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| Lisa Laman, in one of her many selfies |
"Look at the world, so close and I'm halfway to it
Look at it all, so big, do I even dare?"
We can blame Amy Adams for all of this.
The year is 2007. I was bursting with excitement to see a new musical by the name of Enchanted. I initially saw this movie because, well, I saw every movie possible my parents allowed me to see on the big screen, but also because I had been a massive fan of animated Disney musicals from the very start of my life. Very quickly, though, Enchanted went from being a new Mouse House feature to functioning as a gateway drug into something more. Seated in that theater, eyes glued to the massive screen in front of me, I gazed upon the flickering images of Amy Adams as Princess Giselle with incredible reverence. I was transfixed. I had seen entertaining performers before, but Amy Adams was something else entirely.
Adams wasn't bound by the rules of how "normal" people behaved. She stood out like a sore thumb in New York City, but she didn't let that phase her. She was thoroughly herself. Who wouldn't be entertained by that? Back in 2007, I joined the chorus of people impressed by Amy Adams in Enchanted without considering the deeper implications of what this fascination meant. I simply thought she was my newest pop culture hero or perhaps an early movie crush. In the years to come, I realized that this fascination went much deeper than that.
I wanted to be Amy Adams. I wanted her hair. Her confidence. The way she embraced being different rather than running from the qualities that separated her from "normal" society. Amy Adams characters like Giselle could just exist as their wonderfully offbeat and thoroughly idiosyncratic selves. If I could've snapped my fingers and woken up the next day as her doppelganger, I would've done it in a flash. In hindsight, I often felt like that about a lot of women actors I deeply admired. I didn't just think "they're funny" or "they're cool". Before the word "trans" was ever in my vocabulary, I'd immediately jump to "oh how I wish I could be them" about a slew of different women on the silver screen. In hindsight, I'm stunned by just how often my mind would yearn to just transform into the various women I admired.
I would've eventually realized I was a trans woman at one point or another in my life even if I'd never seen Enchanted or any of the other iconic roles Amy Adams has inhabited. However, I'm so grateful this performer was there to function as a lamppost lighting a darkened street as I navigated my gender identity. It's been comforting to have her performances, images, and musical numbers to turn to when I didn't have words to express who I was. Even today, when I regularly go out decked out in vividly-colored dresses and ask people to refer to me as Lisa Laman, I'll still turn to her when I need a pick-me-up or a reminder of how far back my trans experiences go.
All of those experiences have made me who I am. My name is Lisa Laman. I love movies, karaoke, a good burger, pugs, and hanging out with my friends. I'm a trans woman who lives both on the autism spectrum and in Texas. My journey to self-acceptance began with Amy Adams in Enchanted...but it didn't end there. Today is the day I come out to the whole wide world as me, but my transness didn't start today. My identity has been put together piece by piece over the years throughout several core events, from a fateful screening of Enchanted to one seemingly ordinary day on my college campus four years ago.
"Look at me, there at last, I just have to do it
Should I? No...here I go!"
The year is 2019. I showed up to my Women's Literature course at the University of Texas at Dallas at the exact same time and day as the preceding few weeks. What was different for this particular class, though, was how I dressed for the occasion. My default attire of shorts and a T-shirt adorned with some kind of graphic had been ditched. Now, I had on my fingerless gloves, a light blue blouse, a skirt, and, most noticeably, a wig of vibrant red hair atop my head. I had dreamed for over a decade of having hair just like Amy Adams and now, as I walked into that classroom with the wig on, I had reached that goal. Of course, this wasn't the total realization of my ideal femme appearance. But oh did it ever feel good to step into a public setting dressed like this.
While I'd been using "she/her" pronouns with some online queer friends for a few months now, going out dressed like this was a whole other level of gender presentation. The difference between just using certain pronouns online and going out to physical locations dressed as your gender is tantamount to going from performing with your band in a garage to headlining a Madison Square Garden concert. Plus, this classroom was a space that wasn't designated exclusively for queer people and I'd never given much indication to my classmates or professor beforehand that I was trans. I didn't have any reason to believe I'd be pelted with tomatoes if I showed up presenting as trans, but I didn't have any proof disproving that outcome either.
Still, I strolled into that room dressed how I always wanted to dress and sat down in my chair. Once I got finished the trek from the bathroom where I'd changed into my clothes to my seat, I exhaled. The world didn't explode just because I dressed like this. People weren't pointing and laughing. The only problem now was that the hairs of my wig kept falling in front of my face. Thank goodness a helpful library worker would introduce me to the magic of bobby pins a few days later! On this day, taking the plunge and wearing my Amy Adams wig opened up a brand new world. I got a taste of a whole new kind of joy. Trans joy. As that class drew to a close, a thought crept into the corners of my mind...if I could do this...who knew what else was possible?
That was 2019. In retrospect, I'm so proud of myself for continuing to dress like I wanted and even taking my femme fashion senses even further in the new year (skirts got added to the equation, as did lipstick). I wasn't on Hormone Replacement Therapy yet, I still wasn't sure if I'd even want that. I just knew dressing like this and having people refer to me as "her" made me happy.
In the years since this fateful day, I've talked to many other trans folks and their experiences with coming out and dressing as themselves. In many cases, they often got on estrogen/testosterone before they started dressing like themselves. They also often started with more subtle ways of reaffirming their identity than waltzing into a classroom with a brand-new wig. With this knowledge, I do have to chuckle at how I did things "out of order" compared to how many other people did their respective trans journeys. I dove right into the deep end of the pool!
However, there was no guidebook I could turn to in a quest for guidance on how to be trans. I was improvising. I just knew how I wanted to look and recognized that I had the privilege of accessing an environment like a college campus to engage in that kind of presentation. There is no wrong way to figure out your identity, just as there isn't an innate right way of doing it. It all depends on what makes you comfortable. There was so much joy just from exploring this part of myself and realizing how much joy I had in presenting and being seen by others as a woman. Just slipping on a skirt would send a sliver of euphoria up my spine, unlocking sensations of joy I didn't know existed before. At the time, it felt like things couldn't possibly get any better than this. Little did I know what 2020 had in store for me.
"Just smell the grass, the dirt
Just like I dreamed they'd be
Just feel that summer breeze, the way it's calling me!"
The year is 2020. The year isn't even three weeks old and I'm trying something new. I'm going to a group at my college called For Autism Empowerment. My own insecurities and self-loathing related to my autism had, up to this point, led to me wanting to distance myself from socializing with other autistic and neurodivergent people. I wanted to be seen as "normal," so I "stifled" my autism and turned down opportunities to interact with people like me. On its day, I planned to change that. Now that I was embracing my transness, I also wanted to embrace my autism. I walked into the room that day dressed as myself and was delighted to find that the majority of the people in this group were trans. I hadn't just found a haven for shared autistic experiences...I'd also found a place to be loved and seen as a trans person.
Much of that euphoria comes from the simplest things, like looking around a room of trans people and thinking "holy cow, there really is no one way to 'look' trans." Being in a space where everyone's encouraged to dress and present however they want makes you realize that YOU define what "being trans" looks like, not the other way around. I've spent so much of my life assuming that I couldn't be trans because of the way I looked or, later on, sending myself into spirals of anxiety over believing that the way I wanted to look (bright red hair, colorful dresses, nails decked out in vivid hues) wouldn't make look like a "normal" queer girl. But sitting in any space with more than one trans person, you realize just how much variety there is in this community. There is no "right" way to present as a trans person, a queer woman, or any other part of the LGBTQIA+ community. What's "right" is what makes you comfortable and validated.
Speaking of insecurities melting away in these social situations...it's so much fun to laugh with other trans folks. I've sat in booths at restaurants late into the night just babbling the hours away with trans people of various genders doing the most ridiculous stuff. Whether it was people doing strained impressions of Transformers characters or lengthy ruminations on whether Grimace could beat Charles Entertainment Cheese in a fight, outlandish exchanges were a guarantee in these safe confines. There's something beautiful about being so busy laughing and chatting about the silliest things that I forget my clothes or trans-centric insecurities. The qualities that kept me up at night before are now pushed from my mind, even only temporarily, to make room for all this joy.
"For like the first time ever, I'm completely free!"
The year is 2023. I'm writing these words as I prepare to publicly come out once and for all to the world as a woman. As I put my thoughts down, I begin to realize something. I've been planning for months to have this essay divided up into sections marked by chunks of the song "When Will My Life Begin (Reprise 2)" from Tangled. After all, this tune has always guided me through such profound experiences in my life, the lyrics feel really specific to me coming out, and I love a good musical number. However, I'm just now realizing another part of that movie resonates as incredibly authentic to my trans experiences.
This element comes right after Rapunzel leaves the tower she's been trapped in. She's taking in the joys of the outside world while grappling with her sense of guilt over disobeying Mother Gothel's orders to stay inside. The camera keeps cutting back and forth between Rapunzel in various states of euphoria and Rapunzel experiencing extreme feelings of self-loathing. One moment, she's rolling down a hill in joy, the next minute she's lying face-down in a field of flowers declaring "I am a despicable human being."
Being openly trans in certain public spaces has led to the most joyful moments of my entire life, like when I'm hanging out with my trans pals or when a Walgreens cashier called me "Missus Laman". Being openly trans in public has also led to the most traumatic moments of my entire life. I can never go into a train at night or a 7/11 at any time of day again without wincing over horrifying transphobic memories of the past. Much like Rapunzel, I too have had moments of euphoria tied to my transness get followed up almost immediately by traumatic experiences related to my transness.
Obviously, the "lows" for trans people are much more severe than what can be communicated in a Disney musical, particularly given how rampant transphobia and transphobic violence and legislation are in American society (especially against trans individuals of color). However, this sequence does offer a starting point for understanding how complicated day-to-day trans existence is. And yet, much like Rapunzel ended up being "so glad I left my tower," so too am I always glad to be trans and occupy spaces where I can present as trans. Being trans is not easy. I'm not "completely free" as a trans woman. Being trans does not mean all of my anxieties and problems get solved.
But the vast majority of challenges I experience as a trans woman come from external factors motivated by cis-people and late-stage capitalism (harassment, the exorbitant costs of gender-reaffirming beauty products and clothes, difficulties in accessing healthcare, etc.), not from my innate state of being trans. Being trans allows me to be in touch with my true self and makes navigating everyday problems just a bit easier. I cannot stress enough how much joy and self-contentment I've felt doing trans-reaffirming things like beginning the process of HRT.
I've been reminded of all these nuances and intricacies every step of the way of writing this piece. Dressing as me, embracing who I am, and being in social situations where I'm validated...these are the aspects of my life that take me to exciting new places. My fear and anxiety over the unfamiliar aren't gone (far from it), but the precedent of doing one big trans-related thing in the past inevitably inspires me to do something else that once sounded impossible.
Pink dresses I was always looking at in wide-eyed wonder as a youngster now resides in my closet.
The hair I saw on Amy Adams that I always yearned for now rests on a wig stand in my bedroom.
The very idea of going to see movies in theaters, my favorite thing to do in all the world, while dressed as me...I've done that.
To quote one of my favorite musicals, "the strangest things seem suddenly routine."
I've come a long way from the day I first saw Amy Adams up on the silver screen and she rewired my brain. Heck, I've even come a long way from just my very first For Autistic Empowerment meeting or the day I started my weekly estrogen injections. I'm sure coming out like this and being open about my transness in writing for the very first time will also be just a stepping stone in a greater and more complicated journey. The prospect of such an uncertain larger future fills me with as much dread as it does excitement, especially given the deluge of anti-trans bills making their way across various state legislatures in America. Anything's possible in this world, which is both terrifying and reassuring. However, I'm so grateful I'll be able to confront every part of that future as me, Lisa Laman. As Amy Adams taught me long ago, it's best to confront reality as yourself...and with some bright red locks on your head.
And now, much like Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, David Lynch's Lost Highway, or Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis (hey, I had to shove some film geek stuff in here somewhere!), this essay is a circular narrative. It's time to end where we began, with a song about the joys of achieving the freedom you've craved for so long...
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