November 6, 2025 |
There is a common misconception that the more you “know thyself”, in the words of the ancients, the less likely you are to change. Transformation, transition, evolution, whatever name you give it, has a way of unsettling people. Intransigence often masquerades as confidence. Certainty for wisdom. Change, on the other hand, suggests precarity: youthful naivety at best, indecisiveness at worst.
And yet, even as we dream of changing our bodies, our habits and the world itself for the better, what we mourn, more often, is change.
When people complain, it’s usually about how much things have changed. Neighbourhoods. Governments. House prices. What you can and can’t say these days. The list is endless. (Don’t get me started, I’m just as guilty.)
Without change, we would have nothing to discuss. There would be no spirited debates about whether this or that transformation is for better or worse, especially when it comes to people. Perhaps it’s some lingering, primordial, tribal instinct to track the anomalies in the group, the shifts in pattern and presentation, which was something once useful for hunting and gathering. Today, it’s Instagram accounts of ‘before and after’ that we hunt for, searching for clues like a game of spot the difference.
To change your body implies something was wrong, something needed correction. And yet, our faces are expected to remain as smooth and pillowy as those of our younger selves – as well as suspiciously sharper and more sculpted, though we must never admit to anything other than drinking lots of water.
There’s that line, said to be by Mark Twain, about the weather: “Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.” I feel like he was talking about me. At the ripe age of 30 – not old, not exactly young – I found myself undergoing what my friend Emman dramatically dubbed, “the change of life, honey!”
Spoiler alert: it wasn’t the menopause. It was going blonde and wearing dangerously high heels. Two sizes too small. People were intrigued. My social media engagement spiked. Rumours abounded. Apparently, everyone desperately wanted to know my pronouns. Thanks to my job as a writer, editor and consultant and active social life – and the irrepressible vanity of sharing it on social media – I often felt like I was standing in the middle of the Colosseum, praying for a thumbs up, waiting for a thumbs down.
But the truth is, I didn’t think of it as a gender transition. I hadn’t exactly been some archetype of machismo masculinity before. It was more of a shedding of gender’s absurd obscurities, a clearing of fog, an invitation to define my own direction. This wasn’t a crossing, but a loosening. Also, I think I look good in a pencil skirt (probably because I don’t have child-bearing hips). It would be a shame not to wear one, right? Well. No. Turns out, people really have a problem with that.
shawl by MARNI, dress by COURREGES, shoes by JIMMY CHOO
I’ve spent the better part of a decade in the chiffon trenches of fashion, so I’m no stranger to the way clothes serve as a kind of Esperanto, a shared language for the things we can’t quite articulate with words. I began wearing whatever I liked, blending menswear and womenswear. On a Miu Miu runway, fabulous. On a busy street? Interrogated. Fashion became a medium for experimentation, for trying on my new moods. I was playing dress-up to decipher which of the looks felt like a character and which felt like me, determining the difference between theatre and truth.
What was less fun was the endless inquisition. People would sometimes ask if it was, you know, a fetish thing. A crossdressing kink. I never knew how to respond. I was equal parts stunned by the tactlessness and tempted to ask: do you really think I’d make my life harder, just for a thrill?
I probably don’t need to explain how trans people live under constant threat. They are statistically more vulnerable and are endlessly surveilled and demonised by those who have likely never met any of the small percentage of the population whose very existence is being debated so publicly. Simply walking down the street and standing tall in a pair of heels is an apt metaphor for the precarity of trans people’s experiences: you never know when someone will topple you over or raise you up.
YVES SAINT LAURENT BY TOM FORD SS02
Men grow increasingly strange, confused by their own desires. Women might raise a single eyebrow, as if to suggest that it’s some kind of offensive caricature of femininity. Some days, I can’t even bear to leave the house, which is probably why I became addicted to blow-dries because, let me tell you, walking out of the salon with a fresh, blonde blow-out is like taking a handful of euphoric drugs.
For a moment, the questions float away with every gust of windblown hair: can they tell how afraid I am? Can they tell I don’t know exactly what I’m doing? Can they tell this might be a temporary mask, a bridge to somewhere truer? Can they tell I haven’t washed my hair in a week?
There’s an unspoken rule in fashion: to stand out, you need a uniform. All-black ensembles. A photogenic haircut. A signature accessory, like dark sunglasses or hats. Something that signals consistency amid the chaos. But I never took well to uniforms. I was the child who was constantly scolded for embellishing school dress codes. I don’t believe that eclecticism belies insecurity. Sometimes, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is how you find your truest self.
Yes, there were missteps. The weekly blow-dries occasionally veered more Brigitte Macron than Brigitte Bardot. There was the month I used bronzer as setting powder to cover my stubble and wondered, Oompa Loompa-like, why everyone was staring as I sat under the clinical lighting of the Victoria Line. And more than a few times, my choice of footwear was so inappropriate that a particularly long night of raving in sling-backs cost me a toenail (which was quickly replaced and glossed over with shellac at Margaret Dabbs).
The truth is, I was – and am – still figuring it all out.
But the world demands certainty. As if identity were an à la carte menu of definitions from which you could pick and order with confidence and settle up for at the end of the night. Many people expected me to know exactly what to say, to have a press release at the ready to summarise where I am and what I am, and to be sure about it. Everyone had questions. Trans friends. Indian friends. Fashion friends. Family friends. Even the neighbours, who I fear think that I might be a sex worker. Meanwhile, I was simply learning to flow – and to be fluid is to be water taking the shape of the vessel, even when the vessel doesn’t always feel like your choice.
AARON ESH
When we’re young, life is full of change and somehow, with the passage of time, it calcifies. People marry. They have children. Addresses become permanent. The self is expected to be fixed. We live in a moment of unprecedented information, where every opinion and feeling, especially about oneself, must be immediate, certain and easily classified. Anything in between is seen as suspicious or ill informed. To know oneself is to brand oneself.
But I have never been a brand. I am a human being! What I’ve always known is this: I contain contradictions and multitudes, the friction of which is not confusion, but a spark. “You have to go the way your blood beats,” James Baldwin wrote. And mine changes tempo daily. Sure, there’s the whole masculine-feminine thing. But that’s the least of it, and it’s a bit boring to be honest. I’ve never felt like I’ve belonged in a box. Then again, who does? I have an aversion to authority, largely because I come from a culture that is all about unwavering traditions and conformities and, early on, I realised that was not going to work with who I was or who I wanted to shag. I am a walking, talking juxtaposition, partly by birth, partly by choice. I grew up with one culture at home and one outside, and two different ways of pronouncing my name in any context. I’ve only crystallised those contrasts with time: I’m now brown and I’m blonde. Spiritual but deeply superficial. Meticulously healthy yet unabashedly hedonistic. I take gleeful delight in showing up to dinner dressed like an East End slapper when everyone else is in florals and going to warehouse raves dressed like Miuccia Prada. I feel both ancient and newborn. And depending on the day, I’m either the loudest, most confident person in the room or silently spiralling, unsure of what to say. I have no desire to pass as some anonymous, palatable woman. I never bought into the idea that I should crush the bones of my face or reshape my body just because my algorithm has suspiciously started offering me package deals to Thailand.
dress by ALAIA, shoes by JIMMY CHOO
The women I’ve always admired held their contradictions close and used style to amplify their individuality rather than assimilate it. Grace Jones, whose glossy, contoured muscles were only heightened by sweeping furs and shoulder pads. Madonna leaving the gym, looking strong enough to knock someone out by day and become an Italian screen siren by night. Linda Evangelista, ever the chameleon: boyish in Lindbergh, ultra-femme in Meisel. Miuccia Prada, whose entire empire is built on the intellectual paradoxes of masculine/feminine, bourgeois/radical and contemporary/vintage, because contradictions are what it is to be human. And then there are the pretty boys: River Phoenix. The Maharaja of Indore. David Bowie. Time may change me, but I can’t trace time. Swoon. In a world of binaries, the grey area is often dismissed. But it’s there that I find myself, content in the flux, grateful for the slippage. I know I sound all over the place, but it’s taken time and reflection to arrive at this truth: the only labels I care about are the ones that say Alaïa.
The other day, a friend told me I’m living through the makeover montage scene of my own life. I think about that every time I climb onto a Lime bike in heels, which makes me laugh to myself. Another friend, more spiritually inclined, told me I may never be understood because of my Scorpio Rising and Leo Moon, which is less fun but okay because I’m understanding myself more with each day. To embrace change is to claim the freedom to evolve, the intellect to grow and the courage to remain porous to possibility. To be open to change is to permit growth. It is to admit I am not finished – and never will be. And so, when a magazine calls, and the lights are bright and the heels are high: you say yes. Because who knows what I’ll look like tomorrow? The only certainty in life is change.
Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 75 – BIRTHDAY, EVOLVE, TRANSFORMATION – out on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT
Photographer JOSH HIGHT
Fashion Editor, Talent and Text OSMAN AHMED
Hair PAUL DONOVAN using GHD
Make-up HELAYNA SHELTON
Photographer’s assistant JACK SNELL
Fashion assistant TALIA PANAYI
Production SONYA MAZURYK
Special thanks to JULIA RANSOM
