From my earliest childhood, it was clear to me that I wasn’t like other boys. I wasn’t interested in football; I preferred Barbie dolls. I didn’t want to play with boys and was always in the company of girls. Entering puberty, while other boys developed urges toward girls, I would do my friends’ makeup, pluck their eyebrows, straighten their hair, and help them choose outfits for going out.

At that time, I probably didn’t yet realize that a part of me actually wanted to look like them. I remember spending my entire childhood pestering both my mom and sister to have long hair, as it had always been a symbol of femininity for me. When I moved to college, into an artistic environment in a bigger city, the first step toward freeing what I had always been inside—growing out my hair—took place.

During my studies, because of playing the piano, I couldn’t grow my nails. However, after graduating and realizing I wouldn’t pursue music professionally, having taken a different path, the next step came. For the following four years, it stayed at just hair and nails.

Looking back now, I realize that one of the main reasons I didn’t explore further in this area (especially clothing) was that until that moment, I only had one vision of women’s clothing in which I didn’t see myself and didn’t fit in. Even today, it’s unimaginable for me to wear, for example, pink, yellow, flowers, polka dots, and so on, which was mostly what could be found in regular stores, and that’s why it didn’t attract me.

Then, there was one (surprisingly) Eurovision performance: https://youtu.be/po5NQ4OzzzI?si=ZiTnjSdxL1qNV8_o — thanks to which I saw something on a woman for the first time that I could imagine on myself. That was already 2019; I was 27 and sure that it was something I wanted. With the help of Instagram, it was easy to find out that this singer had her own clothing line, where I found an outfit I immediately saw myself in. I ordered it and also found heels in the same style on AliExpress. When both arrived after a month or two, I realized I didn’t actually know where I would wear them, so the items ended up in my closet for over a year until the right moment came.

That moment was a Halloween party because I realized it was a safe way for my first step out of my comfort zone. Keep in mind that the outfit included a corset, the heels (which I had never worn before) were 18 centimeters high, and I had to do my makeup the way I had imagined it in my head, even though I had never done it before.

The result was that the outfit fit me perfectly (not to brag, but true), I walked and danced on the heels all night as if I had always worn them (though my feet didn’t feel normal for the next three days, which is less important), and the makeup didn’t turn out exactly as I had imagined, but at that moment, I couldn’t do better. Since I’m already sharing the story from the beginning, I’ll also include my first photo in that look, to see how it looked:

Although I wasn’t completely satisfied with the result, a new kind of confidence was born in me, something I had never known before. It was the beginning not only of discovering my future visual identity but also a part of my personality that I hadn’t even realized existed.