Sarah Kay Quotes

It's very hard as a tall woman to remove your deliberately pronounced feminine aspects and look more masculine.

Those that think my clothes are androgynous also still believe that women should look like Barbie dolls. That's precisely the problem, the deep-rooted assumptions about what is feminine.

"Gender trouble" is old. I mean, you know, in New York, it is old. I mean it's sweet. I mean people are really kind about it but it's like a former love affair you had and you're done.

I was admonished ot adopt feminine clothes; I refused, and still refuse. As for other avocations of women, there are plenty of other women to perform them.

I feel that women and men should free themselves up. It took me a while to get over my dysphoria about shopping in the men's section, trying on men's clothes, but when I was thinking about my life and the kind of woman I wanted to be, it was never just this by-the-book feminine thing.

I never worry about the social backlash against my work because I'm a man in a dress, and somehow American society creates a buffer on how severe things are when you put a man in a dress.

Being perceived as a guy is nothing new or complicated to me. It is what it is.

I have a few girlfriends, but nearly all my friends are guys. I don't think I ever wore girl clothes. I wore baggy jeans, baggy T-shirts, sweaters, just to avoid the looks that everyone gives you when you're a young female in the world.

Being in drag for three months - I now have an idea of what women go through. At least maybe a little.

To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.

It's my view that gender is culturally formed, but it's also a domain of agency or freedom and that it is most important to resist the violence that is imposed by ideal gender norms, especially against those who are gender different, who are nonconforming in their gender presentation.

I see myself as quite feminine. But many people seem to think differently about that; sometimes people mistake me for a man. In Paris I often hear 'bonjour monsieur'.

A lot of kids are bullied because of their sexual identity or expression. It's often the effeminate boys and the masculine girls, the ones who violate gender norms and expectations, who get bullied.

There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.

I was such a tomboy. I had absolutely no bosom, and I wore my hair really short - shaved, like a boy.

It's definitely part of it, that the men were having fun and doing the interesting things but also, I don't know, I'm just thinking more about gender and how maybe in some way I am more of a boy than a girl.

A lot of people say I seem masculine, but I don't feel it. I feel intrinsically feminine. I'd love to be one of the boys but I always felt a bit on the outside. Maybe my masculine qualities come from overcompensating because I'm not one of the boys.

I wear menswear all the time. I don't do anything to make myself look more feminine. I naturally look and am more feminine.

When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world.

I like dressing like a guy. I love it. When I was modeling I used to do pictures where I would dress up like my little brother. No makeup, and I looked like a boy.

Even in 'Victor/Victoria,' there was talk about what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man. You didn't get that in the old days, in 'Charley's Aunt' or 'Some Like It Hot.'

I don't know what I am if I'm not a woman.

Believe it or not, I am a tomboy.

I didn't invent the bearded lady. It's been around for ages, and there are so many bearded drag queens out there - but they're not in the mainstream as I am.