Essay: Unreliable

Pharoah Hatshepsut at the Met Museum, photo by me

Dear Hatshepsut

It’s me again. I know. I don’t shut up. I’m perfecting the practice of the unreliable narrator.

The antonym of unreliable is permanent, durable, stable, predictable, etc. I have a feeling you already know.

When a visitor walks through the Hatshepsut Gallery at the MET Museum, they can see four of your statues next to each other. As they go from left to right, your depicted body goes from femme to masculine; breasts fade, the waist becomes thinner, the King Herself comes forth. It’s not unreliability in the eyes of the beholder. It is unreliability in the body of both object and subject.

The antonym of menopause is permanent, durable, stable, predictable, etc.

As my body has gone from prepubescent, to adolescent, to perimenopause, and now to postmenopause, my body has gone from an almost blank canvas of androgyny bordering on masc before my period started, to femme as my breasts grew in, my waist and hips haggling over curves, until perimenopause kickstarted the thickening of my waist that made it seem as if hips narrowed, with my breasts turning increasingly south, as if to stare downward and marvel at the change, as the King Myself came forth.

Unreliable periods. Unreliable memory. Unreliable woman. Unreliable narrator.

Menopause as the uber Un-.

I want to take what makes a cisgender woman reliable and shake her free. Hatshepsut, you are my inspiration for that.

Reliable for who? You did everything right. You were so reliable that ancient Egypt had a massive growth spurt. Your reign is associated with an infrastructure boom.

And still they erased you.

Reliable for who? Reliable, as the straight line that leads from phallus to patriarchy, with no room for the rest of us? Unreliable for me.

Is an unreliable narrator a liar or just in charge?