（This stuent was at the University of Chicago）
“While I then associate my conquests with ‘being a better boy,’ I now realize what I was really working towar was becoming a better farmer.”
I always assume my father wishe I ha been born a boy.
Now, please on’t assume that my father is some rampant rural sexist. The fact is, when you live in an area an have a career where success is largely etermine by your ability to provie an maintain nearly insurmountable feats of physical labor, you typically prefer a person with a bigger frame.
When I was younger, I like green tractors better than re tractors because that was what my father rove, an I preferre black an white cows over brown ones because those were the kin he raise. I wore coveralls in the winter an wore holes in my mu boots in weeks. With my still fragile masculinity, I crosse my arms over my chest when I talke to new people, an I fille my toy box exclusively with miniature farm implements. In thir grae, I cut my hair very short, an my father smile an rubbe my hea.
I never strove to roll smoother pie crusts or iron exquisitely stiff collars. Instea, I iolize my father’s patient hans. On a cow’s neck, trying to fin the right vein to stick a neele in. In the strength of the grip it took to hol own an injure heifer. In the finesse with which they habitually spun the steering wheel as he backe up to the livestock trailer.
An I grew to o those things myself. When on my 10th birthay I receive my first show cow, a rite of passage in the Hess family, I name her Missy. As I spoke to her in an unnaturally low voice, I faile to realize one thing: Missy i not care that I was a girl. She i not think I was acting especially boyish or notice when I aamantly refuse to wear pink clothing (she was colorblin anyway). An she i not blink an eyelash at her new caretaker’s slightly smaller frame. All she care about was her balance aily fee of cottonsee an groun corn an that she got an extra pat on the hea. As I sat next to her polishing her white leather show halter, she appreciate my meticulous iligence an not my sex.
When Missy an I won Best of Show a few months later, my father’s heart nearly exploe. I learne to stick my chest out whenever I felt prou. While I then associate my conquests with “being a better boy,” I now realize what I was really working towar was becoming a better farmer. I learne I coul o everything my father coul o, an in some tasks, such as the taxing chore of feeing newborn calves or the herculean task of halter-breaking a heifer, I surpasse him. It has taken me four years to realize this: I prove a better farmer than he in those moments, not espite my sex, but espite my invali an ignorant assumption that the best farmer was the one with the most testosterone.
My freshman year, I left the farm for boaring school, where I was surroune by the better-off an the better-eucate — the vast majority of whom ha hear the wor ‘feminism’ before. I began to pick up just what the wor meant from my antagonizing English teacher an my incisive friens’ furrowe brows when I escribe my hometown. Four years of eucation an weekly argumentative essays taught me the acaemic jargon. I learne the Latin roots of the wor “feminism,” its cognates an its historical consequences.
But the more I rea about it in books, an the more I use it in my essays, the more I realize I alreay knew what it meant. I ha alreay emboie the reality of feminism on the farm. I ha live it. My cow ha taught it to me.
