Late 90s, Portland, Oregon:

The foreman at a construction site downtown beckoned. I set aside my tools and walked over. He sighed loudly. 

“Look guy, you do good work. But we got a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I been gettin’ complaints from the fellas. It’s your fingernails.”

I looked down at both hands. Chipped cobalt blue polish on my left…even more chipped metallic silver on my right.

“Someone doesn’t like my colors?”

“Christ guy! You’re making men here uncomfortable! I don’t care what you do in your personal life but I gotta run a crew here. Make sure it’s all gone tomorrow, ok?”

Though a butchy cis man, I’ve still chafed against gender roles my whole life. As a young boy, I appreciated that my grandmother taught me basic sewing skills, but I’ll never forget the time she caught me playing with fluffy pink fabric. It felt perfect… soft and tactile against my cheek.

Grandma yanked it away, declaring “Pink is a girl color! Here, you can have this.” She handed me a piece of rough blue denim, admonishing: “Play with a boy color.” 

I held the stiff material in both hands, completely perplexed. Colors had genders? How could something so bizarre make sense? I didn’t know yet that my grandmother was only a first generation Pink=Female believer. Her parents, born in the 19th century, had it reversed. They considered pink as embodying supposed hot blooded masculine energy. Blue, on the other hand, was obviously feminine, reflecting the idealized cool temperament of women. 

The older I got, similar social constructions made me increasingly angry. Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, hair metal, punk rock and other features along the pop culture landscape made clear masculinity included pink… plus even more overt femme trappings, from makeup and glitter to spandex. By the time Nirvana released a music video hit in the mid ‘90s wearing dresses, gender bending hardly even felt transgressive. Casual drag was just basic punk attire and as a teenage rivethead, I kept several skirts in regular circulation. Recently I even found a little sketch book that a high school friend drew in 1994 depicting various people from our friend group… her little doodle of me was captioned: FEMBOY.

In fact, when my high school principal Mr. Chin turned fifty, I was recruited to jump out of a giant cardboard cake at an assembly and sing Happy Birthday, a performance I conducted with glee while wearing a silver bra and pink miniskirt. Afterwards he came over and following a sober handshake said: “That was a very courageous thing you did, young man.”

So, despite what right wing idealogues proclaim, gender expression outside the binary has existed forever and very much back in the day. I happily smashed sexuality norms as a femboy who enjoyed wearing makeup and skirts but felt just as comfortable operating power tools in metal and auto shop. Eventually, my interest in activities along the butchy spectrum expanded further, from working in the trades to commercial fishing and firearms training. It’s not that I ever lost my femme side, it’s just become less convenient as I’ve gotten older. However, raising four daughters now provides opportunities for demolishing the old social constructions they sometimes repeat, echoing ignorant phrases overheard in the schoolyard:

“Boys can’t have long hair!”

Really? What about our next door neighbor? His hair is long!

“Only girls play with dolls!”

Noooooo! Anyone can play with whatever toys they like!

“Boys don’t wear fingernail polish!”

Okay girls, let’s test that!

Of course, they love painting my fingernails and toes. Now that professionally I’m the one managing worksites, if men feel uncomfortable seeing day-glo enamel on my fingers, they keep it to themselves. The job that matters most is ensuring my kids learn being honest and kind and responsible are what matters, not what anyone look like. I hope more adults come to understand that also.