Growing up in Edmonton, Alberta, it’s not surprising that the summer camp I attended had a definite Western flavor to it. We rode horses, shot arrows, paddled canoes. I loved it, and wore my straw cowboy hat everywhere. With my short hair and athletic, flat-chested little body, I was often taken for a boy, and I never minded. After all, it seemed to me that boys had more fun! When the end of camp arrived one year, I was delighted to be given a beautiful poster drawing of a horse. When I turned it over, it announced, “Best Little Cowboy” as the award title. Wow! I was proud and honored.
Since then, I’ve mostly worn my hair short (dyke short) and caused confusion of a minor sort throughout my life. Even in my forties, supermarket checkers called me “Sir” on a semi-regular basis when I was out wearing a baseball hat and baggy shirt. I never minded.
To me, I’m just “Chris,” or with the people who have known me my whole life, “Christina.” I like clothes that are both traditionally male and female, and other than any awkwardness around a gender-specific bathroom, don’t care if people perceive me as male or female.
In today’s parlance, maybe that makes me a gender non-conformist, or gender-fluid, or non-binary. While my closest friends have always been cis-women, lesbian and straight, I’ve also had a significant number of cis-male, gay and straight friends. I identify as a female and mostly go about the world that way, but obviously not exactly the way other people go about in the world as female. I guess that makes me a bit of a square peg in a round hole.
This self-portrait was an attempt to resurrect the “Best Little Cowboy” in me. I live in the Sierra foothills now, where cowboy hats and plaid shirts are much more common, and I like it. A lot. My hair is longer than its been in awhile, so the challenge was to see if I could create a fifty-something cowboy with a bit of sass to it. The setup and photo session happened across from the street from our house, and my wife, helped me with the poses. We used my Nikon D750 with my Nikon Nikkor 85mm f1.8 lens, which is lovely for portraits. I like how they turned out. They’re not quite as fierce as I hoped for, but they’re me. They’re Chris.