Generation Something Else

James Mergliano

There is no one single way of being human. This series is a reflection of the beauty within our passionate and unique generation that wears our hearts on our sleeves and unapologetically expressing who we are. Before photographing, I asked myself, “What matters to you?” At this moment in time, my main focus within my photography has been self-expression. We are currently in a world where image is one of the key aspects of life that we take into consideration. How do I identify? How do I want to convey myself to others? Who am I? There are so many ways one can expresses themselves, from the pronouns we use, our gender identity and sexual identity, to the way we dress each morning as we start our days. 

Generation Something Else is about loving the skin we wear and expressing who we are as individuals. While giving others the chance to see themselves in a new light, I have also taken this time as an opportunity of rediscovery within myself, after coming out as gender fluid this past year. My inspiration is the lack of communication about gender, sex, and human identity, and the misconceptions about what gender and sex really are. By definition sex is the biological, identifiable marker such as our outer genitalia, while gender are the characteristics, mannerisms, and ways of being constructed by society such as girls having long hair, dressing in a more feminine manner, and do women’s work such as childcare or nursing since they are typically more nurturing beings, while men are meant to have an interest in sports and being hard working, hands on providers for their families. 

In Doing Gender, an article written by Candace West and Don H, Zimmerman, they discuss how because gender is not exact, many people do not naturally fit into social expectations of what gender should look like. As a result, people adjust their behavior based on how they think society believes they should act. They write that gender is a “routine, methodical and recurring accomplishment” that “involves a complex of socially guided perpetual, interactional, and micro political activities that cast particular pursuits as expressions of masculine and feminine ‘natures’.” 

By choosing how we present ourselves to the world, we are creating our own gender norms and blur the lines of who society wants us to be. Cis straight men can wear skirts and make up and woman can present more masculine without thoughts running through their heads about what others will think or say. Moving forward, I have hope that one day there can be more open conversations about sex and gender as well as more people learning to love themselves for who and they are and the skin they are born in.