It's been a long time coming, but finally, my sister has reached the age where every aspect of her life can be compared to mine. Long gone are the years of being constantly bathed in unique attention due to cuteness – at 13 years old, my sister is a little bit over halfway to looking like a real human, and therefore must find ways to attract positive attention to herself via coating her imperfections with paints and powders and wearing only the most sliming of outfits, as is expected of women in the 21st century. The only problem: she’s refusing to buckle to these societal norms. Prioritizing her own comfort over the expectations of others because of her security and confidence, my sister is already a million times more self-assured and feminist than I ever hope to be.
Around midday each Sunday, I would make sure to set aside some time to recant to my sister my typical monologue reminding her of the conservative upbringing of our mother and father, some quick re-explanations of scientific findings or current events that they had misinterpreted, the importance of inclusion and acceptance, followed with general statements of “you know you can do what you want, right?”. Did this premature exposure to the rejection of binaries somehow make her think she could attempt to not conform to them in our household? Throughout my mother’s attempts to make my sister like “girly-er” things, she’s remained true to her love of snorting when she laughs and stomping around the house in her Vans. I just recently dared to wear sweatpants at home, a feat pioneered solely through my sister’s efforts. I went years convincing myself that wearing jeans after 5pm was comfortable until she dared to test the limits and not change out of her sweat suit after lacrosse practice one day. She's my hero.
She even has posters, paper ones held up with thumbtacks!, of her favorite TV shows and bands (all which I had never heard of before) in her room, something I would have never dared to ask for from our uber-clean mother. There’s never a time where she isn’t facetiming someone, and one of her friends has pink hair and has better winged-eyeliner than me. I’ve asked her about boys, and she says that their opinion doesn’t matter to her. At 13, I would cling onto every passing remark of my boyfriend at the time, plagued by the need of his validation to justify my every opinion, because I was a dumba**. My sister is a revolution on her own.
What do I do from here? Three hundred-fifty-two miles from home, I can no longer wrestle her to feel better about myself (but I can now maybe convince myself that she isn’t already physically stronger than me). Instead, I watch her hilarious snapstories and imagine who I’d be if I had a friend as cool as her when I was her age.
