Boys will be girls, girls will be boys. Growing up it was pink for girls and blue for boys. Boisterous behaviour was excused as boys will be boys, crying was for sissies and tomboys were the outdoor sporty types.
The closest I came to gender fluidity was Bowie, Jagger and Bolan with feather boas and eyeliner and a song written by Lou Reed Walk on the Wild Side. That was the 70’s.
My 2019 Series ‘boys will be girls, girls will be boys’ was shot in Bangkok, a city known for it’s tolerance and acceptance of Ladyboys, Tomboys and Trans communities. Conservative values and traditions still hold at the core of Thai life so my subjects and their kin deal with the incongruence of what they feel on the inside and who they are on the outside.
How accepting you find it is probably an indication of how we’ve come as a society, but as The Kinks sang in Lola Girls will be boys and boys will be girls, It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world.