Why I have a mustache

“Shave the mustache, dear. You’ll look so pretty without it.” My relative tells me in Vietnamese, as I smile uncomfortably and shake my head no.

She continues to tell me this and I continue to let out nervous laughter.

“Come on, Hibby, you’ll look more womanly.” My mom also says in Vietnamese, tagging in.

The two of them continue to egg me on, telling me how pretty and womanly I’ll look once I shave it off. My mom eventually finds a razor and I continue smiling, although I feel deeply uncomfortable. So pretty, so womanly, your face looks so different and I love it. I’ve shaved it off before, just to see how I would look, and all my cis family members always light up when they see me without it. To them, it is the next step to achieve femininity for me, and they want to see me happy as a woman. They don’t think it’s harmful to shave it off, because they’re helping me be the woman they think I want to be.

Mustacheless Hibby

After my mom finishes shaving my mustache, I look in the mirror, and see someone I don’t like. She’s beautiful, her makeup is great, but she’s not me. I feel naked, exposed, and vulnerable looking at her.

“Oh my god, so pretty!”

“The prettiest in the family!”

“You look like a woman!”

It’s hard in this moment not to cry. The support my family wanted to offer me didn’t feel like support in this moment. It felt like walls pushing in on me, like I was being told what I couldn’t be. Heteronormativity, cisnormativity, gender roles, all of it weighing down on me, stacked on by my loved ones.

“If you want to dress as a woman, you should shave.”

“Girls don’t have mustaches.”

“Never grow it again, dear. Stay so pretty like this."

How do I tell my Vietnamese immigrant family that women can do whatever they want

How do I tell them that I feel more like a woman with a mustache

How do I tell them these things without pushing away their intentions and love

How do I tell them about feminism, about queerness, about trans rights

How do I tell them that I am already the woman I want to be

I eventually told them (though unwillingly) about my discomfort, and they apologized and affirmed that they didn’t want to make me sad. They wanted me to be happy; they felt happy that I achieved an aesthetic milestone they felt I needed to get to so I can be a woman. However, no one ever asked if I already felt like a woman. They asserted their image of womanhood onto me, and harmed me, but because of my love for them, I told them how that hurt me. With the men on dating apps who will match with me and tell me to shave my mustache, I don’t need to tell them how they did harm. I can’t tell the Bumble matches that disappear seconds after we match, because they saw my hair and breasts before they saw my mustache. Something inside people hates that I could look so feminine while still sporting a mustache. And something inside of me feels joy and gender euphoria because of that.

Of course, it’s not all joy and euphoria. There are moments of intense pain, like being force-shaven, like being told I’m actually a man, like being looked at all the time in public. To me, the extra line of hair on my face follows the rule of three, like a third eyebrow, but above the lips instead. To others, it is an affront to femininity, and an acknowledgement that I am bending the rules; rules that should not be broken. To transition itself may be immoral to them, but to transition and not cross the gender line clearly? You are a fake. You are an imposter. You are a failure, a joke.

As my mustache sits regrown on my face now, I feel myself. I feel real, I feel exactly what I want to be, and I feel like a success, and laugh. I feel confident, I feel beautiful, I feel attractive. No one can take that away, even if they stare at me, call me a man, or say that it only takes away from my womanhood. I am a woman with a mustache, and I am proud to be queer, trans, Vietnamese, and everything else that makes up my identity. The mustache is never leaving my face again, and I will continue to upset people and remain joyful in their hatred and confusion. A woman is not one thing, and a woman is who she wants to be. I am a woman, celebrating three years on HRT, and I have a mustache because I want to have one.

Happy Pride. : )