The New girl

M. Reynolds

It began as a yell of frustration in the summer of the year 2000, a yell which sprang from a conflict I've endured both internally and externally for as long as I could remember. "You can't understand me!" - it was a remark that had echoed in my mind for many years. It was a remark that seemed to come from every woman I'd ever known from my mother using it to justify the 30-year live-in divorce of her marriage to each of a series of failed relationships. I wanted to understand what society holds to be a very basic defining difference between people ? that of gender. I decided in the Summer of 2000 that as soon as I had developed the skill, the courage, and an acceptably female appearance, I would live as a woman - Lisa Anne Weber - full time in public for two months, attempt to find employment and build a life for myself in a new town, and then write about the experience.