For trans women of color, representation is a polarizing topic. There are the well-known trans women of color we admire, and there are those we mourn for. It is easy to be inspired to do great things by the former, and it’s easy to see the latter as evidence of the fact that many of us are in constant danger. But what lies between these extremes of fame and death? Do I have to die in order to matter? Do I have to become a celebrity? I’m stuck between feeling like I need to be beautiful in order to be taken seriously, and feeling like I need to be invisible to be safe.

These days, I save glamour for social media. Posing for the camera becomes routine and practiced, imitating the trans women I see on my Instagram feed. Sometimes, I mention my transness in captions as a “quirky” way to classify myself as a fabulous girl who just happens to be trans. Perhaps I’m inadvertently contributing to this representational divide by posturing myself online as somebody whose makeup is always beat, whose fit is always on point. Otherwise, I feel empty-handed with nothing to offer, even though I would be a more tangible person to everybody else who is like me.

Offline, I hide behind my glasses with no eyeliner, and I have fewer fancy outfits to showcase. My day-to-days are spent going to school; I get my offline euphoria walking down the street without anybody staring. This invisibility is also something I have to practice, navigating the fuzzy line between passing as cisgender without being seen as too fabulous. Perhaps this, too, contributes to the polarization of trans women’s stories. After all, staying invisible in public won’t protect those girls who lack the luxury to be invisible from harm.

Maybe there are other trans women of color like me out there — others who find it difficult to straddle these worlds. There are days I feel so inspired by famous trans women that I want to put on my best look and strut down the street. There are days I am so terrified of my transness that I want to curl up in my bed for ages. But most days, I simply go to school working towards my master’s degree, which is both as boring as it sounds and a massive milestone for a girl like me. Sometimes, I put on winged eyeliner and wear heeled boots to class, and while plenty of people wear eyeliner and heels in New York City, I feel a certain thrill by pushing myself to inhabit that gap between fame and invisibility for the trans community.

I shouldn’t need to center my worth around my appearance or the circumstances of my community. There are girls who aren’t glamorous, girls who are proud to stand out in their beauty, girls who don’t want attention, girls who go to school, girls who work full-time jobs, girls who work four full-time jobs, girls who are broke, girls who are boring, girls who sing, girls who write, girls who show up empty and are still alive.

As we withstand the suffering, we also prosper. Our stories deserve to be told.

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