Sasha Velour revealed the woman in me.

I have had an intense time trying to wrestle with my gender.

Not to be all “Black, bigger girl who talks too much”, but my experience in the world has been that I’m not lady enough to be liked, and certainly not Ladylike. I will sometimes be awarded the position if my accent is appreciated while I’m saying pretty words, but if I attempt to be my fullest, my loudest, my outspoken-est, I feel myself being repositioned in the gender matrix, to somewhere near ‘dork’.

Womanhood has always and forever been a gate that people have managed to keep from me somehow. Well, I know how, but let me not get on the colonial history soapbox today, for this is a happy tale!

At first, my misplacement hid itself in a kind of general but bone-deep discontent with my body - its size, its shapes - but I’d been told that was the price of admission to womanhood, the discontent. That never quite flew with me.

I was always fascinated by the concept of being confident in your own body - like it was some state of nirvana you reach by being the most mentally hygienic person you can be. I wanted confidence - mostly so I could stop focusing on my body and move on to the other important things; and stop using it as an excuse not to go out and live my life, too sensitive to the words of others to venture forth.

I found Drag, as many in my generation may have, through RuPaul’s Drag Race, and grappled again with gender. Here, there were people of all genders finding, what? Confidence in womanhood? Firstly, you can do that? That’s allowed? and then I thought, wait, even if you’re not a woman? Even without permission?

So many feelings came up that I wasn’t able to name at the time, but bore so many of the hallmarks of guilt, envy, obsession, adoration, and awe.

But it was Sasha Velour’s winning turn that gave me my context. This was a performer that merged history, high femininity, and humor - who balanced across all the strings of humanity. Her hallmark reveals, every time, taught me how delight and womanhood can be woven together into euphoria.

Since moving to London, I have been undergoing my own kind of Big Reveal into the world - where once I would stay home, I go out, and going out requires clothes that aren’t pajamas - but are still comfortable. There began the new crisis - I wasn’t comfortable in femme clothes, so I found myself storming, quite butchly - shoulders hunched and cadence wide, through London, in cargo pants, fanny pack and a blazer (albeit with nails freshly manicured - some things just stick.)

I was comfortable in one sense, and not the other. Something was unbalanced. For months, I spun in circles trying to unknot the puzzle.

Queue Sasha.

The Big Reveal arrived at the Palladium, and in my cargos and blazer, I sat among the crowd, ready to take a trip down memory lane. What I ended up with, essentially, was my gender yarn unknotted, given back to me in a soft cashmere jumper, with love in every stitch.

She reaffirmed the aesthetic power of femininity - the ways it can hold humor and toughness, pageantry and academic rigor, playfulness, and pain. Sasha is one of the best to ever do it because she holds all of it. She confronts every aspect of womanhood we deny ourselves, and by doing so, blows the doors off the rigidity of the thing, exposing its internal beauty and capacity.

I was crying, crying in front of strangers, the whole night, and could barely articulate her impact on me when I got my copy of her amazing Book signed in person, which now holds pride of place on my desk, as an ever-present reminder.

The red lipstick went back on under my 3M Aura. I started plaiting my hair for waves, and I stopped storming London as if my Buchness, or rather, caved insecure shoulders and a frown, would save me, would hide me, or would make me feel that balance.

In an era where drag queens and the transgender community are on the frontlines of a culture war they did not sign up for, I am reminded, and remind others, that we don’t just fight to defend their rights, for them to be left in peace, to live joyful and fulfilling lives, just because that’s the right thing to do — it liberates all of us.

Not many of us are actually accepted into the status quo - we sit awkwardly just outside of it, but chained to it nonetheless. To liberate the communities that expand, and break, the definition of the binary is also a part of liberating us from misogyny.

In my case, a Russian-Jewish Drag Queen of the highest regard, if only for a moment, relieved me of the misogynoir that had seeped into my self-image. She opened the door for me to take the steps back out into the sunlight.

I was avoiding the expectations of imposed womanhood so that no one could say I was failing — now, renewed, I felt Sasha invited me back to it with an expansiveness I had never felt before, an answer to the femininity I loved, married with the queerness with which I felt comfortable expressing it.

My womanhood had no reason to hide. Sasha found me, after all those years, and once again, revealed it.