New Glasses

CW: body talk, passing

I got new glasses today. It’s nothing too crazy, just a simple, skinny, gold frame and my first pair with nose pads. To most, it’s no big deal. But to me, I put them on and suddenly see myself in a new light, turning my head side to side, and taking angled pictures that show a sharper jaw, and my long eyelashes.

I am Nonbinary, and I constantly look at myself in the mirror and think, “How can I look more ambiguous today?” How can I look Nonbinary?

With so many binary trans people that strive to ‘pass’ in today’s society and comparing myself to them, it makes it tough to be nonbinary and wanting to ‘pass’ as your gender, albeit, whatever it is under the nonbinary umbrella.

There’s no rulebook, no societal expectations except to confine yourself to the binary, and for gender-neutral options, not everyone wants to look completely androgynous and plain and dare I say it, my personal opinion, boring. And not everyone wants to be a mix of masc/fem and show off a skirt and nail polish with a muscle shirt and hiking boots (even though I’m sure a lot of you can make that work).

So how am I supposed to ‘pass’? How is someone on the street supposed to look at me and think, “That person is neither a man nor a woman. I’ll call them ‘they’ until they tell me who they are!” Well, that’s because not many think this way. I like to believe that many more do, but most don’t.

Even as a nonbinary person I gender people on the street, though I’m trying to…