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Diana’s wardrobe consisted of old hand-me-downs from various family members. Old jackets mended together with string and a dream and vintage tops with tinker bell collars and wide legged pants. Baseball caps torn at the seam and cargo shorts and t-shirts with dated logos and pop culture. The most gorgeous of dresses. She’d taken pride of her curated wardrobe, never letting go of an article of clothing.
Her father had told her she could be whatever she wants. Did that extend to whatever clothes she wore? The mirror certainly believes so.
“I’m Diana! Nice to meet you!”
The mirror agrees.
Diana doesn’t understand the point of splitting class.
She hangs out with boys easily. She doesn’t play sports, but she imagines trucks and cars and action figures with inner lives, just like them.
Girls are easier to fit in, but that’s because Barbies are all the rage. She cuts synthetic hair and draws on their face with crayons, but there’s a looming sense of loneliness when girls start playing gossip.
It’s a cliche thought, why is blue for boys and pink for girls, but she’s too young to make heads or tails.
Originally, pink’s for boys and blue’s for girls.
Growing up means contending that life is full of categories and cliques and groups and Diana has to choose in order to climb the social ladder.
But makeup, that’s a universal constant.
The glamour shots of celebrities and the makeup effects of movie monsters, even just the teeniest touch up to compete with studio lights. On TV, everyone wears makeup.
Mom’s makeup turns into studio grade makeup, and soon Diana’s skills are unmatched. She practices every day to replicate look after look, but what she wants specializing is finding a unique look.
For her clients, but for herself as well.
Sometimes, Diana questioned the need to cut her hair.
The updo she crafted so carefully frames her face so well. Her hair’s tied up delicately behind her. She raises a hand to window shops, an imaginary cut to long tresses. It still adds up to her, so why not give in?
Sometimes, Diana thinks the cut’s not necessary. She loves her hair, loves styling it, loves flashing it like a cape swishing around.
And sometimes she squeezes every strand in netting, making sure it all fit underneath a quiffed wig.
Some say magenta is obnoxious, but it’s delightful on her.
She fits in, until she doesn’t.
All the popular girls pick her because she can re-touch their looks. All the famous directors pick her because she can create beauty from scratch.
But she still doesn’t fit in. Makeup is temporary. Can be dismantled and rebuilt at a moment’s notice. Would that still apply to her identity as well?
Temporary gender. Sometimes a boy, a son instead of daughter, a girl.
Sometimes just a person.
People love her as is, but what if as is had multiple answers? All of the above?
Maybe she didn’t need to fit in at all.
“Do you ever see yourself as another gender, Damon?”
He doesn't think much of the question; he liked his gender, thank you very much, and all the questioning he processed back at his previous school all lead to the same conclusion: yeah, he did like being a boy, and that was that. Any casual conversation about gender elicited the same response: "That's your worry, not mine." A considerate response, but apparently not to everyone.
The makeup artist twiddles her thumbs. “So, it’s not something you...”
He shrugs. “Not me, no.”
The makeup artist twists a strand of hair, face forlorn.
So when the makeup artist tells him that her gender fluctuate, Damon’s first thought was the specifics.
“Still Diana. Still she pronouns. But I’m sometimes a boy and a girl and both? Probably not neither, but we’ll see!”
“That helps a lot.”
Diana grins, smiles in relief as she thanks Damon again and again for accepting her and understanding her. And Damon, awkward as he was, he gives a smile and a nod.
Later, he thinks about how he looks. How tired he looked. How exhausted and ghastly he looked.
He’s still a boy. That much he can agree on.
When he greets Diana, she’s dressed in a sweater vest, men's chinos, bowtie. Her hair cropped. How was that possible?
Before he could think he blurts out “I want a makeover,” with no regard. His nerves unwind as Diana leads him to her tiny makeup studio. The mirror in front of him still ghostly.
“Trust me,” Diana says through her absolute delight, “You’re gonna love your new look, I guarantee it.”
“I hope so, you are an Ultimate after all.”
Diana laughs, and he frowns. It was expectation, not a joke.
She holds a tiny broomstick brush. “Let’s get started.”
“And done! Open your eyes!”
What looks back at him was just his face, but with more...? He couldn’t place the feeling. His eyebrows more pronounced, his face more rosy, the eyebags disappeared. And a tiny ponytail? Right in the middle.
“It brings out your face more,” Diana reassures. The brushes twirl against manicured nails, acrylic. Easy to remove. A shocking pink color, sparkles in the middle. Damon purses his lips for something to say.
As if a mind-reader, Diana holds his hand in kindness. “Hey, do you want me to do your nails, too?”
Well. That answers that question.
Diana’s talked about some collaboration makeup set. ‘Beauty for everyone,’ it advertised. She tells him that everyone wears makeup, regardless of gender.
And maybe Damon believes that, too.
Now, he’s no expert, but he’s kept the foundation. The blush. The eyebrow pencil. First assisted by Diana, then by his own hand, perched on his bathroom mirror.
Diana tells him he does a great job the first time, and he doesn’t believe it until she gifts him a compact mirror. The reflection blinks back, and it’s a relief that it’s him staring. Empowered and handsome.
“It’s not that bad,” he says.