What To Do If You Are Flat Like A Ken Doll

What To Do if You Are Flat Like a Ken Doll, and Why: A post that should have come sooner

This blog is called “What To Do if You Are Flat Like a Ken Doll,” but you know that, you’re here reading it. People who don’t know me very well, and probably some who do, have read this title and laughed at its ridiculousness, and that’s great and all because I feel clever for having come up with such a title, but I guess it’s about time I explain why I’ve called it thus.

When I was a kid, I was pretty convinced I was going to find out that I was not female. I read the vagina monologues when I was like 10 and in my copy there was a little side note about a woman who came up to Eve Ensler after a show and related that when she was a child she compared her genitals with those of a friend and discovered that she did not have a vagina. That’s how I learned that some people who were told they were female did not have vaginas and did not have penises and it happened, and I was relatively sure it would happen to me and it would be fine. I wasn’t panicked or uncomfortable about it, I was just prepared for it to happen eventually. I’m almost positive that I did not make this memory up, but it’s not actually important whether or not I did.

Anyhow, at some point it became clear that I was not, in fact, missing that particular hole. Kind of disappointing, I have to admit. Not because having it was so bad, but because it was not what I had been expecting. And, having spent so many years figuring it wasn’t there, I managed to come into adulthood without forging a proper relationship with that part of my body. This was not a good idea. I started to wish that I did not have to be troubled with it, that I did not have to be involved with it, that I were, instead, Flat Like A Ken Doll.

And in a sense, I still live that way. I don’t know if most people live their lives completely detached from their genitals or if it’s just me. And I want to be clear that being Flat Like A Ken Doll is not the same as being trans and isn’t why i’m trans, it’s just something that is true of my interactions with my body. So I’ve been writing a series of poems, explorations of body image, and I’ve called it “What To Do if You Are Flat Like a Ken Doll.” I don’t have that many so far. Some really are like instructions, some are not. In a way, this blog is kind of also like a set of instructions to myself and people who are exploring being Flat Like A Ken Doll.

Anyway, I’m going to start posting the pieces and I wanted to explain a little bit of the back story.