Laverne Cox

And I got to New York and I did tons of open calls and never booked anything as a dancer.

And I was never masculine enough.

By that time...

I had gotten a very good technique as a dancer.

Maybe I wasn't the best dancer, but I was technical.

I could pick up choreography.

I could do six pirouettes, and I had technique.

But I didn't have an ideal dancer body, and I never figured out how to appear masculine while I was dancing.

And so Butch It Up was the subtext of it all.

I was, so there was a very, like, in the early 90s, there was kind of, there was the downtown kids, there were the uptown kids.

Like, I was a downtown girl.

I was East Village, really East Village, because the gender nonconforming thing, the androgynous thing that I was doing when I moved to New York in 1993 fit better in the East Village.

By the time I made it to New York, I was wearing dresses, lots of vintage things.

I had a black lame dress.

um, vintage dress that I would wear.

And then I would incorporate dancewear so I could go out and dance and, um, and really do my thing.

So a good chunky, um, heel platform heel.

And my head was shaved and I shaved my brows and drew them on.

And a lot of people, and I thought Grace Jones, because the look, his look was very androgynous.

The drag scene I wasn't in, but I also like, I had, um,