My body was mine before the change, but after, it belonged to everyone. Everywhere I went, men’s heads turned. I couldn’t go out in public without it—the mall, the grocery store. Even if I was just standing on the sidewalk, they’d roll down their car windows and yell at me as they drove by. One night, I was with my mom, and a man hung out the window of a red truck and yelled, “Damn, honey, let me suck those tits.” My mom went red in the face and ran after him, screaming, “She’s twelve years old, you sick fuck!”
I’m thirty now, and I’m still embarrassed to tell you that. I feel an impulse to laugh it off. “Suck those tits”—how cheesy, right? Like dialogue from a bad movie. That’s what I feel compelled to say, like it’s a joke. Somewhere along the way, I learned to minimize it. Maybe because at some level, I still think it’s my fault, that my body incited them. Or maybe I realized people are rarely interested in another person’s pain, so you have to dress it up accordingly.
But I’ll tell you truth. It felt like constant surveillance, and it reshaped me. Going outside became an event. I developed this hum of apprehension—an extra awareness, like a sixth sense I always carried. Men were watching around every corner. I could run into them at any moment. I’m not being dramatic. Anything could be an invitation, even accidentally meeting a man’s eyes. So I learned to keep my eyes trained on the ground and stay quiet. The more unnoticeable I was, the safer.
JAMIE KNIGHT: What kind of people would make a kid feel that way?
SHAY: You remember Clara Matthews.
JAMIE: Of course. You, me, and Clara, the three amigos. Soccer hooligans.
SHAY: In seventh grade I used to go to her house after school because my mom was still working two jobs. Her dad picked us up every day. He’d wait for us in his white SUV, and as soon as we opened the door, he’d turn around and say “Where to, ladies?” like a chauffeur.
JAMIE: He was pretty goofy. Clara used to get embarrassed.
SHAY: One day, he eyed me in the rearview and said, out of nowhere, “Have you ever thought about competing in pageants, Shay? My sister did them when she was your age and loved it. She coaches now. You have the look.”
I could see Clara stiffen, but I flushed with pleasure. I knew what Mr. Matthews meant: I was pretty. And he was a safe person, so I could take the compliment.
JAMIE: That’s such an inappropriate thing to say to your twelve-year-old daughter’s friend.
SHAY: The idea stuck with me. I kept imagining walking across a stage in front of a crowd. At first, it was terrifying. The opposite of being unnoticeable. But then I thought, they’re already looking. If I do this, maybe I’ll be in control.
So Mr. Matthews introduced me to his sister, and she said if I competed, I could win money for college. My mom used to say a scholarship was the only way I was getting my ass to college, and I wanted that more than anything. So I begged my mom to let me compete. She hated the idea, said I had to choose between pageants and soccer. She thought I’d choose soccer.
JAMIE: I’m going to be honest. I never understood. You were so much more than pretty. And don’t give me that bull that pageants are about talent. It was beneath you.
SHAY （laughter）： Do you know what teachers used to write in my report cards? Shay is a sweet girl. So polite. Plays well with others. I know what they wrote in yours: Jamie’s gifted, he’s got so much potential, going big places. We got the exact same grades.
JAMIE: I hate that.
SHAY: I hate it because I believed them. I thought the most important thing about me was that other people liked me. It made pageants the ultimate test of my worth.
JAMIE: Well, you ended up winning a lot.
SHAY: At first, it backfired. Competing made me feel exposed, like I was only giving the world more to leer at. My body started feeling less mine than it ever had. The makeup, the way I was supposed to talk, the things I was supposed to eat: everything was a performance.