biodiverseed:Vintage: climbing Opal Hills with my family. I’m the one with the snowball and the bloo
biodiverseed:Vintage: climbing Opal Hills with my family. I’m the one with the snowball and the blood blister on my thumb.It was from about the age of two or three, to the age I am in the photo that I periodically insisted I was really a boy; I had no idea what that meant in the physical sense, but being a boy seemed like it would be a lot nicer. I always insisted on short hair, and gravitated towards clothes I could climb a tree in (even if I wasn’t always allowed to wear them). I envied the fact that my brother didn’t ever have to wear dresses, scratchy socks, and uncomfortable shoes. It turned out that the problem wasn’t me: it was the fact that I had been raised totally without any gender non-conforming female role models. You don’t learn about the female adventurers, scientists, farmers, athletes, tradespeople, and activists in school. I had no idea these foremothers existed until my early 20s. I read their stories voraciously now, to make up for lost time.I’m so grateful to all these women who spat in the face of convention and paved the way for girls like me to grow up and be comfortable in our own skin, even if it takes some time to really internalise it. We’re not ‘tomboys’; our girlhood is as authentic and natural as any other. May we never learn to properly apply makeup, never be comfortable in a dress or heels, always have dirt under our nails, and never again feel self-conscious about it. -- source link
#biodiverseed