“I got out of that car a goddess”
Pink Flowers, Black trans artist, pleasure activist and educator on her transition from gender nonbinary to trans in the Midwest.
Hi, y'all.
Welcome to this week's love letter from the hearts of the Midwest — a very special interview with my friend Pink Flowers.
For most of her life, Pink has lived publicly as a queer man or as gender non-conforming. But during the pandemic, a change happened. Pink emerged. Notorious Pink, who is nearly seven-feet tall in heels.
Across her social media she celebrated her newfound sense of belonging in her own body. I watched from afar wondering what it was like to walk through the world differently. To finally feel like yourself. To belong in your own body. To suddenly have breasts, something I’ve never been entirely comfortable with because I developed early. (Hence, high-necked shirts.)
But I was also a little afraid to ask. Would I be intrusive? Offensive? Clumsy?
Probably.
But she agreed to talk with me anyway.
We have an intimate conversation, woman to woman, about her journey through bra fittings, catcalls and our human experiences living inside the female form.
As subscribers, you have access to the transcript, which is edited for clarity. But I encourage you to listen to this episode if you can. There's something important and special about hearing Pink in her own voice. The cadence of her words, her lived experience, is so much more alive than on the page. You can hear the vulnerability in our conversation.
Okay, y'all. That's it for this week.
I'll see you Friday for Cocktail Hour.
Hi, Pink. I am … nervous.
Well, the world is very scary. And so, however nervous we are having this conversation, this is a safer space than a lot of spaces.
We've known each other a while.
We've known each other for a very long time.
Let's start with how you describe yourself, whether that's physically, emotionally, professionally. How does Pink describe Pink?
First and foremost, I think of myself as a trans woman, I described myself as a trans woman. A lot of my identity I don't know because it's so new. I feel like I'm rediscovering parts of myself that have been lost since I was a child. I sometimes think of myself as a big teenager. I take a fair number of hormones for my hormone replacement therapy and they have an impact on who I am. So I'm also the hormonal person. A lot.
What has it been like for you to live an identity that you didn't feel like you could live before?
So much of it has felt magical to me.
I've always felt like someone from another planet; I've never felt like I fit. And suddenly during this time of reflection because of the pandemic, I found myself really coming to understand nuances of my personality. Like, I always want people to love me; I always want to be attractive. But I never feel loved, and I never feel attractive. And what was coming to me through this time was that I'm beautiful exactly as I am, and we are part of this kind of perfect universe. I just want to be humble enough to think that the universe knew what was going on when I got pushed out.
And so suddenly things about myself that were the flaws I started looking at and thinking, well, wait, maybe it’s not. I've always had gynecomastia; I’ve always had breast growth, and that's something that has been such great shame. And I found myself suddenly realizing anyone that I've ever been with, anyone who's ever been sexually attracted me, probably liked that about me.
And so just starting to look at my body and the way that I felt moving through the world, it was just becoming more clear that there was at least a two-spirit aspect to my identity. So I started using "they" pronouns and I started considering myself gender nonconforming even nonbinary, although I do not think of myself as nonbinary any more.
I found myself in a lot of conversations with people about my "they" identity. I don't want to say that the peer pressure to deal with their confusion affected me, but when I started using "she" pronouns, everything got really simple. People who had been scratching their heads suddenly were having “aha” moments about who I was.
One of the first experiences that I had of this was with my brother at a family gathering. I told him that I was transitioning, and he had his hand on my shoulder, which is what he would normally have done. At the moment that he kind of acknowledged what I was talking about, his hand moved from my shoulder to my waist. It was a very subtle gesture, but my body understood it as him touching me as a woman. It did not feel appropriate for him to have his hand draped over my shoulder as a man; to have his hand at my side, for him, felt appropriate.
It wasn't like it's right to have your hand on the waist as opposed to the shoulder, but he had internalized it somatically so that it wasn't him trying to wrap his brain around something. His body just got it. His body in proximity to my body understood that there was a person that had not been acknowledged under there that it was time to acknowledge.
Has the family been acknowledging you in a welcoming way or has it been a difficult process?
I've been estranged from my family for a really long time. And my relationship to them as the result of a lot of work, 10 years of work coming together and healing.
When I told my father that I was transitioning, he made a joke. He said, "You know, I've always told people that I have five kids, three sons and three daughters. You do the math." And it's kind of cute that he would make light of it and make a joke about it in a kind of loving, accepting way. But it's not the work. He hasn't done the work yet. So he still refers to me as “son,” and I push back. The part of it that's the most powerful is that I'm not living in fear of offending my father; I can challenge him and feel okay. Like the world's not gonna end if he gets mad or gets confused.
Is there a lightness in being able to walk through the world in the way you wish to represent yourself?
Yeah. I was conditioned to be afraid to be a trans person. I was conditioned to be afraid to be a girl. I remember being five or six years old and telling people that my name was Susie and everyone embracing that. And a point coming where that was no longer allowed; it became dangerous. And I learned that at home, not from strangers.
People voice concern for me, and I'm just coming to understand that that's concern trolling. People don't understand that this is a microaggression; reminding me that the world is not for me and that the world is trying to hurt me, doesn't make my life better. Even telling me that I'm brave for just being a person, that feels really weird. It shouldn't take courage just to be alive.
What I'm discovering as I move through the world in this body – and it is this experience in this body; I don't think of it as an experience of any other trans woman – is that I get a lot of positive affirmation, but it comes in a form that would likely be offensive to most women walking down the street. I get catcalled, basically. But not like walking by the construction site – when I walk by the construction site, people get quiet – but like the store clerk, the person in the gas station.
I was in the store around the corner from me, and they were just hitting on me terribly. They were hitting on me so terribly and so openly that in some ways it was fun, but in some ways it was also like, other people don't have to put up with this. And there is a sense that I am othered in the world and, if I had not been braced for violence and hostility, I'd probably be a little more equipped to deal with what I'm actually getting, which is harassment.
How do you deal with it?
Well, it's odd because I'm gigantic. I'm almost over seven feet tall right now with the shoes that I'm wearing. And one of the things that likely terrified me and had kept me from transitioning was that I knew that I'd never be “passing,” that people would look at me and they would see this trans body.
I realized that that's not the issue. In fact, I think that there's a thrill and an excitement for people to see trans bodies. And depending on the culture that one is coming from, trans bodies have a particular meaning behind them. In Western society, in the United States, people think of trans people and they think about sex work and I get it. I get it.
I get what it's like to suddenly have this one aspect of one's self so clearly valued in a particular way by the people in the society who have held the most power for me psychologically. And that is men CIS men.
I want to get excited. I want to be glad that they think I'm pretty. Right? I want to be happy because they think I'm pretty, because they think I'm sexy, because they want my attention. It feels very genuine. It doesn't feel like I'm being mocked. That has led me to even pursue what it looks like to monetize the particular effect that I have on men. Checking out escort sites, posting an ad and seeing what happens. Do I get feedback? And like, Wow, I do get feedback. What would I charge for that?
I haven't, you know, had a customer. I think because my price is way too high, and I think it's set too high because I don't really want to do it. Although if somebody offered me that amount, I probably would go out with them. But that's huge. That's a lot of, that's a lot of power to suddenly feel coursing through one's veins.
And in some ways I don't even feel like it's coursing through my veins. In some ways it is in the trappings of femaleness that I feel comfortable in right now. So I can do my hair. I can do my makeup. I can wear clothes that are cut for women's bodies. I can do these things, and I can be appreciated and generate this cloud of excitement. So there's something really, really intoxicating about that.
I think the moment that really ignited this aspect of the change, the unraveling, was the car accident. I was in a pretty terrible car accident and it was terrible for the car. The car went off the side of a mountain road, flipped, and got wedged into a tree, and I walked away from that without a scratch. That day I went on all my social media and I changed my gender marker to female, to "she." I changed my pronouns to "she" everywhere. It was like I got into that car as a gender-nonconforming person. And I got out of that car a goddess.
One of the things that I've watched from you is this celebration of your female form and your female figure. Watching you get to enjoy developing breasts. And I'm so fascinated by how that is for you and what you get to experience as your new adolescence.
Yeah, it's really funny because I mentioned before that this was something that I used to get teased so horribly about and now, you know, they, they make everyone smile. Like everyone smiles about them.
That change alone is huge. I mean, talk about that particular aspect of my body dysmorphia, my feeling just hatred of my own body, being flipped so immediately. It shifted my thinking about myself from being a failed man to being just a woman. To just a woman. The simplicity of that, for me, was just so lovely, like putting down a weight. I'd even considered having surgery to have my breasts removed and what a terrible mistake that would've been.
I've always been curvy. I've always had these like long legs, these long spindly legs, and they just felt wrong. And they just all feel right now. I'm a bombshell. I'm great. I have a great body. It's not, you know, a Cosmo body, but it is a great body. And for me, that's partially because I've looked at it as a failed body and now I get to see it as just one of many female bodies. So that's been exciting.
But at the same time, the shame, the body shame doesn't go away. Our bodies are number one, right? That's the sacred thing. But that's the thing that has the most oppression around it regardless of who we are. I've been called inappropriate. Social media blocks me or cuts me out and tells me I can't do this, and can't say that, and that this is too risque. And I'm just thinking to myself, How did we criminalize the body like that?
One of the transitions into womanhood is oftentimes the first bra fitting. Have you had the benefit yet of that marker?
Wow. Yeah. I did have a bra fitting. Um, I'm a 42 D. My guess is that I will, that will increase.
I've been more and more expressing myself in ways that would be considered traditionally female just in the past couple of months. And the way I am treated in what I've considered sacred female spaces, like buying clothing and being invited into the women's dressing room, was so affirming.
Walking into a shop as a woman and having someone descend on me to walk me through the process of buying a bra as opposed to me standing there, staring at them and having questions thrown at me that I don't know the answers to. To have someone go the entire way with me and say, Wait right here, let me go get a tape measure. Yeah. Yeah.
I would not have thought that that would have been the thing that made me a little bit emotional, but that's the thing right now that's making me a little bit emotional. The affirmation that I get from just regular people in the world in spaces that are intended, you know, intended for women.
Have you experienced much in the way of TERFs [trans-exclusionary radical feminists] or other people saying that you don't belong in those spaces or trying to push you out of those spaces in any way?
A lot of the argument of TERFs is around genitalia and this idea that because of our genitalia we live a common experience. That's just not true. And it's harmful not just to trans people, but it's harmful to a lot of CIS women whose bodies don't live up to the standards that society wants them to adhere to as women, as female bodies. So I don't feel alone in that. I don't feel particularly triggered or challenged by that. I just think that it's a dangerous way to think. Dangerous for everyone.
Growing up I wanted be a man. Not that I wanted a different gender. I never felt outside my gender. But the opportunities I saw that came with maleness was the power and authority in the world. What has it been like for you going from that position of power?
That's really interesting because the experiences that I see are the things that Black men are subjected to. It's so much. It's like constant surveillance. It's constantly being under suspicion. And it doesn't matter whether anyone else is thinking what I believe they are thinking, that belief has been imprinted on me. So without anybody giving me a strange look, I'm not welcome in spaces. And there is a history tied to that experience.
The experience of Black women, my sense has always been - and I'm finding that my thinking was limited – was that in those same spaces, for the wrong reasons, Black women have been welcome.
You know, the nurturing, mothering part of me has always been accepted by men. Men have always wanted, when they get a booboo, for me to take care of them. So that, for me, felt like stepping into power. But it's relative because it was stepping into a diminished capacity from one diminished capacity to a slightly less diminished capacity.
That again was based on perception because I have not lived with the internal messages that women of color grow up with. So yeah. I felt like I was actually being promoted into my female identity.
What do you love about being able to show a female figure and inhabit that body? And what has been more challenging than you expected?
I actually love the simplicity of being a woman. I feel like I wake up and my body's right. So the simplicity of putting on my clothing and just knowing that they're going to fit right.
How are you finding clothes that fit right?! I can't find clothes that fit right!
That is a little bit of a miracle. And I, and I have found some places that cater specifically to tall women, and I've also been told to start trolling, um, the, the women's ball, the WMPA, the women's …
Women's basketball? WNBA?
Yeah, to start trolling women's basketball players to see where they get their clothes. And I never felt comfortable in clothes for men. That boxy thing, they just didn't work on my body. I always felt like I was trapped. So that I like. That I like.
The challenges. It's so weird because a lot of what probably would be challenges for me, because there's so much novelty around them, I enjoy them. Like, you know, getting cat calls and things like that. If that was something that I grew up with, I probably would not feel the same way about it, but there's a novelty to it that makes it okay. Exciting. All right.
How about medical care and healthcare. Women are frequently misdiagnosed, frequently struggle within the medical communities? How are you at being able to access healthcare and medical care?
It's weird because of my size and build and voice, I still do command a certain amount of male privilege in spaces. For example, when I get on the phone, I can do a thing and get service and support.
Because I'm in spaces that are gender affirming, it's a little bit of a bubble. So I feel like everybody's for me and everybody's rooting for me and everything. I called my doctor and I asked about some facial things that I was thinking about and, you know, got a recommendation instantly. I know that that is privileged and that's privileged because of my connection to finances. And, you know, because I have a husband who works at a bank who has the best insurance available, I get access to all of these things. I can't imagine what it would be like trying to go through this process without that.
You mention your husband. How has that relationship evolved?
Yeah. Um, that's been really tough.
My husband's a writer and in some ways that's really fortunate because I get to read some of the things that he would not say. Having read some of the things that he's written recently, I understand that, for my husband, his spouse died. His spouse died. This person that he's been with for almost 30 years just vanished. And I get that to an extent, but I also have this deeper understanding that, No, actually, you've been married to this fantastic miracle of being, and we're just getting started. So, you know, it's a culture shock for him.
We don't live together and that hasn't necessarily been a strain, but that has made it really hard because he doesn't see the day-to-day. He’s not part of the regimen. So, um, yeah, that's been really challenging.
Relationships in general have been really challenging, specifically with the people who've known me the longest and the best. Not that there's not a sense of acceptance, but that the person that you knew, that was a person under a veil.
I imagine that I feel very different to people. Like all of these things about me are different and it may even feel fake to some people. I've realized even my walk, I used to have this bouncy walk as a kid and I used to get teased about it and I realized, Oh, that's my walk. That's the walk that I need to navigate with this particular body through the world.
Have you experienced a difference in how you're received in the different communities you walk through?
Yes. And I think mostly it's the attention that I get. That feels different. I don't know how to explain it, but I feel safer. I feel safer in the world. I think I used to move through the world thinking that I was going to be exposed, thinking that people were going to find out. And now I feel like I'm living with the truth on the outside. And so what are you going to say? Unless somebody physically harms me, there's nothing you can do. There's nothing anyone can do.
So in that way, I feel like I've jumped the gun on every possible way that someone could attempt to oppress me. And that is like being open about my sexuality, being open about, um, just various aspects of who I am that, you know, would, you know, clutch the pearls. But I realized that when I talk about them, people don't clutch the pearls; people are curious and people tell me about their experiences in that area of their life.
There's got to be a weight of having to even have this conversation about what it is to be a trans woman, rather than just getting to be a woman. How are you balancing thinking about yourself as a trans woman and just being a person?
Yeah. It's so interesting because, well, you know, one, there was not a me when I was young. There wasn’t a me to listen to on a podcast talking about the experience. This particular experience of being a trans woman who does not have passing privilege, does not have a lot of the privileges of, of people who live their lives as trans invisibly. So that's been fantastic. I don't feel that it's a weight.
I'm 56 years old. You know, there's only so much I'm trying to do, right.? I'm not trying to break into a career. I've lived a lot of my life. And so now I get to settle comfortably into this, this aspect of myself. So I don't feel a weight when I get to talk about this experience. I feel like, Wow, finally, I get to say this, these words get to be recorded. They get to go out into the ether for the next person to learn and have an experience.
I am humbled by the young people who have been living their authentic selves from when they're teenagers. And in some ways there's a privilege to that. But in other ways, I'm learning from them how to just live, how to not have my life be all activism.
You're 56, so you're kind of experiencing the opposite of what I'm hearing from a lot of women. As we hit our fifties, we become completely invisible to the world. And you are becoming visible both in your stature and in your presentation. That is exciting.
Yeah. I actually love the idea that I'm going to be a senior citizen who is a sex symbol and who is trans. I will be seen! To be in this aging body, with this aging face and to just to be like, Yeah! I hope that that makes the world bigger and more comfortable for a lot of people.
Is this switching how you're working professionally in terms of the work that you get to do and want to do?
I've done a lot of work with kids. And well, first of all, you know, what's happening now with Don't Say Gay. To think that my identity would make, like, go against a policy. Like my existence would be a breach of a policy because I'm a trans person. So just to talk about me is bad. And to feel shut out of an aspect of myself, the person that's really, really good with children … I'm really good with children. Like, I'm the GOAT when it comes to working with young people. I think it's that those young people have been aware of who's really here. And so now that I'm all the way really here, and the fact that my full presence now makes me unfit in certain minds and according to laws is, you know, sad.
It's devastating.
Yeah. That the world has gotten bigger and I'm able to talk about other things more freely feels like a blessing. I can't imagine what it would be like if I was someone who wasn't already doing social justice work and hadn't already made a name for themselves as someone who was a very competent facilitator for discussions, for difficult conversations like ones around gender.
Let's talk about sex. Has it changed for you? Has it changed how you experience it?
Um, wow. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to try to talk about this in a way that my mother-in-law might appreciate. I don't know. I, I definitely feel, I feel differently in my body. So everything is different in this, in this body. there I, like I talked about body shame and so to be having sex as a person who hated their body was not fun. It just was never fun. And I'm not saying like, yay, sex is great now, but sex is an adventure that I am happy to be on. There have been moments that were probably the most kind of thrilling and satisfying moments of my sexual life since I've, since I've transitioned. And I imagine that that will just continue.
What questions might you have for me?
Oh my God. You know, it's so funny because it's not, it's not about the genitalia, right? Those are the obvious questions. But that's not about the genitalia. Um, I, oh my God. I just – now I understand the experience of a white person asking a Black person a question about being Black. And just being like, Oh, there's no way to ask that question. But I, I guess I would want to know for you, What were the moments where you woke up to your own completeness as a woman?
That's such a good question. Because I don't know that if I, I don't know that I have, or if it's just that I've always taken woman-ness for granted so I don't recognize it. I think there's been an evolution.
Growing up I was what we would have called back then a tomboy. I was my daddy's girl. Womanhood and frilly dresses were not things I wanted to engage with. But I did get breasts early and watched men watch me. And my way of dealing with that was, in many ways, to become over-sexualized.
So I think that a lot of my womanhood is actually based in trauma.
That’s so interesting. Because we are all individuals and we're all living our experience, that in many ways that gender marker doesn't tell us anything. There are assumptions that can be made, but those assumptions can be wrong.
So wrong.
Like ways that are really hurtful to people. And so the value in exploring what it means to be trans, what it means to be Black, what it means to be a woman is not so much in answering questions for the world in that way. But for understanding how we got shaped. Because, you know, there was the woman mold and the black mold and all of these molds that no one fits.
And just to understand how those even the molds were devised and constructed and thinking about things like the history of Harper's Bazaar and women's magazines and how those molds and the ideal body isn't an accident. Those were things that were written down and categorized, so we can learn how we've been shaped by those things. But also how those things are ultimately meaningless.
Thank you, Pink.
You're welcome, Amy.
Thanks for listening to Bar\Heart.
That was my friend Pink Flowers, who was experiencing the transition into womanhood after a lifetime living as a queer man or gender non-conforming, you can read more about Pink and her anti-oppression work on her website, NotoriousPink.org.
This week's music and audio production was by Silas Hite.
Terrific interview