I let my trolls give me a makeover
Every journalist needs an audience, and I was losing mine -- fast.
As a Mashable correspondent, I depend on the comments of my loyal readers to keep me on my toes. But recently, I had started to notice a shift in tone.
You May Also Like
Every time I appeared in a video, multiple people felt compelled to inform me that I “look like a dude,” because I am “not a real woman,” just a stand-in for "Harry Potter." Even my written pieces were subject to critique -- clearly, I don’t know anything about Star Wars because I am "Bill Gates" disguised as a Mashable reporter.
While normally I’d ignore these comments, this time I decided to listen to my trolls, and make a change.
My trolls were telling me I wasn’t a real woman -- and hey, maybe they were onto something. A good journalist, they teach you, listens to her readers. And if 10,000 men named [email protected] took time out of their precious day to find my personal email, upload pictures of aborted fetuses, and explain to me that I was a "dude man" -- then maybe I should pay attention. Maybe they were onto something. Maybe I had to become their version of a real woman.
So I reached out to someone who understood femininity better than anyone else -- legendary New York drag queen Glace Chase. Glace, a "total bottom” with "blow job lips," knew that we faced a nearly insurmountable challenge. I have a man’s haircut and a boy’s body, and the only time I use makeup is to hide a mole I am 100 percent sure is cancerous. But Grace was confident that, with a little work, and an $86 Spandex straightjacket from Lululemon, I could become the woman my trolls wanted.
Our first stop was Crossfit Union Square. Sure, Crossfit tends to appeal to more of the 'healthy demographic,' not drag queens and borderline dead people like myself. But they embraced Glace and I with open arms. Together, we cycled, did pushups, and hung from rings like pieces of raw meat in a slaughterhouse. If I was going to be come a real woman with pilates arms, I needed to push myself to the limit – for about 30 minutes, max.
As it turns out, my body needs more than a workout to heal -- it required drastic surgical intervention. Some of the most influential women in the world tan their way to prominence, and my trolls were always telling me I looked like “Harry Styles with his blood drained out.” So we cabbed it over to Beach Bum Tanning, where I stood half-naked in a shower while a stranger sprayed acid onto my face. Frankly, my spray tan stylist did an excellent job, but I still cried (because that’s what woman do, amirite, lol).
After my spray tan, I headed back to the office to throw on a little makeup and sex UP with the help of Glace, a beacon of grace and femininity. And while she wanted to keep my make-up muted and my hair, combed, I challenged her to go beyond her antiquated “health and safety standards.” If I was going to satisfy my trolls, I had to have the plumpest lips and the rosiest cheeks. I needed to look like a sexy, barely-legal, virginal … Mashable reporter.
The transformation was almost complete, but I’ve seen one episode of Sex and The City – and knew I couldn’t become a real lady until I experienced a real ladies lunch. I grabbed my favorite coworkers – excuse me, coladies -- and cabbed it over to CorkBuzz Wine Studio for a little midday bubbly. Being a woman isn’t just about how you look, it’s about how you act. So I polled my galentines about their favorite topics: Brunch. Friendship/Galship. Female orgasms!
They didn’t seem to totally understand what was going on, but that was okay with me.
Once upon a time, I was a tiny little Urban Outfitters boi. Now, I was a real woman, eating side salad.
But no matter how much I loved my makeover, and despite the hairless vagina between my legs, I knew had further to go. I thought I was a woman. I believed I was a woman. But the only entity who could tell me I was a woman?
The Internet.
So I brought in three of my most steadfast trolls to judge my transformation. Would I be able to satisfy the very high expectations of [email protected], or Arnie Joe, a contributing writer at Reddit, or Peter, my boss?
I threw on my roommates’ heels, busted out my 8th grade graduation dress, and turned up the Shania Twain. I wanted so hard to become the woman of their dreams and their Facebook comments. For years, they had been telling me I didn’t have the authority to write about the Marvel Universe or corgis on skateboards, because I was “a girl who looked like a boy.” If I looked like a man, “I must want to be a man,” rendering the thousands of words I had published and hundreds of stories I had researched and the dozens of features I had edited completely and totally obsolete.
But on this day, I had finally risen to the challenge, and climbed to the summit of their expectations. After I finished my performance, Kid Rock, Arnie, and Peter, all said I did a -- get ready for it – "good job."
A good job!
I had become the woman they were always looking for, the journalist they always dreamed of.
Every writer needs a reader. And it’s because of the work of my readers, because of the thousands of hours they put into their incisive YouTube commentary and Facebook reactions, that I decided to make a change.
Thank you to Glace, Beach Bum, and my Galentines. And thank you to the trolls who --- more than anyone -- made me the woman I am today.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Heather was the Web Trends reporter at Mashable NYC. Prior to joining Mashable, Heather wrote regularly for UPROXX and GOOD Magazine, was published in The Daily Dot and VICE, and had her work featured in Entertainment Weekly, Jezebel, Mic, and Gawker. She loves small terrible dogs and responsible driving. Follow her on Twitter @wear_a_helmet.
