Carey Mulligan Steals Style Tips From Sienna Miller

Going out for me is usually a very relaxed situation. I’ve probably been out to a bar or a club maybe once in the last two years. I know what my alter ego wants to do.

“Today I was asked when I real­ized I was in the wrong body. As much as it took me a real­ly long time to come to terms with it, I think I have known since I can remember—since I could even think about gen­der or notice it. I was think­ing about when I was in pre‑K ‚and I would dress up as Cin­derel­la and do girl things. If I decid­ed to wear a dress or role­play as a princess, my teach­ers would tell me I couldn’t do it because I was a boy. So when you have every­one in your life telling you that you’re a boy, you kind of start to believe it, even though none of it comes nat­u­ral­ly to you.

My tran­si­tion has been a very grad­ual, very cere­bral process. For a lot of peo­ple, it’s very easy to reduce gen­der to bod­ies, and that’s ter­ri­ble. So to answer that ques­tion that I was asked today, I real­ized I was a woman after I was already liv­ing as a woman for about a year or so. Before that, I had this plat­inum blond hair, acrylics, and would dress in skirts, and wear purses—but I still iden­ti­fied as male. I was open-mind­ed enough, grow­ing up, to think that even if my out­ward appear­ance was female, I could still be male. If you read enough queer the­o­ry, you real­ize any sort of con­junc­tion is pos­si­ble. There are boys who want expe­ri­ence life as women but still be boys, and that’s valid.

I nev­er under­stood why peo­ple would think that men couldn’t be as beau­ti­ful as women, so for a long time I didn’t have a word for myself. I was like, ‘I’m not a boy but I can’t let myself be a woman.’ So at the time I was like, ‘OK, I’ll be some­thing else.’ It was weird for me, and in some ways, my think­ing allowed me to keep putting off how I felt inside by just cov­er­ing it up with this cere­bral explanation.

There is a lot of psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­sion in try­ing to dis­cuss any­thing with gen­der identity.

I used to wear a lot more make­up. I fuck­ing love Boy George, and I would put on that amount of makeup—like Boy George amounts of make­up. My eye­lin­er would like reach my hair­line. I would go real­ly crazy with it. I would try to over­com­pen­sate. Now I’m much more toned down, but I feel like all girls have that phase when exper­i­ment­ing with make­up for the first time. Though, if I start­ed off putting on the amount of make­up I wear now, I knew I would just look like who I real­ly am, and I think I was just not ready for that.

I was 14 years old when I got my first taste of make­up. I was in a band as the lead singer and we were play­ing one of our first shows. At that point all I could get away with was straight­en­ing my hair maybe once a month. So yeah, I was at my first show, and I remem­ber find­ing a Revlon retractable black eye­lin­er in the bathroom.

I put it on my water­line, not even think­ing about the fact that I could get an eye infec­tion as I picked it up off the floor—it was dis­gust­ing. I guess the cool thing about being in a band is that there is so much more free­dom. There’s the clas­sic ‘Dude (Looks Like A Lady)’-feel. I felt like I could wear the eye­lin­er, and no one would care because I was at a rock show. Then I wore it again to a crowd that was more of a hard­core scene, and it wasn’t a cool expe­ri­ence. They were scream­ing at me to get off the stage and call­ing me the F word. I was just like, ‘Wow, OK.’ I was 15 at that point. It was a ter­ri­ble wake up call to me, all because I was wear­ing eyeliner—it’s not that big of a deal, and yet, peo­ple are already polic­ing me for not per­form­ing this gen­der that I’m pre­tend­ing to be. Obvi­ous­ly I was doing a shit­ty job at per­form­ing male. Some­times I tell peo­ple that I real­ly feel like I was in drag for over a decade, in the sense of per­form­ing male gen­der roles. I’d end the night and make sure to wipe off my eye­lin­er before I got home.

I had real­ly bad acne in high school, so I’d get away with wear­ing cov­er­all and that’s it. Still, my moth­er would look at me from her bed—I did, and still do, my make­up in her room because it has the best lighting—and be like, ‘What are you doing?’ I used to tell my mom like, ‘Don’t wor­ry! I’ll nev­er wear mas­cara!’ But it all happens…100 YouTube tuto­ri­als lat­er you emerge in full face [Laughs].

I always admired make­up. I’d watch my grand­ma doing her make­up, and she’d always be put togeth­er. She would tell me that pho­tos are for­ev­er, you can’t take it light­ly, and you have to per­fect it. Lit­tle things like that real­ly stuck with me. With­out my mother’s per­mis­sion, I dyed my hair plat­inum blonde as a teenag­er. Hav­ing white hair changes your life, regard­less of gen­der iden­ti­ty. It is a real­ly crazy expe­ri­ence. You learn about so many dif­fer­ent sides of peo­ple and how they per­ceive you—it’s crazy. It was moti­va­tion, I guess, and it was the first instance of feel­ing like I can’t hide myself.

I was real­ly obsessed with Final Fan­ta­sy at the time, espe­cial­ly the Final Fan­ta­sy vil­lains. If you real­ly look at a Final Fan­ta­sy vil­lain and ana­lyze it, it’s a female head on a male body. I felt con­nect­ed to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of being real­ly pret­ty, even if my body didn’t match up—there was a chance for the head por­tion to be on-point and con­sis­tent with how I view myself. After that, I start­ed real­ly div­ing into make­up as iden­ti­ty. Beau­ty can be a big deal for all girls, but beau­ty for a trans girl could be life-or-death. There’s moments when you could be placed in dan­ger for not pass­ing as a woman con­vinc­ing­ly enough. One time I was walk­ing with my friend and a guy was try­ing to holler at me, then he took out a knife. Make­up is much more seri­ous to trans women. Even cis girls can relate—they get attacked and bul­lied in schools, grow­ing up, because they’re not pret­ty enough.

I real­ly feel bad for a lot of trans peo­ple and trans women who don’t have the expe­ri­ence [with make­up] before they come into them­selves and have to learn to do their make­up in no time. They’re 35, they have kids, and they need to tran­si­tion then—that’s the bravest thing ever. That’s not to say that I think peo­ple tran­si­tion­ing lat­er in life nec­es­sar­i­ly need to wear make­up to be who they are. I just iden­ti­fied with it. The way I did it was just like how every girl picks up make­up skills—where your mom is like, ‘You can only put on lip­gloss.’ You need time to prac­tice, so it looks good. I used to just have these Zen three-hour make­up ses­sions. Of course, dur­ing the day I just wear tint­ed mois­tur­iz­er, con­ceal­er, and maybe mas­cara. Some­times I’ll do a wing, but just a lit­tle bit on the out­er edge. But at night…at night is when I’d real­ly take my time. I’d do my make­up from 7pm to 10pm and go out at midnight.