Member-only story
Still A Strange Girl
Orig appeared Battered Suitcase 2011
Note: I was not publicly identifying as non-binary at the time.
I am a woman in my thirties and like many other women my age, my girlhood was changed; by the magazine Sassy, the discovery of bands like 7 Year Bitch, L7, the Gits and RiotGrrl culture. I have lived in Seattle for most of my life; I saw a lot of this culture up close but rarely personally. I was too young and too shy to go out and experience the birth of angry girl culture, but the hooks were sunk.
My desire was to grow up and be like Mia Zapata or Donita Sparks- I wanted to stand with one foot up on an amp, shredding on a guitar and screaming into a mic. I wanted to wear my hair messed up; I wanted to wear torn up baby doll dresses and Doc Martens. I was already pissed off and in my heart I knew that those women, those magnificent women were for me.
This obsession was something I kept to myself, one more secret for my diary. It became another of those things that hurt my tender heart but, that I couldn’t say to anyone.
Around the age of 13 or so, magazines like Sassy were still absolutely aspirational. From the pages of Sassy I began to develop many opinions that I still hold to this day. I learned an appreciation for all things DIY, I started to actively want to see beauty in a new way and yet, every…
