When I was six or seven, I had a massive container full of Barbies. Looking for a specific doll meant searching through a sea of synthetic hair, velcro clothing, and tiny plastic shoes. I had a plastic horse with which I first learned how to braid hair and a little stable where said horse lived. When friends came over, we’d play house with the Barbies and fight over who got to be the mommy, and then they would complain that I had no Ken doll to be the daddy. Poor little Kelly was missing a daddy. As a first grader, I didn’t particularly want a Ken doll but asked for (and got) one for Christmas because my friends told me I needed one for my collection.
During one of the many nights when I was struggling to fall asleep, I wondered when I would start liking boys. This was about a decade ago, and when being gay wasn’t a totally foreign concept to me, though to my knowledge I didn’t know any openly queer people. I knew that there were people in the world who were gay, but it just never came up in our house. I very clearly remember asking myself if I liked girls, and then deciding that I was just too young and it would change, all as Barbie and Ken kissed each other.
I think the first queer person whom I knew personally was a teacher of mine in middle school. I didn’t immediately find out they were gay, but the moment I did, it was as if I’d found a lost piece of the puzzle. I didn’t know where it fit in yet, but I could feel it between my fingers. Throughout middle school, I tried to just not think about it. I was still pretty convinced that I’d end up with a husband, dog, and 1.86 children, though struggled to answer the quizzes in Seventeen Magazine that asked, "What’s your biggest turn-on in a guy?” (my go-to were hair and eyes. Seemed reasonable enough that nobody would question it). I was present at every middle-school GSA meeting and found what would end up being my queer family (though few of us knew that yet).
The first of my close friends to come out to me directly did so in eighth grade. It was over Google Chat (which was the preferred method of communication for middle schoolers in the early 2010s), and I was only a little surprised. I knew to some extent where the conversation was going, but I was a little surprised. We both loved the musical "Rent," which was a major source of queer representation. It was definitely the first form of media I came in contact with which explicitly presented queerness. I was (and am still) in love with Idina Menzel, which was a big part of the appeal for me (I had never considered representation as anything significant at that point). Part of me wanted to just say “same” after she told me that but instead decided that sophomore year I would do it. I’m not sure why I chose that year, but I promised myself that that would be it.
I actually ended up coming out before sophomore year. As a freshman, my favorite teacher had left school and I ended up babysitting for them. After morning assembly, I walked directly to a practice room, texted “So I’m bi," and stared at my phone until she responded. I’d moved from “I’ll like boys eventually” to “I like boys, just not as much as girls," and that was the story I was sticking to for a while. That was the first and only time I’ve ever actually “come out” (at least in the typical sense). Almost everybody in my life at this point knows, but I’ve decided that I don’t like the whole “I need to tell you something: I’m gay” process, so I generally just wait for it to come up in conversation.
I didn’t really say anything again until my junior year. I guess I felt that that initial coming out was enough to earn me another year of heteronormativity. My school is very committed to diversity work and creating an open environment, and we had something called Many Voices Day. At the end of this day, we did an all-school activity were someone would read various identifiers and if you identified as such you would step into the circle. You didn’t say anything, instead, we just looked around at who we shared identifiers with and how people identified differently. I loved this activity. There was no commentary, people were respectful, and nobody pressed any particular issues. I heard “please step into the circle if you identify is bisexual. Observe who is in the circle, observe who is not, please step back.” I stepped into the circle, stared at the ground, and then walked quickly back to my spot in the masses.
I left with a friend as we talked about confidentiality and double-confidentiality (which were both promised respected in regards to this and many other activities). I was now openly queer in my school but wasn’t ready for it to leave that community. However, my parents were very involved in the school community, and I had to accept that being able to keep my school and home lives separate wasn’t a guarantee. My brother also went to my school, though he was in middle-school, and just oblivious enough that he might not notice.
Come senior year, I identified as a lesbian. I’d never absolutely rule out the possibility of liking a guy, though that has only happened once in my lifetime, and it was during the “I’ll like guys eventually” phase, so who can tell how genuine that was? The summer before college, it happened to come up with my older cousin, who was the first family member to find out. At this point, I honestly don’t know who else in my family knows. As I’ve said, I just sort of let it happen, and after years of actively hiding my queerness I pretty much immediately shut it down around them. Either way, I make it abundantly clear to pretty much everyone around me that I’m definitely gay. I love my “Cute, Queer, and Angry” phone case, and my rainbow socks with “GAY” written down the sides. It’s still just as present in my mind, though mostly because I can talk about it as I please without having to think about it first.
Coming out is a process. It can become a complicated game of who does or doesn’t know and what posters of flags you have to hide around certain people. Some people are able to just wake up one day and say, “Wow. I’m queer,” and then go back to bed, while others spend years thinking about it before doing anything with that information. I was surrounded by great friends, almost all of whom were queer, and being able to immediately dive into the LGBTQ+ community after years of observing from the side was fantastic for little 16-year-old me. I went to a very accepting college (shout out to UVM) and I’m in the process of recreating my little family in Vermont before I get to go home to Philly.
When people ask me how I knew I was gay, I go back to my Barbies. I didn’t know what it meant, I didn’t know that it was reflective of my own sexuality, but I knew that I didn’t need or want Ken in my life. Not everybody knows as a child—some don’t figure it out until adulthood, but some do. It’s hard to accept that a child can know that they are gay before they even really know what romantic love is; it can even be hard for children to accept that. But to this day, I still only have the one Ken amongst the dozens of Barbies.
