Geena Rocero

We embrace spectacle and theatricality with open arms. When I was growing up, Catholicism and trans beauty pageants inspired equal fanaticism. Families would go straight from mass to watching the Super Sireyna trans pageants on TV back at home. No one really saw this as a paradox; it was just part of our unique cultural blend.

Fashion and modeling might seem like creative and open-minded fields, but at its core, the industry wanted to propel only what it believed was trendy, cool, and beautiful, which usually meant white people and always meant cisgender people.

I knew that if I wanted to keep growing, I had no more time for dogmas that taught me to hate my skin and myself.

Those pendants were us, the trans butterfly and the Catholic, a pair as perfect as it was unexpected.

That’s the tragic paradox at the heart of transness: To live, we risk dying. To feel pleasure, we accept the possibility of pain.

Falling in love with a man felt somehow even scarier than having sex with one. I was too afraid of what love would require of me emotionally to even speak that desire aloud. I couldn’t let myself do much more than imagine a life with someone who embraced all of me.

Falling in love with a man felt somehow even scarier than having sex with one. I was too afraid of what love would require of me emotionally to even speak that desire aloud. I couldn’t let myself do much more than imagine a life with someone who embraced all of me.