putting on a nonbinary face

k iver

My gender surfaced through intuition. As my third decade gained on itself, I grew tired of the work, money, and time expected of me to become “presentable” to anyone outside my home. The weather in Florida where I lived became a daily metaphor for that heaviness, making the choice to shed jewelry, hair, heals, and synthetic fabrics an easy one. If men weren’t expected to wear it, or carry it, I wasn’t going to. My assigned gender was on strike. This process took a long time in part because I was born in the early 1980s in Mississippi where strict gender and sexuality codes continue making life difficult for queer people, sometimes unbearable. Now, my gender is simply picking up where my 10-year-old-self left off when they started dressing like k.d. lang and was quickly punished back into floral patterns. A year later, I started wearing makeup. Everyone thought I was too young, and told me so. I spent hours learning how to apply layers of foundation, mascara, and dark lipstick, as if my once-desire to look less feminine had been overcorrected. 

I mistakenly think of makeup as the last marker of gender conformity I’ve yet to let go. Makeup requires work, money, and time, and I resent how little all three are expected of men to “put their face on.” Two things keep me holding on: 1) Pandemic stress has wrecked my skin and made me look every bit as old as I am. Most days, I don’t recognize my eyes. 2) There are gender-nonconforming and cis people using makeup to appear androgynous.

I wish I had the features of Asia Kate Dillon, simultaneously soft and sharp. My face is oval, with round cheekbones. I have a fleshy nose with no discernable cartilage to justify its fleshiness. The 90s stole my eyebrows that once sprawled their real estate on most of my upper lids. While my eyebrows are not quite pencil thin, they now have a permanent round arch. However minimalist my style, I look like a woman in her late 30s. My brain chemistry would never allow hormone therapy for sharpening my features: the probability and risk of mental suffering is too high. So, I’m getting help from makeup. When I tell people that I’m learning how to use makeup to appear less feminine, they automatically think, more masculine. They assume I want to theatrically perform male stereotypes: paint on a beard or mustache. A friend asks me what my drag king name would be. At first, the idea registers in my body as dysphoric. I just want a minimal, everyday routine, the I-don’t-care look that arrives with some care. I want to take an author photo the way Asia Kate Dillon takes an actor photo, at complete ease and delight in their face and body. I have a photo deadline coming up, my first since coming out as nonbinary. I need reinforcements, from youtubers and queer elders. My queer friends send me tutorials that don’t quite hit my target. But their algorithms help me sift through twenty-plus more, stopping at the last two.

Lately I’ve been reading about the innovative expression of MilDred Gerestant, aka Drag King Dred. Gerestant was a first-generation Haitian American who rose to drag stardom in the 90s and died in 2019 at 48. A short documentary filmed in 2010 features her joyfully walking through her neighborhood in a large suit with a shaved head, hoop earrings, and a fedora. In a hair salon, Gerestant marks a sharp, triangular goatee with eyeliner, applies adhesive, and dusts her chin with tiny, snipped hairs from the salon. The result is a chiseled face and major masculine sex appeal. This isn’t what I want, I think. Then, she reveals that she shaved her head before beginning a career in drag: I just got tired of doing my hair. There it is: tired. The inevitable aftermath of performing what we don’t want to. Eleven years before this one, before the words “gender queer” and “nonbinary” become commonplace, Gerestant describes herself as fluid. She is remembered as beginning her shows by depicting hypermasculine stereotypes and, later, stripping to a bikini bra to remind the audience, I am both. Her video doesn’t help me find my regimen: there are no brow or contouring techniques. But I catch some of her magnetic courage to be both genders, either genders, or neither gender when she wants. That is the sustaining force of the distant queer elder. They bless your identity with the benediction of their own life. 

On YouTube, I watch Lisa Eldridge, a British cis woman give an androgynous makeup tutorial. Throughout, she’s careful to assert her cisness, as if for permission: This look isn’t going to be for everyone…I’m quite a girly girl, and I like dresses and I like girly makeup, but… The video is surprisingly helpful in teaching me how a very feminine face can appear less so. I learn that 1) brows are key: draw them straight, not arched. Lower the arch. Lower the arch some more. 2) Contouring is more angular, instead of rounded, at the cheek. 3) Make sure the highlighter is not a shimmer. 4) Use the dark contour palette to define your eye socket and your bottom lid. 5) Don’t use a lot of mascara, if any. 6) No eyeliner. 7) If your lips are naturally pink or peach, no need for color. I’m sure these rules can be broken but, for now, Eldridge’s template is useful in its strictness. 

I try doing what she says. At Sephora, I buy the versions of her products that are not Tom Ford or Bobbi Brown—still resenting the cost. As expected, my eyebrows look too thick and dark. But they’re straight, not arched. My cheeks and temples have sharpened, just a little. I’d gotten a little shy with the contouring. Every time the shadowing seemed too dark, I blended it too much. I had not periodically backed away from the mirror to check the overall effects like Eldridge advised. But, looking in my selfie screen, I suddenly feel lighter. This scenario doesn’t fit in my “less work=less heaviness” formula. But I didn’t expect to feel that lightness when I shed my name to one letter and my wardrobe to button ups, loose slacks, and flats. That feeling steadily revealed itself as a primal need that I hadn’t named.

After my first go, I look at some of Gerestant’s performance photos again, and notice that, in some, she made sideburns right below her cheeks, sharpening them the way now sharpen ours through contour. Like her other applications of facial hair, the sideburns looks natural. By contrast, my brows look cartoonish. But, along with that feeling of lightness, they also offer an unexpected sense of safety. As if they’re now carrying a claustrophobia I don’t have to. Tomorrow I’ll try them again. I’ll try darker shading.

about the artist

K. Iver is a nonbinary poet born in Mississippi. They have received a Ph.D. in Poetry at Florida State University. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, BOAAT, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. They are the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow for the University of Wisconsin Creative Writing Institute.