Hi! My name is Kirstin.

I enjoy doing my makeup, nails, hair and wearing dresses and skirts.

I also prefer to date women.

A lot of people call this “Passing Privilege.”

I want to call it “Femme Invisibility.”

I want to talk about how much being invisible and not seeing any representation of what I felt in a role model made me question who I really was.

Being a girl who dates girls is hard. I don’t want to minimize the struggles and discrimination that butch lesbians deal with. What I want to talk about is how invisible, secluded, left out and entirely not welcome in the lesbian world I felt being a femme.

Because I felt so left out, I never really felt comfortable with my body or who I was.

I told myself that because I didn’t “look” like a lesbian, there was no way that I would ever be accepted in my community.

So. I did the most liberating thing that I could think of.

I cut all of my hair off.

That’s right. I donated close to 80 inches of hair about a year and a half ago.

People started asking me why I felt compelled to do so, and of course I answered that it was just time for a change.

I knew deep in my heart that the real reason was to try to fit in to what I thought was who I was or who I was supposed to be.

I started dressing differently, wearing less makeup, and even stopped shaving to achieve what people consider the “typical butch” look

See, I figured that if I could just become a dyke, maybe I would be more accepted in this world of lesbianism that I had felt secluded from my whole life.

If you were wondering: chopping off nearly two feet of hair actually does not change who a person is.

I was just as unhappy as I was before, only now I had less hair.

I had to start talking to someone about this. For so long, I had felt that if I just looked the part of a dyke, I would feel comfortable with who I was. And now I didn’t truly feel comfortable looking like a dyke, either.

I feel like even from inside of the community, I was stereotyping myself in order to try to convince myself of who I was, and that was making me entirely too unhappy.

Truthfully, I would rather wear make up and do my hair and wear dresses and date whoever I want than try to tell myself to be someone else.

Not seeing my “brand” of sexuality represented anywhere around me caused a lot of hatred and confusion in my life growing up. While I agree that sexuality and gender are fluid and can evolve over time, I still wish that I had known someone growing up who could have told me that I didn’t have to pick a brand of gay to identify with.

I wish that I could go back in time and tell my younger self that it is okay to take pride in a feminine appearance. I wish that I could tell her that I would meet so many different flavors of people throughout life that claiming a “type” really doesn’t make any sense at all.

I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to not cut off my hair, but I doubt that I would have ever learned as much about myself as I have in the last year and a half had I never taken that risk.

And I mean, really, it’s just hair.