‘I know who I am’
Portraits of the everyday lives of trans teens
When Emily Monforte set out to chronicle the lives of transgender teens in Los Angeles, the California-based photographer wanted to tell a universal story of self-discovery, to capture the turbulence and ordinariness of becoming a young adult.
“When you hear the words ‘coming of age,’ I think people immediately think of films and TV, these romanticized narratives. But I’m interested in the mundanity of growing up,” Monforte says. “In regular, everyday life, it is not a crazy journey that looks like a movie or a fairy tale or a dystopian story. It looks like every other teenage experience, which is just living life, making friends who support you, running into difficulties with your parents, trying to find an outfit that makes you feel good in your body, getting your homework done on time.”
Monforte, who uses they/them pronouns, has spent more than two years photographing queer youth in Los Angeles. For this project, they focused on two trans girls living in L.A.: 15-year-old Evan and 17-year-old Natasha, both of whom are being identified by first names only to protect their privacy.
At a time when transgender youths have been targeted by state legislatures across the country, when headlines often highlight the effects of laws that would restrict trans kids from accessing medical care or playing sports or using certain bathrooms, the rest of their lives — the nuanced entirety of their childhoods — can be overshadowed, Monforte says.
“The news can be extremely reductionist, and especially for people who do not know anyone who is trans, that will become their only reference point for what trans life is like,” Monforte says.
Over months spent following Natasha and Evan, Monforte was especially drawn to the teenagers’ hard-earned wisdom and their determination to create their own happiness. “These kids have found joy in the smallest of cracks, they have broken them open and found the light underneath,” Monforte says. “And that joy is theirs to keep. They’re not going to let anyone take that away from them, and they know people are going to try.”
The following interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
EVAN
Ever since I was little, I would wear dresses and wigs and heels. I remember one Halloween, I went as a Disney princess, and that makes so much sense, looking back at it, but I obviously didn’t know at the time. I’d always play with Barbies, and obviously that’s also okay if you’re a cisgender male, but it felt more like I wanted to be like them, look like them. It felt like I wanted to play with somebody who looked how I wanted to look.
I watch “RuPaul’s Drag Race” pretty often. As more recent seasons have come on, there’s been a lot of trans queens on the show, and that was my first introduction to it. They would talk about [being trans], and it was just, like, realizing that I kind of felt the same way. That was how I found out about myself.
I really didn’t want to come out. I’m not an extroverted person. I’m really introverted, so the thought of attention being on me, I just didn’t like that. I don’t like answering questions, and a lot of people tend to ask a lot of questions. I kept pushing it off. But eventually I told my mom, and I had my mom tell my family, and my stepmom told my dad.
My parents are divorced, and I mainly live with my mom and visit my dad. My family is very Hispanic and religious, but they’re still pretty supportive of me. I have an uncle in my family who is gay, and my grandma’s friend who lives with her is also gay. The one relative I was kind of worried about was my great-grandmother, because she is 92 and very religious. Like, when I say religious, I’m talking — when we were in quarantine, she’d only watch Mass all day long. But she was actually perfectly fine with everything.
Coming out was a big weight off my shoulders. I felt so much better. I made it harder than it needed to be just because I didn’t want the attention, but it was a good experience, and I’m lucky to have the family that I do, because they’re all supportive.
I think every teenage girl’s best friend and worst enemy is her mother. My mom and I are really close, and then there are times when we are the opposite of that. But a majority of the time, we are close, and I am very glad to have her. She’s been very accepting, and she’s been a big help to me with this transition.
I’m really self-assured — like I’m really, really secure. I know who I am. So if anyone were to misgender me, it doesn’t really bother me, because I know who I am. I know a lot of people get freaked out about pronouns, and sometimes I think you can’t blame people if they’ve known you for so long and they’re so used to calling you something else. They could be trying their hardest. Like my aunt will still call me “mijo,” which is technically “boy,” but it doesn’t bother me at all, because for the past 15 years she’s been calling me “mijo.” It’s not malicious.
I just try to look like a normal cisgender girl as much as possible. I do makeup, but I don’t do anything crazy. I wear normal clothes. I try to be myself, but also not stand out, because I just hate standing out.
My new school is an arts school, so it’s very LGBTQ-friendly. I dance at school. I’ve been dancing since sixth grade, and it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. Especially ballet, it will make your gender dysphoria so incredibly awful. With the leotards, I use tucking tapes, but they’re not the complete best, and having to wear them is not the most comfortable. At the same time, I love to do ballet. It’s elegant and graceful and it’s calm. It’s one of my favorite things ever. It’s interesting, that constant battle.
That’s something about me: I love calm. I love to be home. I’m just a homebody. I don’t really like going out, and whenever I get invited to places to hang out, I tend to bail. If I’m going to somebody’s house, then I’m fine with that, but I like being in a house. I like being in a place of comfort.
My dad used to take me on hikes all the time when I was little. I do like to be outside; I like to stop and enjoy nature. My plan for the future is to get tattoos of a butterfly, for my mom, and a beetle, because my dad has a tattoo of beetles on his forearm. Bugs go through this transformation, this cycle where they’re evolving to get to their final state, and I feel like that’s what transitioning is. You’re just evolving and evolving until you get to the point where you feel your best, and you look like your most beautiful or handsome self.
I’ve said this to my therapist, but a frustration of mine is that I feel like I’ve had to mature a lot faster, because I’ve had to go through things that are heartbreaking. You get to witness your friends do all these things that you wish you could do, but you just can’t, because it’s just not the same. My friends have been dating, having flings, stuff like that. My friends who are girls, I see how comfortable they are wearing whatever they want. But for me it’s not that simple; it’s not that easy. I’ve had to learn that instead of crying about it, to push through that and deal with it, and that has made me mentally stronger than my peers.
I’m just trying to get to that finish line of feeling completely comfortable with myself. I have my goals, like I know what surgeries I want, and I want all of them. I think that’s what would make me the most comfortable, and then I feel like I’ll actually be able to enjoy my life. I don’t want to be 30 and just barely starting to be truly happy. It took a while, but I’ve just started taking estrogen. It feels really good, and it will feel even better once it starts showing, but it’s really, really exciting. It’s the start of a new journey.
NATASHA
Growing up, my parents were like the typical Asian, conservative Christian parents. It was a pretty airtight environment. It was pretty hard, especially being queer. I grew up in church, so I would pray to God every single day: “Please make me normal. Please make my parents proud of me. Please make me the perfect child.”
One time when I was little, I made a dress completely out of paper that I stapled together, and I wanted to wear it to school. Obviously my parents said no. I didn’t know what “trans” or any of that queer stuff was. I was just like — you know, I just want to wear a dress. I really think that childhood innocence is bliss. I think that was the only time where I was pure and content, because I didn’t know anything.
This community is really small, people are really conservative, and I was already known as the “gay boy.” I never got to come out, but people just bullied me and assumed. I didn’t come out to my parents, either, because I had this fear that kept me up almost every night.
My parents and I have been working as a family together in therapy now for, like, two years. So they’ve come to accept me a little bit more. I only came out to them as trans in January. I came out in the middle of family therapy, so they wouldn’t flip out or anything. They’ve been working on themselves a lot. They actually took it pretty well.
Before I came out as trans, I won homecoming prince twice. It was really surreal, because my junior year, there was one prince and one princess, and a lot of popular guys were competing: the stereotypical jocks, athletes, student council guys. And I was like, you know what, it would be so hilarious and fun if I decided to compete. And I actually got it, and it was crazy standing up on that stage. I really lived in that moment. … I felt really empowered. I didn’t think a lot of people liked me or accepted me, but I guess a lot of people thought I was iconic.
My parents and I have had fights over clothing choices, so I’ve had to really diminish — or, in my parents’ words, “tone down” — my personality for their comfort. I love thrifting, because fashion is like, I think, the pinnacle of my whole entire life. Fashion is truly everything to me, and thrifting is amazing, because all these clothes had a past, and it’s like: How you can turn this ugly thrown-away top into the most gorgeous modern-day piece? It’s really fun and exhilarating when you’re looking through so many racks and you find the most gorgeous thing ever.
I’m naturally a very extroverted person, and I just love meeting new people. I love socializing, so my friends have always been a huge part of my life’s journey, and when I did come out as trans to them, they were super supportive. You know, they weren’t super educated about it, but they knew the basics enough to respect it, and they immediately used my name correctly and immediately gendered me correctly. They’ve just been really supportive. My friends are my safe space. At times when I couldn’t love myself, they were there to love me.
I’ve really channeled all my energy into all the decorations in my room. I have collages on my walls — a bunch of album covers that I love, artists that I adore that have really helped me throughout my life and also, like, snapshots of cinematography or movies that I’ve also loved throughout my life. When I need somewhere to hide or really want to be myself, this room means a lot to me. The clothes that I can’t wear in front of my parents, I try them on in this room, and I feel beautiful. I do my makeup in this room. It’s my escape.
I feel like femininity is an almost goddess-like power. So many people try to go after it their whole entire lives, but really, you don’t need anything to have that feminine energy. I haven’t even started hormone therapy yet, and I’m super feminine because it’s all about the mind-set, you know? How you perceive yourself. I think no matter who you are, no matter what you were born as, you’re feminine if you want to be.
I definitely matured at a much earlier age than the people around me did. I worry about stuff that other people don’t have to. I went to the beach a month ago with my friends, and strangers came up to us and talked to us, and I had to really feminize my voice to a kind of exaggerated degree, so I wouldn’t get clocked. And my friends were like, “Why are you talking so weird?” And I was like, “You guys don’t get it. I’m genuinely scared for my safety. I’m scared to speak because of my voice.” Cis women don’t get it. They can wake up, have no makeup on, not do their hair, wear the laziest outfit ever, and people will see them as a woman. I have to wake up early to do my hair for two hours, I have to put on makeup, I have to duct-tape my body parts, I have to put on the most hyper-feminine outfit, I have to do all of that to even be perceived as who I am, and even then it’s a risk. Even then people might not believe me.
I turn 18 really soon. And I definitely think that after graduating high school, the whole entire world is mine to take. I am going to college, and I think I’m going to move out [of my parents’ house] in August. I recently consulted with a hospital, and I might be starting hormone therapy like in July, and I’m super, super excited for that. [My parents] respect me enough to let me go through with it, and even though I’m going to be 18, I still kind of want their blessing. They’re my parents.
It was actually only recently that I really, really started to love myself for the first time in my whole entire life. I changed my mind-set. Instead of looking at it as, “I’m a trans woman,” I can look at it as, “I’m a woman who has more to offer, and a woman who has fought her way to be a woman. And all my suffering has made the strength that I have now.” If I hadn’t gone through that, I wouldn’t have such empathy for others, and I wouldn’t have realized my self-worth. When I came out as trans, all of a sudden I had nothing to hide and nothing to fear. I realized how powerful I was.