By Vincent Finch-Brand

The first time I wore a binder, I was fifteen, a sophomore in high school, and engaged in a full-on battle with my own body. I measured myself to the best of my ability, ordered it online, checked off the “discreet packaging preferred” box, and waited anxiously for it to appear on the front steps. I was convinced it was the perfect solution to the problems I saw when I looked in the full-length mirror attached to the back of my bedroom door — the hips, the belly, the breasts, all growing bigger every day. I remember being almost instantly disappointed when I pulled the starchy fabric over my shoulders. The material bunched visibly at my shoulders and rubbed uncomfortably at my stomach. I wore the binder to school for a few weeks, taking breaks in the bathroom between classes, trying not to adjust it too much in public. I hated it because I still hated my body that was steadily growing curvier everywhere. The realization hit me a few months later — I thought I had wanted a binder to compress my chest, but I had actually wanted it to compress my body. “I must not actually be trans,” I remember thinking. “I’m just fat.” 

The binder, though it stretched past my hips, wasn’t meant to make me not look fat, it was meant to give me a flatter chest. I returned to the closet, where I tucked the binder away on a hanger and threw myself into finding a new solution to the “problem” of my body. The plus-size models and influencers I followed online seemed to use femininity as a kind of armor against bigotry, and I tried to emulate this. I learned to wear dresses, low-cut tops, and a full face of makeup. In some ways, it did help. Each morning, I watched myself transform into a woman in the bathroom mirror; and, though I didn’t have the words to say it at the time, putting on this costume made me feel more powerful, more able to be and permitted to exist as a fat teenager. 

Five years later, I put my second binder on for the first time. I smiled the whole day, even though the hem squeezed my ribs just a little too tight. At this point, I had spent several years as an out nonbinary lesbian working to unlearn my internalized fatphobia, but I was still terrified to present in a more masculine way. My entire understanding of myself as a desirable, lovable human being rested on the femininity that I had worked so hard to master, and was feeling increasingly alienated by. But I felt just as alienated by the skinny, androgynous transmasculine people I was surrounded by at college and on my social media accounts. No matter how I presented, I consistently felt devalued by the trans community where so many of my thinner friends had found comfort. I felt that I had to continuously prove and justify my transness to queer and non-queer people alike. I do not know the specific moment that I decided to allow myself to be unapologetically fat and trans — truthfully, it is a process I will forever be working towards. However, I do know that my transness is and has always been deeply entangled with my fatness. 

From a young age, I felt alienated from womanhood, which is so often defined by proximity and relationships to men. While my friends experienced attraction to and sexualization by men, my fatness and my lesbianism made me the kind of person that men did not immediately see as desirable or attainable. So, early on, I was forced to redefine womanhood as it pertained to my own body and experiences; even while I practiced femininity, before I had the words to describe myself as trans or nonbinary, I knew I was only pretending to be a woman. My body, though, limits the gendered spaces I am allowed to occupy.  My belly, breasts, hips, ass, thighs, even my face, are lined with soft curves, a kind of feminized fatness that differs greatly from the masculine ideals of bodies that are large and strong and hard. While being on testosterone for six months has helped to define my muscles, my body is nearly always still read as a woman’s body. Though it comes with difficulties, being fat and trans is not a life sentence of misery. In a lot of ways, being trans has helped me to accept my fatness, and being fat has helped me to accept my transness. I feel lucky to have the perspective I do have, and to have access to the community that I do. I love to talk to other fat, queer people; there is a shared understanding and connection that I have found to be almost instantaneous and universal. I am learning to love and accept my body for its fat, queer, trans self, and to allow my fatness to be something I use to enhance my preferred gender performance. 

It has helped me immensely to surround myself with other people working to unlearn their fatphobia, especially as it pertains to queerness. My friends, trans or cis, skinny or fat, have been instrumental in helping me understand that my transness is not negated by a body that is fat in a way that is usually read as feminine. I intentionally follow many fat, queer content creators and am always grateful for these perspectives. Recently, I saw a video by a fat, trans guy I follow on TikTok (@easybakeowen), in which he discussed his choice to not bind. “As you can see,” he says, turning in front of the camera in a black graphic tee-shirt, “I have a larger chest, but I also have a larger body, and that’s been something that has helped me a lot in accepting my chest. Being a fat, trans guy and growing a connection to my chest and realizing that it is something that actually enhances my gender euphoria has been something that has comforted me a lot.” He goes on to explain that, while he is looking to get top surgery soon, he has been learning to love and accept his body as it exists now, too. Though I bind most work days (in a well-fitting binder, finally!), it does not completely flatten my chest — this was my compromise in exchange for breathing well — and I am learning to embrace how my chest looks both in and out of a binder. I know for certain, now, that it is possible, and not unusual, to be both fat and trans, and I’m proud as hell of it.

Vincent Finch-Brand is a recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where they studied Gender Studies, Psychology, and Journalism. Based in Western Massachusetts, they currently work as a cheesemonger and a freelance writer.

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