Horse Barbie, page 25
Hell, I had dominated beauty pageants, become a fashion model in New York City, and talked my way into a magazine job I wasn’t even remotely qualified for. I had done incredible things in my life, but I was finally starting to believe I could do them—and that unlocked a whole new tier of possibilities in my mind. Between Norman, the discoveries about my ancestors, and the sea turtles, I had been shown a path forward, a whole constellation of surreal circumstances nudging me in the right direction, telling me to fully come into myself. All I had to do now was take the first step.
My friend Cameron Sinclair, who I met through the entrepreneurial group Summit Series while I was working for the biodegradable trash bag company, had won the prestigious TED Prize in 2006, so I decided to ask him if he’d make an introduction with the organizers, explaining that I wanted to come out as transgender in my talk. On January 20 I got an email back: “TED says maybe. They will be in contact.”
The next day I took a call with TED director Kelly Stoetzel, who explained that the main stage was almost totally full because this year’s conference was only two months away. But I walked her through my story anyway. I talked about growing up in Asia and moving to America, and about the trans models who had come before me. I told her how their stories had been cruelly taken from them, and how I wanted to finally take control over my own, live onstage.
When I was finished speaking, Kelly told me that if I were accepted, I would be the first transgender person to speak about trans identity on the TED main stage.
Bear in mind that this was January 2014, five months before Time magazine declared “The Transgender Tipping Point” on its cover, and one month before Janet Mock released her groundbreaking memoir Redefining Realness. A movement for trans visibility was emerging and gaining rapid momentum, but to do something like TED was still a bold step forward at the time. Kelly wanted to know if I was willing to be that standard bearer.
I told her I was—and despite my nervousness, I actually meant it. I wanted to make the kind of statement that couldn’t be ignored. I would do it for myself, for Tula, and for every trans person out there who felt alone and unseen.
Kelly ended the call by telling me, “We’ll be in touch,” and a few days later, an official email appeared in my inbox: “Invitation to Speak at TED 2014.”
It was happening. Now I just needed a speech.
A month later, with my first draft in hand, I went to the TED headquarters in SoHo for my first rehearsal in front of Kelly and a few other curators. It was partly for me to practice but also partly a test—speeches could still be canceled, and this rehearsal was one way for the TED team to make their final decisions. I walked into a small, darkened room, with a spotlight trained on the center of a circular stage that was surrounded by rows of seating. It was a terrifying space to debut my talk, like something out of Eyes Wide Shut.
But I stepped into the spotlight and started anyway.
I wasn’t good. I trembled. The intimate space, the twenty-odd people judging my every word, their eyes trained on me—it all felt like a stimulus overload. People don’t usually walk into dark rooms and tell strangers their life story. I was so nervous that I opened with the statement “I’m a proud trans woman,” cutting right to the chase. That didn’t get the reaction I was hoping for. Without any context, the big reveal just left my small test audience looking confused. Again, this was 2014, and not everyone even knew what being a “trans woman” meant.
I could tell that I was losing them before I was halfway finished. I struggled to find the flow of my words, and my body kept shaking. Accustomed as I was to dominating pageants, it was scary to feel my powers waning, like Supergirl exposed to kryptonite.
Afterward the TED organizers asked me to repeat the speech, but this time at a slower pace. I barely made it through, and I was glad when it was over. I knew I’d blown it, with the same certainty—but the exact opposite feeling—as when I’d stepped onto pageant stages with all my Horse Barbie spirit, knowing I would take the crown.
Kelly came up to me and delivered a polite compliment, but I could hear a telling tinge of disappointment in her voice. Even worse, I had to take a seat in the audience and watch the rest of the speakers rehearse their talks. They were all so polished compared to me. I was embarrassed, I was jealous, and I was furious at myself for ever believing I deserved a spot alongside them.
After the rehearsal was over, I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Hey! Geena?”
I turned. The voice belonged to a petite woman with her hair cut in a short black bob, a proud gray streak running through it. She looked like a miniature Cruella De Vil, but a whole lot friendlier.
“My name’s Gina Barnett,” she said. “I’m one of the TED speech coaches. I believe you have an important story, and I think I can help you tell it. We have the same name, after all, so I think it’s meant to be.”
This was one of those magical coincidences in life that I had learned not to ignore. What are the chances that someone with my name would be there to help me come out? She spelled her name G-I-N-A, but not everyone had my mama to help them change the vowels.
Gina Barnett changed everything about my approach to the talk. Instead of coming out in the first sentence, she told me to tease the audience instead. “Make them beg for it,” she advised. “You want to have them wrapped around your finger.”
In weekly meetings at her Rockefeller Center office, Gina told me to think not about the points I wanted to convey but about the experiences that had been important to me. Some of the stories I shared with her were about feeling empowered; others were about my inability to share my full self with friends, colleagues, and lovers. All the stories were like puzzle pieces strewn across Gina’s desk, and now all we had to do was assemble them.
It had never occurred to me that these stories were valuable in and of themselves. All quarters of society tell trans people that our lives are worthless. I thought my TED Talk had to be a passionate plea for equality to win over a skeptical audience.
But Gina told me, “They’re already on your side. You don’t need to convince them. You just need to tell your story like you’re telling it to one person.”
Those words were like a lightning bolt. I just need to tell my story.
I didn’t need to make it powerful. My story was powerful already, and if I talked around it or tried to dress it up too ornately, it wouldn’t shine through brightly enough. People didn’t want to hear me spout statistics—“just share one,” Gina advised—they wanted to know who I was, where I came from, and how I had been shaped by a world that didn’t seem to have space for me until I carved it out myself.
That’s when the opening sentence of the speech crystallized. “The world makes you something that you’re not,” we wrote, “but you know inside what you are.”
The rest of the talk would just be my story, simple and unadorned.
* * *
—
I was so busy preparing for my TED Talk that I almost forgot to let people know I was doing it. By this point, I had been modeling again full time for three years, and I realized my agent might like to know that I was just about to come out as transgender on one of the world’s biggest stages.
I was so worried about how he would react that I overthought it. Should I send him flowers with a note? Maybe a handwritten letter? But then I thought, Fuck it, I’ll just pick up the phone and call him.
After a few minutes of catching up, I eased into it. “By the way, Ron, I wanted to let you know I’m doing a TED Talk.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say it all at once.
“Oh, great!” he said. “I love TED! What are you talking about?”
I took a breath.
“I’m coming out,” I told him.
“Oh, Geena! I’m so proud of you! Coming out as a lesbian—that’s so big, that’s so powerful.”
There was no circling around it anymore. I had to say it.
“Actually, no, Ron, I’m coming out as a trans woman.”
The next three seconds were some of the longest in my life. He had been working with me for four years. Together we had worked with Hanes, Nordstrom, and all my major catalog clients. He wasn’t just my business partner; he was my friend, too, and he had never known this about me—hadn’t even expected it. I’m surprised he didn’t take a full minute to let it sink in, but it felt like one anyway.
“You know what, Geena?” he said, breaking the silence at last. “You are such a great model for us. I honor you. I respect you. I commend your bravery. Do it. If you feel like this is what you need to do, do it. We’ll figure out the rest later.”
I was so relieved. It was rare to get so perfect a response in the moment. Usually, people stammered or asked questions. Never once did my agent make me feel guilty for hiding it from him. Nor did he oversimplify the situation and pretend it didn’t matter.
In fact, he was upbeat about my prospects. “We’ll find out what the market will say,” he said, adding with a laugh, “You may not work in the southern catalog markets anymore, but we’ll see. Who knows? You might even gain some clients!”
I called Tigerlily, too, to let her know my plans.
At first, she was anxious. “I trust your decision but whatever happens after it, be ready,” she cautioned. She didn’t need to say it out loud, but I knew she was thinking about Tula.
Then after a pregnant pause, she pivoted to the excitement of everyone in the Philippines seeing me speak at TED. “Your entire trans pageant family has been waiting for this moment! Their long-lost sister Assunta reclaiming her stage! Horse Barbie making her comeback!”
I felt her love all the way from Manila.
“Also,” she continued, “I can’t wait to finally boast about your modeling success to anyone and everyone! All your magazines can’t stay in my closet forever!”
Mama wasn’t as optimistic. When I told her I was going to Vancouver to come out to the whole world in a TED Talk, she worried what people would say about me. She was scared I would lose my career. For years, I had felt guilty about making her and my family maintain my cover story, but now that I was finally giving Mama the chance to drop it, she doubted it was a good idea.
I understood Mama’s concern. She just wanted to keep her baby safe. She wasn’t Ma’am Rocero anymore. She couldn’t protect me from the bullies forever. But what could bullies do to me if I took their power away from them and claimed it for myself? I would be coming out before any tabloid could out me. The industry could blacklist me if it wanted to, but no one could accuse me of being a coward.
People used to throw stones at me in the Philippines, so let them throw words if they wanted. I knew what I had to do. I wasn’t going to wait any longer for the world to accept me; I was ready, at long last, to be free.
* * *
—
Everything became real during my final rehearsal onstage in Vancouver.
Standing inside that iconic red circle on the stage, facing an empty audience in a huge auditorium that would soon hold thousands, I launched into it: “The world makes you something that you’re not…”
I was given the option to have my speech displayed on a “music stand” in front of me, but I declined. I wanted to be like the Diva in The Fifth Element, effortlessly commanding the stage with almost operatic inflection, channeling the cosmic power of the story I was about to tell, with no barriers between myself and the audience. Even with thousands of eyes on me, I wanted to create a sense of intimacy. I could hear Gina Barnett whispering in my mind, “Make sure you breathe. Take…your…time.”
I knew my speech backward and forward by this point. Gina had told me to rehearse it every day in preparation, first out loud in a silent room, then out loud with noise in the background, and then in my head with the noise still going.
“Memorize it in your muscles,” she had instructed, and that work paid off, because during my final rehearsal, I wasn’t even thinking about the words in my head. I was fully in my body. My pageant training kicked in. Everything clicked into place. I was Horse Barbie again, commanding the stage, projecting with ease, my movements refined and purposeful. I nailed it.
The night before the conference, TED held a massive dinner for the attendees. Being around everyone there was still surreal. One minute I was talking with the mayor of Vancouver, the next I was talking with brain scientist Jill Bolte, who in turn stopped our conversation midsentence to point out Will Smith walking by. It wasn’t lost on me that I might be the only trans person in that room. Hopefully my talk could change that.
But because I needed to save the reveal for the next day, when people asked what my talk was going to be about, I said, a little slyly, “It’s different. You’ll just have to see for yourself.”
On the morning of the speech, I woke up at five, having barely slept, and started doing my obligatory three run-throughs. The first went well. For the second, I got in the shower and turned on “Unwritten,” my hype song and personal anthem ever since my bout of eczema. The fog from the shower must have gotten in my brain because as the music played, I got confused, forgot the order of my paragraphs, and tripped over the words.
The third run-through was even harder: Saying it in my mind with the shower going and the song competing for my attention felt all but impossible.
I would have to trust my gut. I knew the speech. It was just nerves.
Looking at my reflection as I put my makeup on, I couldn’t help but think of the young trans girl who grew up poor in that eskinita in the Philippines. Here I was, standing in front of a hotel mirror, about to share my story with CEOs, scientists, and movie stars—and with millions of complete strangers, when it was posted online. I had no way to wrap my head around how I had gotten from there to here. It was mind-boggling to think back on all the choices and chance events that had put me in this privileged position.
I found it so impossible to comprehend that I almost felt like I had teleported straight from that alley to the TED main stage. One day I was a child with a T-shirt around my head, and the next I was a grown woman in a Zara dress and YSL stilettos, getting ready to speak my truth to the world.
Walking out of the hotel to the TED stage across the street early that morning, I held my coffee in one hand and my printed speech in the other, squeezing in one last rehearsal. The spring air was crisp and clarifying.
Breathe, Geena, I told myself. Breathe.
I arrived backstage at around eight-thirty and went straight to the private area designated for speakers. It was cold, dark, and quiet. The radio communications were crackling, and someone whispered into their headset, “Geena Rocero just arrived backstage.”
Gina Barnett came to my rescue, giving me a tight hug. “I’m proud of you,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “You’ve got this.”
“Don’t make me cry! I don’t want to ruin my makeup!” I said, squeezing her back.
Before she left, she did one last bit of coaching: “Just remember, rehearse the first sentence of your talk before you go on. Do it over and over.”
It was a tactic she used to help speakers avoid the infamous blank-out that sometimes happens when they step onto the stage. If I already had the opening line in my head, I could ease into the rest of the talk instead of starting cold.
Shortly before my talk was scheduled to begin, a sound guy came over with a thin beige headset microphone for me. He took one look at my body-hugging dress and asked as delicately as possible if there was anywhere inside that we could clip the microphone battery. “Of course,” I said, unzipping my dress, but then I stopped.
“Sir, uh…I don’t know how to say this, but there’s nowhere to clip it. I’m not wearing a bra.”
I guess I thought going commando would make me feel confident, but now I was about to give the most important speech of my life and had nowhere to clip the microphone!
But the sound guy was a total pro about it. “No worries—we’ll make something work.”
He walked away and returned a few minutes later with a thin Velcro belt that I could wrap around my waist inside my dress. We clipped the battery onto the back of it, and then I zipped my dress back up. It was so minimal that you could barely see it through the fabric.
With the sound figured out, I remembered Gina’s parting words to me and began repeating the opening line of my talk, reciting it like the catechism: “The world makes you something that you’re not, but you know inside what you are.”
After about twenty repetitions, the sound director’s voice crackled into my earpiece: “Uh, Geena? I think you got it.”
I burst out laughing. The whole sound department must have thought I’d lost my mind! “Thanks,” I said, “and sorry.” The embarrassment actually helped calm my nerves, keeping me grounded and distracting me from what I was about to do.
And then it came: “Please welcome to the stage…Geena Rocero!”
The loud applause and bright lights very quickly brought me into the present. I was really doing this. I felt somehow as if Tigerlily were standing there with me, cinching my hips with that crackly tape, making me stand up even straighter. As I walked toward the center of the stage, my demeanor shifted. My gait felt more intentional. With every gliding step I took, I felt my Horse Barbie power take over my body. It didn’t feel strange to be there anymore. It felt like home.
I reached my mark and began my speech, holding the PowerPoint clicker loosely in my right hand, my voice calm but powerful. As I moved from paragraph to paragraph, I felt like a dominatrix, wrapping the audience in my whip, in command of their attention. Every bit of inflection in my voice, every hand gesture, came straight from my soul. The nervousness vanished, and only I remained. It was all me.
