American Like Me

by America Ferrera

  Just stepping into an ice rink costs money—not to mention buying the clothing and gear and paying coaches, choreographers, dance teachers, and physical trainers. Just the skates alone are pricey. If you don’t replace them as soon as you start to outgrow them, you risk breaking an ankle. Even used skates can cost $500, plus $750 more for the blades. I always had holes in my tights and gloves, and I wore hand-me-down costumes. Paying for everything was a constant struggle. One time my dad brought home a pair of new skates, and I could see how proud he was to have been able to provide them. He said they were custom-made, but I knew this wasn’t possible, since I hadn’t been fitted for a mold—not to mention the girl’s name written on the bottom of the shoe that my father had done his best to scratch out with a thick black marker. At the 1993 national championships, my parents borrowed a costume for me from another competitor. Even at the point that I was skating on the national level, our family had to rely on donated gear. I was very fortunate because I received a travel and training grant from the Women’s Sports Foundation, which helped my parents out a lot. Looking back, there were so many times that I almost had to quit skating because of our financial situation.

  At one point, my parents literally sold their house and moved us into a smaller one so there was more money for me to skate. We saved money like crazy in my house. We had a five-gallon jug where we squirrelled away change and we’d use it to buy groceries. My parents never had nice things for themselves. My dad drove an old beat-up blue Pinto that my sister and I were embarrassed of at school drop-offs. We gave up things like new clothes, vacations, and Christmas presents so my sister and I could compete.

  One year my sister and I were determined to have a Christmas tree. We begged our parents, but there was no money for it. “Skating is your Christmas,” my dad said. But as luck would have it, there was a competition going on at school that year. Whoever could string the longest popcorn garland in the shortest amount of time would win a fully decorated miniature Christmas tree (as tall as my waist) to take home. I saw an opportunity, and I seized it. I threaded that Jiffy Pop on the needle so fast my fingers could have bled. I was determined to get that tree. When I want something, I don’t give up. Later that day, my dad picked me up from school and helped us load my winnings into the back of the Pinto. My siblings and I laughed all the way home and used our meager savings to buy a few presents to put under the tree.

  My parents gave us whatever Christmas or Chinese New Year they could. They worked and earned as much as they could to support my skating dreams, but their greatest sacrifice might have been their time. Neither one of them slept more than five hours per night for a good fifteen years. Free time was utterly nonexistent for them.

  There were a couple of years when we’d have to wake up at three forty-five in the morning so we could skate a few hours before going to school. My sister and I would go to bed the night before wearing our tights so we’d have one less thing to do in the morning. Later in my athletic career we trained at a special ice rink for serious skaters competing at the highest level. This facility was two hours away from our home, and during those years my dad would commute four to five hours at the wheel every single day to support us. It makes me shudder to think how much of his life was spent working and driving. I remember seeing my mom up in the middle of the night painstakingly sewing teeny-tiny beads onto my costume. She is not a seamstress by any means, but she wanted me to have good costumes like everyone else, and the tedious work of gluing on every little crystal did not deter her. If we couldn’t afford to buy something in my family, we’d borrow it or make it ourselves. If we didn’t know how to make it, we’d learn how. This kind of grit was expressed in everything my parents did—so I learned from the best. It’s not surprising I won the Christmas tree contest or often skated through injuries and illness.

  I remember overhearing quiet conversations between my parents when they were stressing about money. It was always difficult to figure out which corners to cut, and how much more they could spend on a skating expense. When things would get especially tough and my dad would need to lean on my grandparents for financial help, he was sometimes met with scrutiny and questioning. Shouldn’t skating be the first thing to go if bills couldn’t be paid?

  As far as my grandparents were concerned, we had a great life in America—we had a roof over our heads, clean water to drink, food to eat, and most of all, each other. My grandparents’ lives had been unspeakably hard. When my grandfather was a child in China he was given to a local farmer to help tend to the crops and animals. His parents couldn’t afford to take care of him—something that was not uncommon in the desperate economy he grew up in. So for my grandparents, living in America with their son, running a family restaurant together, enjoying their grandchildren—this was the life they had always dreamed of.

  And rest assured it was a dream for my father too. He risked everything to come here, after all. But he wasn’t going to stop there. He wanted his children to have it even better, no matter how crazy that may have seemed to his parents or his friends. It’s remarkable how much my grandparents endured, and how much my parents sacrificed and worked. The least I could do is be scrappy on the ice. I came from a long line of hardy people, and it wasn’t going to stop with me. The only difference was that I was lucky enough to be born into a place where hard work could actually yield extraordinary results—something the previous generation would have never dreamed possible.

  In addition to learning to be extremely hardworking, my home life made me very resilient and self-sufficient. I put myself to bed when I was tired and chose to eat healthy foods for my training regimen when everyone else my age was eating whatever they wanted. Because of my training schedule I didn’t have much time to hang out with friends or go to movies, but I never felt like I missed out, because skating was an incredible outlet where I could be creative and expressive. It also kept me from boredom or the kind of teenage rebellion a lot of kids go through. I was too focused on making it to the Olympics—and I would do whatever I could to fast-forward to my goal.

  Competitive skating has several levels that you have to test into—and you can’t qualify for the Olympics until you reach the highest level, senior. As I started competing seriously, I decided I was going to get to senior level as fast as I could. It was 1992, I was eleven years old, and I wanted to be a part of the 1994 Olympics. It was a very ambitious goal, especially considering I was still several levels away from senior and it takes most skaters at least a year to advance through each level. But I was a beast, mastering all the jumps and moves I needed to pass each test, and by the time I was twelve, I was at the junior level. I only needed to advance one more level, but my coach Frank didn’t think I was ready for the senior test because I’d only placed ninth at the national junior competition. I was young and unrefined, bold and . . . well, twelve.

  So one week when Frank was out of town, I told my dad to take me for my test, and I led him to believe that Frank was okay with it. I was nervous going behind my coach’s back, but I felt very strongly that I shouldn’t play it so safe or conservative. I didn’t want to rise slowly in the rankings as he was advising. I wanted to be a shooting star—and the youngest in the senior level by many years. It was a huge risk, but once I made up my mind, I had to go for it. It was like my parents coming to America, carrying out what was maybe not the most ideal plan but definitely the right thing to do. My mom and dad have demonstrated time and again that you don’t have to plan perfect transitions in life. You don’t have to land flawlessly. You just have to take the leap.

  I passed the test and confessed to Frank when he got back to town.

  It was (and still is) viewed in the skating world as an act of unconventional defiance and rebellion. But it got me into competitions where I was skating against my idols, and it ultimately landed me a spot as an alternate on the 1994 Olympic team at the age of thirteen. I went on to compete in the 1998 and 2002 Olympic Games and win several national and world titles, becoming t
he most decorated skater in US history. I owe this to the fact that I skated at the senior level for more than a decade and I worked really, really hard all along the way. But most of all, I owe this to my parents, who were willing to set aside their lives for my dream. My whole childhood, my dad didn’t sit down for a meal, much less sit on any chance to help his children. There’s not enough time in my life to express my gratitude to my parents. I always felt their confidence in me no matter how well I was performing or how much it cost them.

  The American dream is a ladder of opportunity. It’s not just for the rich to climb. It’s not just for those whose great-great-great-great-grandparents were born here. It’s for anyone, including people like my parents, who are willing to take a leap, work hard, fall even harder, and get back up again.

  PHOTO BY TIGERLILY

  Geena Rocero, born and raised in Manila, Philippines, is a model, host, producer, and trans rights advocate. On March 31, 2014, in honor of International Transgender Day of Visibility, Rocero came out as transgender at the annual TED Conference. Her viral talk has since been viewed more than three million times and has been translated into thirty-two languages. Geena is the founder of Gender Proud, an award-winning media production company that tells stories to elevate justice and equality for the transgender community.

  Geena Rocero

  BEAUTY PAGEANTS MIGHT AS well be the national sport of the Philippines. The way Americans watch football or basketball is how Filipinos watch pageants. They take place in mountain villages, provincial coliseums, and concrete stages next to rice fields. They are so embedded in mainstream culture that you can catch one almost any month of the year. Because they are a part of Fiesta celebrations where we honor Christian saints and patrons—and because nearly 95 percent of the population is Catholic—Fiesta pageants are just another wholesome activity that nearly everyone enjoys.

  I still remember the feeling of neighborhood Fiesta celebrations as a kid in Manila where I grew up. It was a fun and exciting time, with people on the streets drinking, going from one house to another without formal invitations—and somehow you were always just welcomed into the homes of random people. Kids, grandmas, aunties, friends, and entire families sitting outside, eating and applauding, all eyes on the stage. Fiesta included singing contests, dancing contests, and transgender beauty pageants. The irony of transgender beauty pageants being a popular shared custom in one the most conservative religious celebrations is not lost on me. Even though there was no word for transgender—and certainly no acceptance of being transgender in the church—these pageants were hugely popular. No one called them transgender beauty pageants, but that’s what they were. There was no shared vocabulary or context for explaining to your parents that you knew you were not the gender you were assigned at birth. So I wore T-shirts on my head to pretend like I had long flowing locks and walked down our hallway like it was my runway. And when Fiesta came around I was sitting in the front row at every single pageant.

  I remember seeing my first one around seven years of age. The contestants—mostly teenagers—all lined up in their costumes, striding out with such poise and glamour. I was transfixed—especially by one contestant who was a Phoebe Cates impersonator. I had no idea who Phoebe Cates was at the time, but I was fascinated. She and all the others were compelling, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Immediately I felt a connection. Maybe I am like them. Maybe I can be them.

  I never shared this dream with my mother, but I made it very clear that I was pageant material. I used to steal the lipstick from her purse before she’d leave for work. I chose to play with little girls and dress up Barbies for fun. She was an elementary school teacher, always surrounded by young children, so she must have noticed what was different about me, but she never made me feel shame. I told her I was really a girl, and she just said, “Okay, if that’s who you are . . . whatever makes you happy.”

  When I turned eleven she left for America, something we always knew was coming. Members of the older generation in my family had fought for the United States in World War II and were granted opportunities to come to the United States and bring family members over to become citizens. Going to America meant that my mother could be with her mother and some of her eight siblings who had already been there for several years. It meant more opportunities for her children. It meant she could work and send money home until she could petition to get us there. This had always been our family’s destiny, so it did not come as a surprise, but it still sent shock waves through my whole existence.

  After my mother left for San Francisco, my sister and I stayed with our dad in a small province outside Manila and attended school. I wore a boy’s uniform every day. Most of the subjects were taught in the formal version of English that I have spoken from a very young age, but at home we spoke Tagalog—and cried for our mother, who we missed every day.

  And then I met Tigerlily, my trans mother figure for two of the most important years of my life. I was fifteen years old—still a die-hard fan of pageants—and had just gotten a taste of participating in my first one when a friend of mine asked me to be a backup dancer for the opening number of one in our province. A few days later, my friend Reynald invited me over to her house because a pageant troupe from Manila was going to be getting ready for that night’s pageant at her place. Reynald knew how exciting it would be for me to see these queens in person, who I normally only saw onstage or on TV. When I arrived, Tigerlily, the manager, and all her girls were there, doing hair and makeup, sewing costumes, and blowing my mind. When Tigerlily saw me, she told me I was tall, fresh, and beautiful. She asked if I was interested in being in pageants, and within a few minutes I put on another girl’s swimsuit and showed her my walk. She offered me a spot in that night’s pageant. It was like a fairy-tale moment for me, where the small-town girl gets discovered by her fairy godmother.

  That night was unforgettable and surreal. Tigerlily quickly threw together a set of garments for me to wear, and I lined up with all the other girls for this most exciting rite of passage. My swimsuit was a two-piece bright orange number that looked great with my dark skin, and my gown was borrowed from another girl on Tigerlily’s squad. For my casual wear, I dressed like a young ballerina in fuchsia pink and super-high heels. I looked like a living Barbie doll. It was thrilling. I impersonated Assunta de Rossi, a beautiful actress who’s very popular in the Philippines. When I walked on the stage, I felt a sense of validation I had never felt. To hear a crowd cheer for you at your best, brightest, and most beautiful—it was the most exhilarating thing possible. I made it all the way to the semifinals. Out of forty-five candidates, I was in the top twelve.

  And that is how I became a fifteen-year-old beauty queen literally overnight. The rest was history, and I was hooked.

  Tigerlily was like a coach and a manager and a mother all rolled into one, helping our group of young trans girls define and perfect our performances. We not only needed guidance on our clothing, talent, and poise—we needed help with our makeup, preparing for the interviews, finding resources for travel, and developing our impersonations. Every village or town had a pageant mom who ran the pageant scene in her territory. Although we all competed against one another at pageants, we were each other’s best support system too. Tigerlily’s girls were my new family. I still technically lived in my house with my father and sister, but my new home was with my pageant sisters, where I completely immersed myself in a community that provided validation and fun for a young trans girl. We traveled all the time, and when I would come back home to my father and sister, I loved sharing my winnings, taking my sister out shopping or to the movies. She could see how happy I was that I’d found this group of friends.

  It changed everything for me. I remember a few pageants in, thinking, This is me now. I am going to go full-time as myself! No more boy’s uniforms at school! I started wearing female clothes all the time—not just onstage—and used my pageant winnings to buy hormones—something many trans girls were beginning to do. It was
dangerous because it was unsupervised by medical professionals, but it was also crucial in our journey to become more authentically ourselves. It was survival for us.

  The pageant community was my survival too. Tigerlily not only helped us manage our careers, but she also served as a mentor and emotional supporter in a very tumultuous teenage time. I found a sisterhood of best friends who accepted me and understood me in a way I only dreamed of when I was a kid. Pageants are considered sexist to many people all around the world. I am a feminist, but where I grew up pageants were the only place where I could express myself and earn money for my performance. Through pageants, I learned how to command a stage, speak without fear, and love who I am—not to mention I found a community of women who had my back no matter what. The skills I learned being a beauty queen are the same skills I used several years later in my activist work.

  We were competing in so many pageants—sometimes two or three per week—that I was able to make hundreds of dollars and it became my full-time job when I finished high school. By then I had done nationally televised pageants and become one of the most prominent queens, winning most of the big titles. I was more happy and secure than I’d ever felt in my life.