OLLY ELEY: ‘I EXIST TOTALLY OUTSIDE OF GENDER’
What happens when the body you’re born with doesn’t reflect the person you are? As a new generation questions the conventions of gender, model Olly Eley explains their own journey of finding themselves beyond boundaries As told to LOTTE JEFFS
How you identify is your choice. That’s what model Olly Eley wants to make clear. Here, they share their path to reclaiming their identity
Finally, the way others saw me was the way I understood myself. After years of despising the body that I was born with, unable to relate in any way to the gender I was assigned at birth, I had at last found a way of existing in the world that made sense to me.
I’ve never felt female, but then neither have I felt male. If there was a thin line that connected the two genders, I would be a dot floating somewhere between the two, but untethered to the line altogether. It’s the only way
I can describe it. Articulating this feeling of existing in a hinterland outside of the binary is one of the greatest gifts the past few years has given me.
I grew up in rural Australia; our closest neighbours were miles away and our house was in the middle of a forest, hours from the nearest big city.
Ever since I was a toddler, I was thought of as a ‘tomboy’ – the only time I’d wear a dress was if I was forced to for a wedding. My hair was long but, other than that, I had the strong features, physicality and energy of what is typically associated with ‘boys’. My five brothers and I played outside together all the time. I did everything they did: football, climbing trees, running around exploring – it always felt relatively equal, although as time went on, it got harder trying to keep up with the restrictions and differences that came with my body.
A lot of girls feel a sense of shame around their changing body as they go through puberty, but for me it was different. There was no base of ‘femaleness’ that I was gravitating towards or away from – I felt completely unanchored to my body and my sense of self. A simmering rage coursed through me almost constantly, but I didn’t understand why.
I remember watching my brothers pee standing up behind a tree; the way their bodies worked, and the way they worked with their bodies seemed so easy. I seethed with jealously and the sharp pinprick of frustration. I used to take this anger out on my family. I gave my mum a lot of grief, just for bringing me into this world, and the pressure of being what she thought of as her ‘only girl’, when I never really was. I’d scream at my parents, slam doors, lash out violently and tease my brothers for ‘being gay’ as I tried to regain some power, when I felt so powerless over my changing body. They responded with frustration and confusion – they couldn’t understand what my problem was or why I was so miserable. When I think back to that time, I find it hard to remember specifics. Instead, a darkness descends, and I feel the unbearable heaviness of being.
When puberty hit, and my chest grew, the difference between my unhappy chubby feminine body compared to my brothers’ ripped male bodies became even more difficult to accept and understand. I was bullied at school for being different, and it got to the point that I didn’t want to be alive. I’d only ever fitted in with the boys – but, even then, it didn’t feel right. I didn’t fit anywhere. I felt like an alien, like I was in the wrong place, in the wrong body. I was operating at a completely different frequency to everyone else around me.
This was the early 2000s – a time when being gay in regional Australia still felt so taboo. I remember putting The Ellen Degeneres Show on TV to see how my parents reacted; my dad turned it straight off. All the out gay people I knew of were celebrities like Elton John – they were already powerful and that protected them. Meanwhile transness was nowhere to be seen. The closest thing was Dame Edna Everage: a male comedian who was laughed at for dressing up as a woman.
From my early teens, I loved women. I had major crushes on all the early Noughties pop icons, from Christina Aguilera to Beyoncé. When I got a girlfriend at the age of 16, we must have been the only queer couple in a 100-mile radius. Initially I thought I was just gay but that didn’t solve my problems; I still felt far from complete or at peace. Being called a lesbian couple made me cringe – to me,
THE first time someone used the PRONOUN
“THEY” instead of “SHE” for me, it felt like peace.
“I felt like an alien, like I was in the wrong place, in the WRONG BODY”
the word was so connected to women, I couldn’t relate.
And that’s when it became complex because I realised my journey was not solely about my sexuality but also my gender; the two being so deeply intertwined that making sense of it became my mission. I realised I was not a gay girl when I realised that I was not a girl.
Before I moved to Sydney, I didn’t have the language or the role models to understand how I felt. I’d never really had the chance to consider that ‘gender’ could be something