SHORT:
I am the way I am because I got the lead keyboard solo in my Jewish Day School’s orchestra rendition of “Mas Que Nada” (by Sergio Mendes and The Black Eyed Peas of course).
A white Jewish boy did the Spanish & English rap parts while parents beamed and clapped off-rhythm.
MEDIUM:
In middle school, the two most popular girls spent lunch eating ribbon noodles on the floor of the large stall in the girl’s bathroom (to clarify they ate the noodles out of a thermos, they sat on the floor).
One day I had the honor of joining them. I didn’t have ribbon pasta (I always had PB&J for lunch because it’s dessert but you’re allowed to call it main course), but they kindly shared theirs. We spooned ribbons into our mouths and talked about things like how they had their periods and I didn’t.
At the time, all I wanted was to get my period.
These days, I would give anything to make my period go away.
At the time, I was willing to eat pasta in a bathroom stall.
These days, I might still be willing to do it, but it would have to be like Michelin star level pasta or someone like Cher would have to be sitting on the floor. Cher and I would talk about how she doesn’t have her period anymore and I still do.
What we convince ourselves is cool or normal or important at age 12 is insane.
I am also now realizing that we definitely ate the pasta with forks. Not spoons. But that’s neither here nor there.
LONG:
Before I cut my hair, people would tell me that I looked like the sad little girl from Bo Burnham’s film Eighth Grade. Now they tell me that I look like the sad little girl from Bo Burnham’s hit film Eighth Grade if she cut her hair.
When I was in eighth grade, my 17-person Jewish Day School class went to Israel. The first night, I shared a hotel room with the noodle girls. They pushed two twin beds together to make one big bed for us, and I slept in the middle. Around 2am, I woke up to find that I had fallen into the crack between the mattresses. I quietly got up, climbed over them, and went to watch TV in the next room. I watched MTV because I was not allowed to watch MTV at home in America.
Around 8am, the Mediterranean sun warmed the room, and the noodle girls rose from the comfort of their non-concave slumber locations. They pressed themselves up against the bedroom mirror and started to tweeze their eyebrows, getting ready for the big (eye-brow-centered?) day ahead. I stood in the corner, aimlessly shuffling in my socks until they finally invited me over and taught me how to “tweeze [my] eyebrows without tearing up too much.”
Later in the trip, I teared up A LOT because my “boyfriend” (male person who I texted, held hands with once, and sat next to on the bus) dumped me. We were on a Kibbutz, and he slid a note under the door of our room letting me know that “it was over”.
Earlier that day, we visited a chocolate factory and I purchased a giant chocolate heart at the gift shop. Upon receiving the breakup note, I cried, climbed up onto my metal Kibbutz bed, and threw the chocolate heart onto the floor. I sobbed dramatically as it shattered into a million delicious and disgusting pieces. The girls in my Kibbutz room cheered and told me that “I was SoooOO much better off without him!” We blasted “Bedrock” (the song of that Spring) and danced our butts off, grinding up on the poles of the Kibbutz beds and screaming like the little Jewish freaks we were. To this day, nothing gets me going quite like the iconic lyrics “Call me Mr. Flintstone, I can make your bed rock.”
I did not sit with my (now-ex) boyfriend on the bus the next day. I didn’t want to look at him (and also he chose to sit next to the new girl he was dating – less than 12 hours! Quite the turnaround! Let me remind you that there were only 17 of us total in the grade and on the bus!)
This bus ride was also when I learned that the boys were making a list of the 8th grade girls and all of their “problem areas”.
The list was surreptitiously distributed a day later. I watched everyone pass the list around the bus and braced myself for mine. I spent middle school convinced that everyone thought I was ugly and I knew, I just KNEW that was what the paper was going to say. Megan Pope: UGLY. I’m still constantly emotionally panicked about the way I’m perceived (although now it’s become Megan Pope: people don’t read you as non-binary/transmasc because you’re so girly no matter how hard you try not to be).
Sometimes I think that if all the brilliant people or even the non-brilliant people in my life stopped obsessing over what they looked like, we could have cured cancer by now. Why do we care what our soul sacks look like? Why do I care? Most of us can fundamentally intellectualize that fact that looks don’t matter and yet, when we see someone with abs or a gorgeous jawline, we’re floored.
The paper didn’t say Megan Pope: UGLY. It said Megan Pope: small tits. Which didn’t bother me as much (and is hilarious in hindsight now that my tits are gone). I sat back in my bus seat and exhaled, relieved that they hadn’t written anything about my skin or hair or face or teeth.
I later found out that my “boyfriend” actually dumped me because of the small tit situation. He liked the new girl better because she had big boobs. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. I really hope to go back to Israel one day and spend time taking in the history and scenery as opposed to worrying about the opinions of middle school boys.
I really hope to stop policing my femininity out of fear that someone will read me as a girl. In The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson quotes Sally Munt: “to be femme is to give honor where there has been shame.” I’m going to focus on honor this year. Honor instead of shame when my voice gets high, when I have to put little clips in my hair to keep my bangs out my eyes, when I say the name “Megan”. When I accidentally move in a femme-y way. When I laugh. When I cry.
I’ve slipped a note under my door letting myself know that my dumb shame “is over”. It has left me for someone with bigger boobs. It will sit with that person on the bus tomorrow. It’s time for me to go break a chocolate heart and dance. Call me Mr. Flintstone, I can make your bed rock (sorry, I had to).
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-Meg
Social- @megspope@mpopetweets
Venmo- @mpope-venmo-26
Website- meganpopework.com
Donate to The Audre Lorde Project
Song Of The Week: “Driver’s License”, I can’t stop listening to it, it was made in a lab. I highly suggest looking up the drama behind it if you haven’t already.
Movie Of The Week:We Bought A Zoo, I love movies that ask the question “will Megan be able to sit through this?”
Shows Of The Week: Pretend It’s A City & Search Party (New! Season 4)
See you next week <3
