“For so much of my life, I lived feeling as if, if I spoke, if I said something, I would lose everything. I would be pushed out. No one will want me. No one will love me. No one would want to be friends with me. It took me decades to get to a space of saying, ‘This is my truth. This is who I am, and I don’t care if you like me or you don’t like me.’”
― Janet Mock
“When marginalized people gain voice and center their own experiences, things begin changing. And we see this in all kinds of grassroots movements.”
― Janet Mock
“I walk in the world as a woman because I am a woman, and people should take me as that. I’m not passing as anything that I’m not. I’m just being myself.”
― Janet Mock
“My personal style really started in my teens when I gained purchasing power to actually buy my own damn clothes. For so long, my parents dictated what I wore, which largely was their way of containing me within the gender binary.”
― Janet Mock
“Throughout elementary and middle school, I was used to hearing other words: Smart. Studious. Well-spoken. Well-read. They became pillars of my self-confidence, enabling me to build myself up on what I contributed rather than what I looked like.”
― Janet Mock
“Femininity in general is seen as frivolous. People often say feminine people are doing ‘the most,’ meaning that to don a dress, heels, lipstick and big hair is artifice, fake, and a distraction. But I knew even as a teenager that my femininity was more than just adornments: they were extensions of me, enabling me to express myself and my identity.”
― Janet Mock
“One musical that deeply influenced me – and continues to do so – is the 1997 ABC TV movie of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Cinderella,’ starring Brandy, with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother and Whoopi Goldberg as the prince’s mom.”
― Janet Mock
“We cannot and should not be reduced to just one sliver of ourselves, as it skews the truth of our lived experiences.”
― Janet Mock
“Because trans people are marked as artificial, unnatural, and illegitimate, our bodies and identities are often open to public dissection. Plainly, cisgender folks often take it as their duty to investigate our lives to see if we’re real.”
― Janet Mock
“There’s power in naming yourself, in proclaiming to the world that this is who you are. Wielding this power is often a difficult step for many transgender people because it’s also a very visible one.”
― Janet Mock
“We must have the audacity to turn up the frequency of our truths.”
― Janet Mock
“On my road to self-discovery, only certain terms were available – I didn’t use ‘trans’ or ‘transgender’ until junior high school, but I was living as trans much earlier.”
― Janet Mock
“Reproductive rights are about body and medical autonomy: our collective and deeply personal right to choose what we want to do to/with our bodies. Trans people and feminists should be building natural alliances here.”
― Janet Mock
“Great conversations always spark in a genuine interest to recognize and know the other person’s story and, therefore, recognizing and understanding and celebrating their humanity.”
― Janet Mock
“As an activist who uses storytelling to combat stigma, I have always been adamant that we tell our own stories.”
― Janet Mock
“To say that I loved school would be an understatement. It was my oasis, my sanctuary.”
― Janet Mock
“If I’m watching ‘The Real Housewives of Atlanta,’ there’s a part of that that’s just escapism. I’m not watching it with a political lens, but there is a part of me that certain things trigger and pull up, where I’m like, ‘Oh, that was really problematic.’”
― Janet Mock
“I just love to glow, glow glow, so with my skincare and makeup routine, I gravitate to products that help me achieve that sun-kissed, dewy look.”
― Janet Mock
“Throughout the day, I like to spritz my face with a rose water for extra moisture.”
― Janet Mock
“Any woman’s right to self-identify is a personal freedom I fight for, and those women who claim trans women are not women are perpetuators of gender-based oppression, and all feminists should be upset and moved to action against this.”
― Janet Mock
“We must resist the pressures of others to soundbite our complicated, nuanced experiences.”
― Janet Mock
“Media gatekeepers – editors, publishers, film studios and the like – need to begin investing in talent behind the scenes, developing and resourcing marginalized voices to tell their own stories. At the end of the day, it’s about the story and what will enable the audience to truly see, understand, and know the life and times of the subject.”
― Janet Mock
“We are all part of a larger collective looking to create a more beautiful and just world.”
― Janet Mock
“I would advise any 17-year-old to surround yourself with people who listen to you, nod when you speak, and smile when you enter spaces.”
― Janet Mock
“I don’t chase beauty trends.”
― Janet Mock
“If we want to enlighten people or give them new thoughts and ideas, we have to be willing to do the work of educating them.”
― Janet Mock
“For me, as an activist and a storyteller, I’m very centered in ensuring that we show the complicatedness of the human experience that happens to be rooted in my community’s trans experiences.”
― Janet Mock
“I think millennials are the most woke generation because they understand that differences are just in the fabric of who we are.”
― Janet Mock
“When you hear anyone policing the bodies of trans women, misgendering and othering us, and violently exiling us from spaces, you should not dismiss it as a trans issue that trans women should speak out against. You should be engaged in the dialogue, discourse, and activism that challenges the very fibers of your movement.”
― Janet Mock
“I know how messy things can get when adults overstep their boundaries and insert themselves – their politics, their fears, their prejudices, their ignorance – into the lives of young people.”
― Janet Mock
“Trans folk, especially of color, should not be obligated to help cis folk play catch-up on our experiences. The effort can detract from our work to protect and liberate ourselves.”
― Janet Mock
“If anyone can be said to embody the American Dream, it’s Kim Kardashian West.”
― Janet Mock
“I want to create the content I didn’t have while growing up.”
― Janet Mock
“I was a mixed black girl existing in a westernized Hawaiian culture where petite Asian women were the ideal, in a white culture where black women were furthest from the standard of beauty, in an American culture where trans women of color were invisible.”
― Janet Mock
“I think about Ellen DeGeneres, seeing her every single day on a show. Her identity is there every day, but what leads the way is her talent and how much you like her.”
― Janet Mock
“It was through my hashtag #girlslikeus where I connected with other trans women on Twitter and Tumblr. We had challenging conversations, courageous personal revelations, and shared insights and experiences, and just had fun. The hashtag tethered me to many women in my community in impactful, lasting ways.”
― Janet Mock
“The Internet has introduced me to some of my closest friends.”
― Janet Mock
“What helps me when someone puts me down or aims to offend me is to not take what they say personally. I try my best to not internalize their comments.”
― Janet Mock
“I know intimately the struggle of trying to live your life and be yourself while feeling the pressure of an entire community on your shoulders.”
― Janet Mock
“When I feel that burden of representation in public spaces, it helps to recognize that it’s a duty – a job, really. As with any job that you want to do well, you have to ensure that first and foremost you are energized and in the right head space to take on that task.”
― Janet Mock
“A staple in my makeup bag is Black Opal’s True Color Skin Perfecting Stick Foundation, which offers a range of colors with many undertones.”
― Janet Mock
“We are all inundated with images that present a limited scope of what is considered beautiful. For American women, the closer she is to whiteness/paleness, cisness, thinness, and femininity, the more she is considered beautiful.”
― Janet Mock
“When I was younger, I wish I would have been told more often that I was right and nothing was wrong with me, that I was deserving of everything this world has to offer, and that my visions for my future were worthy of pursuit.”
― Janet Mock
“I want – no, I need – to see images of black girls and femmes twerking, slaying and primping, just as much as I need to see Symone Sanders bopping her head and Representative Maxine Waters reclaiming her time.”
― Janet Mock
“I was born outraged. I was born without, knowing my people were not counted, not included, not centered. I struggled through low-resourced schools, communities, and housing projects.”
― Janet Mock
“I spent my life navigating systems built upon me – a black child in America – not making it out.”
― Janet Mock
“I knew very early on that I was not pretty. No one ever called me pretty. It was not the go-to adjective people used to describe me.”
― Janet Mock
“’Pretty’ is most often synonymous with being thin, white, able-bodied, and cis, and the closer you are to those ideals, the more often you will be labeled pretty – and benefit from that prettiness.”
― Janet Mock
“Like many teens, I struggled with my body and looks, but my despair was amplified by the expectations of cisnormativity and the gender binary as well as the impossibly high beauty standards that I, and my female peers, measured myself against.”
― Janet Mock
“When I was a toddler, my father cut hair in the townhouse we had shared together in Long Beach, California, where Dad was stationed with the U.S. Navy. The buzz of clippers consistently hummed as he gave fades to his coworkers, my uncles, and my brother, but his clippers were never oiled and plugged in for my head.”
― Janet Mock
“My parents split before my fifth birthday, and I moved with Mom and my three siblings to her native Oahu.”
― Janet Mock
“For many, hair is just hair. It’s something you grow, shape, adapt, adorn, and cut. But my hair has always been so much more than what’s on my head. It’s a marker of how free I felt in my body, how comfortable I was with myself, and how much agency I had to control my body and express myself with it.”
― Janet Mock
“Toughening up, performing masculinity, pretending to enjoy things I didn’t enjoy all enabled me to dodge the gender policing of the adults around me. But the way I really was – the swished hips, the Double-Dutching, the hair flips – seemed to always prevail and attract Dad’s disdain.”
― Janet Mock
“I was six years old when ‘The Little Mermaid’ was released in 1989 and was immediately struck by the fiery-maned, melodic-voiced, tail-swinging mermaid protagonist. She spoke to me on levels deeper than her father’s oceanic kingdom.”
― Janet Mock
“When I was a high school freshman in Honolulu, I would sit with my girlfriends on the bleachers of the school amphitheater every morning. We’d meet in the same spot and chat for an hour before homeroom began.”
― Janet Mock
“I was in the seventh grade when I first began to identify as trans and express my gender identity as a girl. My social transition began with growing my hair and wearing clothes and makeup that made me feel like Destiny’s Fourth Child.”
― Janet Mock
“When I was 12, my brother and I moved back to Honolulu to live with our mother. Hawaii felt like another universe, and reflecting on it, I am struck by how much more open and accepting it was.”
― Janet Mock
“Once, when I was 5 years old, a little girl who lived next door to my grandmother dared me to put on a muumuu and run across a nearby parking lot. So I did. I threw it on, hiked it up in one hand, and ran like hell. It felt amazing to be in a dress. But suddenly my grandmother appeared, a look of horror on her face.”
― Janet Mock
“I learned to hide aspects of my personality. Playing with girls was fine, for example, but playing with their Barbies was something I could do only behind closed doors.”
― Janet Mock
“Stern and critical, my father couldn’t accept how feminine and dainty I was in comparison to my rough-and-tumble brother.”
― Janet Mock
“I was obsessed with ‘The Velvet Rope’ for a year straight, letting Janet Jackson’s confessional lyrics lull me to sleep and comfort me when I felt lost. I felt that the album was the vehicle onto which Janet finally expressed her full self.”
― Janet Mock
“My body, my clothes, and my makeup are on purpose, just as I am on purpose.”
― Janet Mock
“Our culture often demeans and devalues the work, the pleasures, and the contributions of women and feminine people. This is, in part, why beauty culture is dismissed as unimportant and frivolous.”
― Janet Mock
“Being trans, I’ve grown up with the understanding that most women are born girls, yet some are born boys. And most men are born boys, yet some are born girls. And if you’re ready for this, some people are born girls or boys and choose to identify outside our society’s binary system, making them genderqueer.”
― Janet Mock
“By the time I was a sophomore in high school, it had become routine for me to be sent home for wearing dresses. My mere presence in a skirt became an act of protest that would get me called out of class and into the vice principal’s office.”
― Janet Mock
“There’s nothing more mundane than sitting across from a celebrity in a sterile gray conference room. But when the star sitting across from you is Taraji Penda Henson, you are being treated to a master class in the art of the hustle.”
― Janet Mock
“Curiosity is vital to the growth of our society.”
― Janet Mock
“Movies have always been spaces of refuge for me. For a few harmonious hours, I could escape my reality of being a girl living on the margins.”
― Janet Mock
“Popular culture is most powerful when it offers us a vision of how our society should look – or at least reproduces our reality.”
― Janet Mock
“The transgender community has always been a part of Hawaiian society, where people who don’t conform to the binary system of man/woman, masculine/feminine are accepted or, at minimum, tolerated.”
― Janet Mock
“As a visible and outspoken trans woman myself, I know that it’s rare not to have your trans-ness lead the way for you in public spaces.”
― Janet Mock
“I still have a YA-genre-series type of a book in me that I really want to tell.”
― Janet Mock
“Women are so policed and devalued and dehumanized when it comes to the work they do.”
― Janet Mock
“In the evening, I use a cleansing oil – coconut oil also works – to remove makeup.”
― Janet Mock
“I’m an island girl, so I love super bronzy skin!”
― Janet Mock
“I wrote ‘Redefining Realness’ because not enough of our stories are being told, and I believe we need stories that reflect us so we don’t feel so isolated in our apparent ‘difference.’”
― Janet Mock
“We need space to discuss unspoken, uncomfortable dark truths.”
― Janet Mock
“I hope being honest about my experiences and contextualizing them empowers young women to step into their truths, tell their own stories, and live visibly.”
― Janet Mock
“We exist in a culture where trans people are constantly delegitimized.”
― Janet Mock
“Hawaii was so integral to my journey. I was just there at the right time.”
― Janet Mock
“In seventh grade, I met my best friend Wendi, who is a trans woman.”
― Janet Mock
“I just am trans. That’s just the way it is. I knew this as a child. But I was told that because I expressed femininity in a boy’s body, I needed to be silent about it. To be ashamed. That led to isolation, which then made it easier for me to be prey to a predator in my own home.”
― Janet Mock
“I think a lot of people are very interested in why other people are trans or why people are gay.”
― Janet Mock
“It is the world’s limitations and the myths that we internalize about ourselves that pushes us to diminish our power and ignore it.”
― Janet Mock
“Trans people are not a monolith.”
― Janet Mock
“I grew up at a time in Hawaii where there were trans women around, so there were visible role models for me. At the same time, as a low-income trans girl of color, there were so many things that I didn’t have access to. I didn’t have access to a great education. I didn’t have access to affordable healthcare.”
― Janet Mock
“As someone who wasn’t heavily supported or resourced as a young person when I was going through the hardest times of my life, I’m used to operating outside of systems. The trans movement has always been that way.”
― Janet Mock
“I came out, as not enough of our stories are told from our perspective. ‘Marie Claire’ was offering the chance to be a part of a women’s magazine, which often celebrates ordinary women doing extraordinary things.”
― Janet Mock
“I don’t feel as if I’m typecast – like any writer, the difficulty is that one facet of my identity becomes louder, obscuring the fact that I’m also a woman, a writer, a lover of pop culture and other things.”
― Janet Mock
“It’s great to engage with the mainstream media to get messages out, but the most empowering tool is to create records of our lives, and our own images, which are not filtered through judgements, biases, or misunderstandings.”
― Janet Mock
“I get invited to a lot of college campuses, and administrators think it’s going to be a lecture on ‘trans-ness’ or whatever. But when young people get there, their questions are about just life.”
― Janet Mock
“There’s a burden of responsibility for me to show up correct – in my head, if I don’t do it right, then I’ll get shut out, and then other trans women of color will be shut out.”
― Janet Mock
“Our differences are what make us great. Let us think about how we can extend this appreciation to people of color, undocumented immigrants, and other members of the community.”
― Janet Mock
“I often feel failed by feminism.”
― Janet Mock
“I don’t have to explain anything to trans women. Trans women know exactly what’s going on.”
― Janet Mock
“I take the time to show up for people in my field who are often not seen and heard in the same capacity as I am. Applauding other women and queer writers of color enables me to recognize and showcase the abundance of talent and work being created.”
― Janet Mock
“We are multiplicities, and none of us live single-identity lives.”
― Janet Mock
“One of the most difficult parts of ‘The Trans List’ was coming up with a list of 11 people. For me, what was important was to ensure that we were as diverse as possible across a lot of different intersections.”
― Janet Mock
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