our fancy as we settle into our teenage years. But those few years in between are full and complex; hormonally, biologically, culturally, socially and psychologically. And to come out at the ripe old age of twelve and declare a sexual preference is nothing short of precocious. 

Twelve year old girls love girls because they are safe, and they are lovely and because they totally get each other. And because the thought of penetration with ‘that thing’, (especially if they have younger brother’s with whom they have shared a room or a bath), just seems ludicrous. They are just getting used to the terrible fact that blood comes out of their vagina every month which they have to manage with pads and tampons in what seems to be a time in their lives where one foot is still solidly planted in childhood. 

They still want to do cartwheels on the beach and build cubby-houses. They want to use power tools and ride horses, they want to dance and practice kissing in front of the mirror. They want to be the Kardashians and they hate the Kardashians. They want to go-cart ride and be movie stars. They want carbs and the couch, affection and validation and they desperately want to be liked though they will never admit it.  They are tough and obnoxious and feisty and lazy and wildly creative and bored out of their minds. They want to leave their dependent relationships far behind them and they still want a good night cuddle. They are a bundle of contradiction and sweet as Cherry-pie. 

Flooded with unpredictable hormones, the chemical roller-coaster takes them off in any number of directions as they shed the skins of their childhood identity. But there they remain, very thin skinned, for a few years as they recklessly try on this or that outfit, idea, voice, persona, and sexual identification. Influenced by peers, the media, siblings and internal conflicts, exploring destructive behaviors they express their own shadow and reject aspects of their much loved previous selves. It’s a very confusing time, though they wear it with dangerous confidence. And it takes tears and time before the new formed being emerges, wearing an identity that feels almost comfortable. And then it takes a little more time before you really feel comfortable, some fifty years at best. 

I have a very dear friend who, from the age of fifteen, knew he was gay. Great I say, yes. At fifteen, you could know. At fifteen, when you’ve been wearing your big girl or boy body for more than a few years, you know where your heart beats loudest. But if you stand up at a podium, no matter how much courage it takes you to do so, and announce that you are gay at the age of twelve, I will very gently say, give yourself a little time before you decide what you are. There is no glory in knowing who you are with absolute certainty at the age of twelve.