Felicity was robbed!

I watched "TransAmerica" tonight with my friend Rick. I really liked it. Great script, great acting. Now, I thought Reese Witherspoon was really good in "Walk the Line," but I think Felicity Huffman should have won the Oscar. What a performance!

We even watched the bonus commentary on the DVD. At one point the director was talking about how the story has ‘universality,’ as my high school English teacher would have said, because at some point, we all feel we don’t belong, at some point we all feel out of place in our own skin.

I once took a weekend seminar on communication, and at one point the leader discussed how we make decisions about ourselves in moments of stress or failure that impact everything in our lives for years after. He asked us to think of a time when something happened to us that made us say, “I’m not [blank] enough.” Not good enough, not smart enough, etc. What came up for me was something that happened when I was in 4th or 5th grade. My class was putting on a musical production of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. I really wanted the part of Becky. I sang for the audition, and I thought I was sooo good. I was already a budding musician – I had had piano lessons and everything. There was no way I wouldn’t get that part. Well, not only did I not get the part, but the part I did get was one of a chorus of old men. Old. Men. In that moment I said to myself, “I guess I’m not a real girl.” Or not enough of a girl.

From then on, I felt estranged from my femininity in one way or another. From sophomore year of high school until about 2 years ago, I would rarely wear pink, and I had an unspoken, almost subconscious negative judgment of women who did. It’s not that I wanted to be male instead, or that I wanted to be butch. It’s just that anytime I wore high heels or a lot of makeup or a fancy hairstyle, some small part of me just felt inadequate, alienated, fraudulent. Hitting my sexual peak at age 32 helped somewhat. Something about being horny makes one willing to play one’s gender role if that’s what it takes.

But I’m still sorting it out. Sometimes I crave attention directed at my girliness, and sometimes I resist and deflect it. I’m still looking to play the female lead somewhere, in something.