Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

by Janet Mock

I had come to blackness through Clair Huxtable’s swift didactic monologues in reruns of The Cosby Show ; through the anger I felt when I was prettily invisible in clubs in New York’s Meatpacking District, where guys looked through me in search of white girls; through the uh-oh dance in Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love”; through the sounds of bottle-popping douches who called me “exotic” and said “You’re really pretty for a black girl!” and “I’m usually not attracted to black women”; through the revolutionary words of Audre Lorde; through the vision of Michelle Obama’s fist bump; through the consensus of the black-girl interns who said I was different because “You’re the right amount of black,” the kind white woman editors aren’t intimidated to work with; through the raw brilliance of This Bridge Called My Back ; through the beauty of Marsha P. Johnson’s flowers, smile, and S.T.A.R.