Luckyboy Mkhondwane. Photo courtesy of Equal Treatment.
5 June 2013
‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ ‘Go outside and play with other boys and throw that doll away. Who bought it?’ My father shouts at me as he finds me playing with the cheap fashion doll which I secretly brought with my lunch money after months of saving.
As children, we are sponges soaking up all we are exposed to, absorbing all influences of our families, communities, and friends that shape our thinking, behavior, and beliefs. Sometimes this absorption is a good thing. Other times, it is not.
Mirror, Mirror, on the wall. Growing up, we struggle. We encounter external things that we feel we don’t have control over. For me, it was my appearance. I have drop-dead gorgeous siblings and all of my cousins are also tall, beautiful or handsome. Then there is me: short, scrawny, big forehead and teeth. I laugh when I think about this because no one ever actually said to me, ‘Lucky you are so ugly’ or anything like that. This opinion was shaped purely by the magazines I used to steal from my cousin’s room when I ran out of reading material. In these times, the ‘all Black’ magazines, few as they were, featured well-built guys with big afros and perfect white smiles. Imagine, I wasn’t even in my teens then and yet I compared myself to those images of the ‘perfect man’ and those that resembled the ‘mannequins’ I believed I was supposed to look like. Clearly, it is not only the people we grow up with that influence our behaviour and thinking, but also the media that invades our homes. In my case, it was an overload of pop-culture, which, rather than providing pure entertainment, became one of the drivers of my not-so-healthy self-image.
‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ ‘Go outside and play with other boys and throw that doll away. Who bought it?’ My father shouts at me as he finds me playing with the cheap fashion doll which I secretly brought with my lunch money after months of saving. ’You are not supposed to be playing with that - what kind of boy are you. I think you are exactly like your uncle’, he continues. This memory is what I always think of when, in those rare moments, I ponder my sexuality. The uncle to whom my father referred is his younger brother, a man who I have been told as far back as I can remember is like me. When found playing with any ‘girly things’ or other ‘non-boyish’ toys, whoever discovered me would waste no time in calling up this uncle’s name.
What or who grants the authority to make rules on how boys or girls should behave? Why do society, our parents, and the media teach us what we can and can’t do in order to be accepted or ‘normal’? And, who even wants to be ‘normal’? Your normal and my normal will never be the same, so why do we pull our hair out over something that is beyond our control?
I’ve never been an outdoors kind of boy (I’m still not) and I see nothing wrong with my choice of toys. My brother (who turned out to be heterosexual) played with my dolls too, but I don’t remember him being told he was a ‘sissy’. Why me? Is it because, even though I’m three years older than him, I am shorter, skinnier and more fragile? Whatever the reason, its effects continue to trace along the scars of my memory. Growing up surrounded by my male cousins, my brother and not a single girl living with us, I realize now that I was being ‘programmed’ to be a man. ‘Don’t cry, man up, drop that, here is a soccer ball, is that a doll?’ is what I remember hearing all the time in the house. How did I respond to this? I was young but it was clear to me that I had no choice but to ‘man up’ or I’d end up being like my uncle, whatever that meant.
Freedom from the mirror! The first time I saw her, I must have said “Who is this fat woman with big hair and a flat nose, and why is she on TV?” This is how my relationship with talk-shows and Oprah Winfrey in particular started. Finally, I had someone to look up to who did not fit the ‘perfect’ mold I had been taught! I could say: “Well, if she is successful and on TV, why am I stressing about a body I did not choose?” I don’t know if it is the fact that our birthdays are both in January (mine on the 28th and hers on the 29th) that made me feel such a bond with this woman who is halfway across the world from me or if it is in the positive way she portrayed all people, black, white, big, small, good-looking or plain.
I had built a prison for myself constructed of magazine photos and fruitless comparison to those I previously considered better looking than me. I found my release from the prison and I am now so confident that I don’t even notice my teeth or humungous forehead (well, most of the time).
Interestingly enough, it was another magazine that further helped me to better accept myself. When I was 14, I thumbed through an issue of YOU Magazine (reading every page as always) and I came across an article by Susan Erasmus. It was about homosexual teenagers, and, while reading it, I felt like I was reading about myself. It was a light bulb moment, as my “friend” Oprah would say. “So, I am gay”, I thought, “but what is ‘gay’ really?” This, I decided, is a question for the uncle that I was warned about.
I asked my uncle the next weekend he came to visit. He told me to call him “auntie” but he didn’t have much to say other than “I am gay.” He then told me what I’d already gathered from the magazine article. So there is a name for this “thing” and it is not wrong or weird as I used to think. Well, a sense of relief came over me as I am now able to name my “condition” and reject the pretense of being a “normal” boy. When my uncle leaves, I go back into my room, pick a book, and sigh in relief with the discovery that nothing is wrong with me. Nothing has been wrong with me and nothing will be wrong with me. “I am normal, not anybody else’s definition of normal, but my definition of normal. The world can either take it or leave it,” I thought. And my path as an activist began.
As time passed, my father stopped asking about the dolls and the pink floral wrapping paper I used on my school books though it is still a mystery to me how that came about. But I have a feeling my “auntie” must have said something to him because I don’t believe he could have changed on his own.
I began this piece by saying that we are shaped by what we see, hear, and expose ourselves to, and I wish to end it by saying that I have learned that this socialisation is not permanent. Learned behaviour, made up opinions, social influences can all be undone. It doesn’t take a person that you know to ‘re-socialise’ you. It can be that talk show host across the ocean, that lady you have never met, but whose words struck a chord in you and revealed to you who you really are, or, if you are really fortunate, that uncle who insists that you call him “auntie”.
I still read magazines, but I’ve come to terms with my skinny frame, my big fat nose and my forehead. These are parts of me that can’t be changed and it is the whole person that counts, the human being. I am no longer scared of my love for pink and “girly” things, and, funny enough, I think I’m “manlier” than any of my three close friends, though we are the same in many ways. I don’t have to live up to society’s expectations of what beauty or masculinity is. Like flowers in a field, we all add beauty and variety to this world.
Our socialisation is often inevitable and not of our choosing. But things change and people get exposed to other cultures, move to other places, or discover new things. How we are socialised, be it willingly or unconsciously, can be reversed. Everything changes, so can socialisation.