Natural Crossdressing

One summer, I watched a group of caterpillars eating a birch tree right outside my door. Two of them, I thought, would make a perfect mustache. It was a difficult photo shoot, since the caterpillars kept trying to crawl up my nose and also had trouble sticking to my face. Applying honey to my upper lip (my mother's suggestion) helped slow them down a great deal.

I’ve very often wished I had titled this photograph something else. At the time I made it, I intended for the word “natural” in the title to critically call attention to the normative views on gender that viewed any self-presentation through clothing that didn’t conform with a person’s cisgender “unnatural.” But I think the title too easily reads as a send up instead.