Name:  Christina

Gender: cisgender woman 

Pronouns: she/her

Home & From:  Anchorage, Alaska 

I identify as a cisgender woman. And I know this because what I do and wear, and how I act and exist in the world, do not define me as a woman. Instead, those things are feminine, are womanly, BECAUSE I, a woman, am doing them. I am every bit as much a woman in jeans and a T-shirt as in the dress I was photographed in. 

I’m not sure WHY I identify firmly as female. I certainly DON’T enjoy some aspects of cultural/performative femininity (makeup? Shaving? No thanks!). But some female-coded things DO feel good and right. 

I started wearing a corset for bust support about a year ago, and I not only like the reduced tension and pain in my shoulders, I also like the way I look and feel in my corset and skirts. Interestingly, they feel more natural to me, less performative, than the dress I was wearing in my photos.  That may be partly to do with the way the corset improves my posture.  I also think it’s because my corset, skirts, and socks-with-garters look feels DELIBERATE and PERSONAL in a way that a more conventional mode of dress does not. Is this gender euphoria?  Maybe!  Probably, even!  For me, I think it’s also body-euphoria – embracing the body I have and making my clothing suit my body instead of following the cultural pressure to change my BODY to suit fashionable clothing.  Maybe it’s even culture-euphoria, if such a thing exists – wearing clothing my ancestors might not have WORN, but which has features I think they would have recognized and understood. 

It may seem a little odd, but in a way, I think the 2024 presidential election helped solidify my sense of gender identity. I felt betrayed and dehumanized by many of my fellow citizens, in a way that feels specific and – more importantly – PERSONAL to my identity.  It’s not only that misogyny affects me because I present or am assumed to be female; I already knew that. But the election results HURT.  It HURT knowing that so many people would dismiss an incredibly qualified and capable candidate because of the shape (and color!) of her body.  I think I would still be hurt even if I didn’t identify as female, but the hurt feels more intimate than that; it’s an attack on me as a woman, and an attack on my own right to equality. 

So yeah! I’m a woman. I’m female. I’m even “feminine,” though honestly the cultural connotations of that word ARE harder for me to embrace. I’m a WOMAN, and *I* get to decide what that means.  

More thoughts from Christina:  

I’d been trying to get a handle on the difference between “I defy gender expectations by defining everything I do as feminine” and “I defy gender expectations by doing what I want regardless of other people’s interpretations of me”. The first is like me, and the second is like a friend of mine, whose relationship to HER gender is basically “I’ve been informed that I am female. Fine, whatever, this is not particularly relevant to my life except insofar as it seems to make some other people act like assholes or idiots”. 

I’m NOT so ambivalent about my gender, but I really have been struggling to pin down what the difference is and why it matters to me at all. 

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTE:

I took these photos with Christina and Bryan nearly two years ago. Sometimes, understanding our gender—and everything tangled up in it—requires deep reflection, and time. Especially as we move forward through the chaos of ordinary life.

These portraits were also a quiet celebration of their wedding anniversary, taken in the same place where they were married over two decades earlier, so most of the photos in Christina’s story include Bryan as well. While their gender journeys are distinctly their own, they are also deeply intertwined. Over the years, Christina and Bryan have described the beauty of growing alongside one another—learning, evolving, and making sense of themselves and the world in partnership.

Photos taken August 2023

Story written summer 2025