‘Skin Deep’
Written by Jas Saunders - June 26th, 2025
I know better than to trust the mirror hanging on the back of my bedroom door. When you’re looking at yourself in something that always stays the same, you’re not going to find any changes. Some parents create a notch in a door frame to measure their children’s growth each year, but for Joel and me, it was always the annual lake trip.
We’ve been going since we were five and six, respectively. Dad’s a business professor for the uni in the city and whenever he can get away from there for long enough, we stay here for holidays. Just a dingy, little chalet by the lake. As far away from students and lectures and grading as possible. Little did he or Mum know, it was probably what I needed as well; to be away from other people.
Even though it would only be us at the lake, it never stopped me from feeling self-conscious. It didn’t matter that there were less people there to see me, I didn’t want to see myself.
I was able to get away with wearing a shirt and swim shorts, just like Joel, when I was younger. It was more practical and sun smart. It felt more me.
When I got old enough to start wearing more feminine bathers, I still wanted to drown myself in oversized shirts and boardies. I can count all the times I cried in the local Kmart’s fitting room over the amount of different styles Mum would get me to try on. I didn’t care that there were ‘boyleg’ bottoms or that the bikini tops had some ‘boyish’ pattern on to ‘balance’ out the femininity.
It helped when I finally shaved my head on the last day of term and packed my own clothes. Mum cried when she saw all my hair on the cold, bathroom tiles and Dad, despite lecturing thousands of diverse and different students every day, didn’t understand why I did it. Joel, though, when he saw my reflection, gave me a nod as if to say, ‘I see you, sis.’
Dad wanted two boys to play basketball with after a long day of work and take to watch the AFL with him. Mum wanted at least one boy and a girl; the latter to live vicariously through and pass on family heirlooms of earrings and necklaces to. Instead they got me, in all my buzzed and boyish, 16-year-old, glory.
‘But what if you come back next term with no hair and the school thinks you’re making a statement?’ Mum asked.
I told her that I had already been outed as gay at the start of the year, there was no statement left to be made. There were no statements to make other than I just wanted to feel right in myself. That I had already lost some of what I already had, and I had accepted that. It’s just what happens when you get sent to a religious, private school; you fall out of line to take up space you deserve, and you get ostracised. Who wants to be friends with people who cast you aside like that, anyway?
Sometimes I wonder if to my parents, I’m just another case of the ‘sunk cost fallacy’. That they’ve only supported and sheltered me for as long as they have because they’ve already committed and invested so much time, money, and effort in me, even if those costs aren’t recoverable. Maybe I’ve sank so low, they’ve given up on me completely. I didn’t even do that bad of a job shaving my head too, I made sure I double-checked to see if it was patchy in any areas.
‘Race you to the floating dock?’ Joel asks. I didn’t know he was behind me this whole time.
I turn to look at him. ‘What, like we’re little kids again?’ We’re too old to be doing this child’s game. I don’t want to use all my energy on some silly contest.
Joel takes my sardonic reply as an affirmative to his proposition because he runs into the lake’s shallow end, the icy water splashing and biting at both of our ankles, before breaking into breaststroke.
I look at my reflection in the lake’s surface. I thought I would be happier. I set myself free from everything that chained me down, but I still look miserable. I look gaunt. Hollow. Almost like a ghost, almost like I’m not even there in the first place.
I start to follow behind slower. Then I break into a swim. A lazy swim not increasing my pace, but I take my time treading water. My thoughts go back to where they were before I got deeper into the lake.
I’m not competitive anymore; I lost that trait years ago when I realised that no matter how hard I swam, Joel would always beat me. I hated the way he built muscle naturally and how whatever he did, he was still the Golden Boy to Mum and Dad, just for being born the way he was.
What now? What else is missing? What else do I need to do to feel like myself? Why can’t anyone else see how freer I feel? Wasn’t it so obvious? That forcing myself into femininity felt like swimming in a glass tank where the water levels just kept on rising and rising and rising? That I felt like I was suffocating when I was trying to fit in with everyone around me and the standards that were placed on my shoulders?
‘Tara!’
‘Mum-and-Dad-aren’t-talking-to-me-because-they-think-I’m-being-their-problem-child-on-purpose-but-I-can’t-do-this-anymore-I-couldn’t-do-it-anymore-wearing-all-those-clothes-I-felt-like-I-was-dying-I-can’t-be-a-perfect-daughter-for-them-anymore-I-felt-like-I-was-drowning-and-suffocating-like-my-head-was-underwater-the-whole-time-and-now-they-aren’t-talking-to-me-because-they-think-I’m-chosing-to-be-difficult.’
I open my eyes and realise they were closed this whole time. ‘Tara!’ Joel is shaking me. My lips are chattering. The water is a cold blanket wrapped around my shoulders. My face is wet with a combination of water and tears.
‘It’s okay, I’ve got you,’ he says.
‘What happened? What was happening?’ I ask.
‘I thought you were following me, racing me rather,’ Joel explains, ‘but when I turned around, you looked like you were going to go under. You looked so out of it. When I got close enough to hear, you were just spiralling.’
Oh. He heard me. All of it. It wasn’t just inside my head.
‘Spiralling?’ I repeat.
‘Breathe in and out with me,’ Joel says and he puts his hand on my chest, on the side where my heart feels like it’s going to burst out of my chest and tear a whole through the baggy t-shirt I’m wearing.
I follow his instructions and in time to the waves lapping against us, I breathe in. I breathe out. In. Out. In. Out.
In the distance I can see the floating dock. I can hear some of the seabirds cawing as they fly overhead to the trees beside our chalet. Everything feels so big and so small all at once. So loud and quiet.
Ah yep. The conveyor belt theory. One thing leading to another until I can’t breathe. Until it all consumes me. Thoughts going around and around and around until I can’t tell my left from my right, and it’s made me blind and dizzy, obscuring my focus.
After a few minutes of not saying anything to one another, Joel looks at me right in the eyes. I hate the eye contact and want to look down, but this is my big brother. Only older than me by a year, and here I am in his arms like a big baby. Despite hearing me ‘spiral’ about how much I envy him, he didn’t leave me to sink down to the bottom of the lake’s floor. He hasn’t even let go of me. His hands are on my shoulders, keeping a distance between us, but he’s watching me intently to make sure I’ve got enough air in me to speak.
‘Did you mean all of that?’ he asks.
‘Wh-what part?’
‘Well, the part where you called me Golden Boy, for starters,’ he looks embarrassed when really, it should be me feeling ashamed.
‘Uh, well, at the time I did,’ I say. ‘You’re Mum and Dad’s first-born, you’re the only boy. You’re everything a teenage boy is expected to be, and actually like being one. You never get in trouble. It’s always me breaking the rules and disappointing them.’
‘Tara,’ Joel says, and his eyes go dark. He’s disappointed in me too. ‘Is that what you really think?’
‘It’s true,’ I tell him, ‘Mum and Dad still haven’t properly spoken to me in a week, because I buzzed all my hair off.’
‘You didn’t hear the lecture they gave me, Tar. They were upset I gave you my clippers to do it,’ he said.
The water is still cold, but I think our bodies are getting used to it. The goosebumps are starting to go away. I look up at him and I’m reminded of how tall he’s gotten. Once we were just two five- and six-year-olds at a lake on an even playing field where the only expectations we were given, were to enjoy the annual lake trip away from all the city commotion and fuss. To just be kids. When did it stop? When did we suddenly grow up so fast and forget all about that?
‘I’ve still disappointed them though. They wish I could be like everybody else’s daughter,’ I say. ‘Straight. Pretty. Likes makeup and dresses and all that other shit. If not that, they wish I were born a boy like you and be right from the start.’
‘That’s not true,’ Joel shakes his head, ‘That’s not true, Tara–’
‘But it is,’ I interrupt.
‘Do you know why we go on these trips?’ Joel asks after a pause. His voice is low and husky. I used to envy that as well. How calm and collected he can be even when he’s been stung. The ability to know when things are never personal.
I do my best to stop and think about it. Isn’t it obvious why we come here each year? Everywhere else is so loud. Perth is said to be one of the most isolated cities, but it’s still so constantly busy. You don’t ever just blend into the sea of people. Not here. Every time Dad goes grocery shopping with Mum, he runs into a small handful of students who end up wanting to stop and chat with him. They start to mix his work life with his personal life. How grating it would be to be under supervision at all times.
‘So Dad can get away from all the city kids and uni life?’
‘That’s one part of it,’ Joel says, ‘but – the other part is because they knew how much you’ve struggled to fit in. They thought you wanted to spend time with just us who would understand you more than any of those other kids who harass you all the time. That after getting outed this year, it’s what you needed most’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, Mum did cry when you buzzed your hair, but they’ve mainly wanted to just watch you be in your own time to see if you felt better for it. Her and Dad; they’ve been trying.’
I taste his words on my tongue. They’ve been doing most of this, all for me? This whole time?
‘You can be yourself here,’ he says.
I think about the seabirds that flew over us. They never have to pretend to be anything for anyone to fit in. In nature, the animal world doesn’t judge one another for changing themselves to fit the image they see themselves as. They just all share the same nests. Their caws just sound like laughter between friends; true acceptance amongst the flock. To think that after all this time, my family were never as disapproving as I thought, or as discouraging as they once were, but instead they just wanted me to feel more myself.
I fall onto my back and the water catches me. Joel’s right; here I am free, I am floating.
‘Skin Deep’ comes from a place where you feel so anxious you care what other people think of you, but you also feel yourself past the point of feeling uncomfortable or putting your own desires aside. It was inspired by many things that all came together to tell Tara's story; camping trips years ago to a lake, observations of clothing in Kmart for little girls with dinosaurs on to appease the tomboys all whilst still being too hyperfeminine for their desires, and the love for an older sibling who loves you but is also nonchalant and accepting without having to talk about certain awkward topics. It is also inspired by the lack of coming of age stories featuring lesbian protagonists who are more butch, masculine, or gender-nonconforming.
- Jas Saunders