By Justine Trinh
How to Fuck Like a Girl.
I blinked twice and reread the title.
How to Fuck Like a Girl.
The title initially caught me off guard because of how bold it was, but that was what also piqued my interest. I wanted to know what it meant and “how to fuck like a girl.” As someone who is asexual, I am not going to have the same experience as the author, Vera Blossom, but I wanted to know more about how Blossom comes to define her experiences and understanding of this concept of “fuck[ing] like a girl.” For me, “fuck[ing] like a girl” means not to do it at all, and this is a way for me to maintain my female autonomy. Of course, this is different for everyone, but despite these dissimilarities, Blossom’s work allows her reader to connect with her.
In a collection of personal essays, Blossom provides a queer coming of age story that documents her foray and transition into girlhood as well as her observations of the world as she experiences it. Each account she chooses to share is brutally honest and genuine as she pulls no punches in her descriptions. For example, when Blossom discusses what it is like to be trans, she states, “Trans girls become a specific kind of person only liked by specific kinds of people… Other people find out about this alien, this intruder, and they get mad, like it’s a sign from God or something higher or something evil like Satan. They want to kill you, fuck you up.” This is a harsh reality that trans people have to live with as their everyday truth, that there are people who take offense just for their existence and do not see them as human. And simply knowing this fact hurts. Blossom’s positionality as a trans woman of color heightens this precarity yet she calls it out for what it is. By making this violence visible, it allows others to see this harm and empathize with her.
Yet at the same time, Blossom highlights the moments in which life is simultaneously beautiful and funny despite the hard truths. I loved “Steal Your Girlhood Back,” the how-to guide on shoplifting. Blossom starts off this chapter with a simple truth: “Being a girl is fucking expensive.” The delivery of this line made me laugh so hard because of the validity of this statement and how bluntly it was stated. Women’s bodies are so policed as we have to wear the right clothes or be called frumpy and so forth. Yet Blossom acknowledges this from the get-go and discusses a way, i.e. shoplifting, to combat these systems of oppression. Capitalism tells us that we need certain products to be a woman such as clothes, make up, and beauty services, and they will charge us an arm and a leg for it, which is criminal. While shoplifting is a criminal offense, Blossom reminds us that “every fantastic woman is at least a little bit criminal.” And there is such beauty in that lesson as women are often portrayed as outside the norm and as a transgression.
When reading the moment when Blossom is in the Dunkin’ Donuts and wants to make a connection with the woman working there, I could feel her yearning when she states, “Maybe it’s because I’m delusional, but I believe that every one of us could be connected, good friends, family, lovers, if the circumstances were right. If we tried.” The timing was kismet. When I was reading the chapter prior, I was thinking how much I wanted to meet Blossom and have a real back and forth conversation with her. I wanted to get to know her beyond the book and how despite our differences, we could have been friends or at the very least, acquaintances who follow each other on Instagram. There are so many things that separate Blossom and me or Blossom and the Dunkin’ Donuts employee, yet there are so many things that could bring us together to form these human connections that most of us desperately yearn for.
Blossom ends her book on an optimistic note when she states:
“I believe in the earth’s ability to heal. I believe in humans’ ability to change, to come together, and to assist the earth, our mother, our family, ourselves, in healing. I believe in an internet that connects us, challenges us, creates a vibrant dreamworld that we can all be together in. I believe in an earth that reverses global warming, that recuperates dying species. I believe in building something new from the ashes of our old world. I believe in something better.”
This is a world I want to believe and live in too. We are currently in a world in which trans rights are denied and threatened, and it scares me. Yet as I read these beautiful lines, there is something in her words that makes me hope and want for something better. I love this book for how tender, vulnerable, and assertive it is, and How to Fuck Like a Girl is so necessary at a time like this as it humanizes the trans body in a world in which trans people are not seen as human.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.