sarah sheppeck
A light-skinned Black person looks back at the camera over their left shoulder, which is adorned with a watercolor elephant tattoo. They are smiling widely and wearing a light purple beret.
When Addie and I decided that the theme for this volume would be “rebirth,” we were thinking both of the timing (the New Year), and of a theme that would resonate with the historically marginalized communities we elevate. As we’ve approached the issue’s release, I’ve reflected on my past and present incarnations, as I have already been birthed and rebirthed many times over.
I am a fire sign, energized by the cleansing power of flame, so it’s no surprise that I’ve always found kinship with the phoenix. I associate the process of rebirth with tribulation, with new trauma and fresh scars, with all that is destroyed in order to make room for something new and necessary. I have emerged from ash with a seemingly correlative frequency as the word “unprecedented” begins to lose its meaning from overuse.
I was rebirthed once in 2017, after a certain presidential election, the car accident that ensured I would never again dance the way I once could, and the miscarriage that redefined my understanding of grief. I was born again in 2019, when I left sunny LA and its disingenuous actor-slash transplants for a literal cabin in the woods in a Maine town so small that the post office doesn’t deliver mail. Again in 2020, after a heartbreak from which I thought I would never recover. Now, in the first days of 2022, I think this life cycle may last a bit longer.
For many of us, last year was merely a continuation of the year prior–more uncertainty, more stress, more incalculable loss. And yet it was in the midst of shared struggle that I finally began to feel like I am becoming something–someone–great. This is not my first rebirth, but it is the first for which I am grateful.
I think it is that type of rebirth–the type that brings gratitude, safety, and joy–that is celebrated throughout this issue. There’s “The Last Diet,” a comic by the wonderful Keet Geniza featured in our new fat + furious section, and the feature piece “Adorning My Trans Body” by Zeyn Joukhadar, both about finding pleasure in one’s present body. There are the works of Theo Canavan and Alex DiFrancesco in the glow up, both about masculine gender expression through makeup. David Salazar’s “Mamá Shaves My Head,” about the identity affirmation born from a haircut. The common theme? An air of celebration. We are here, and we are alive, and we are strong in our vulnerability.
May your next rebirth bring you certainty and peace.
xo Sarah
Sarah Sheppeck
Co-Editor in Chief
just femme & dandy
January 2022