Published January 1, 2025

Although I came out as transgender in 2017, there were no photos of Carly Dubois online until the first day of 2020. Well, except for my feet, showing off a fresh pedicure.

In December 2019, I decided it was time to be visible. It felt safe enough.

Little did I know.

On New Year’s Eve eve, I spent hours at Ulta getting made up for the photo and having my hair colored for the first time. They did a wonderful job.

Look how short my hair is.

I love that color. Someday, I might do it again.

The stylist who colored and shaped it is out of the business now, which makes me sad, but I hope she’s happy doing whatever she’s doing. Cami, sending love to you. You gave me confidence and changed my life.

She took pictures. I took pictures. Then I walked out of Ulta.

And I saw a photo booth in the mall. Hmm …

Why not?

The photo I now call Sepia Carly was the first photo of me in my entire life that I liked, and I didn’t just like it. I loved it.

It got plenty of display time on my social media accounts and elsewhere. And I loved telling the story of how it came about.

The story of how it came about

What I discovered in the photo booth is that I could see myself before the camera would take the picture. That made all the difference.

I’d avoided mirrors my whole life until then and did my best to not have photos taken of me. Even after being made up at Ulta, I was uncomfortable with it.

Somehow, in the photo booth, I liked what I saw and relaxed, which made me like what I saw even more, and I became happy, almost playful. People say they love Sepia Carly because she looks sassy, body language and all, but truth be told, I think that was an accident.

I had my crossbody bag over one shoulder, not across my body, and I’m pretty sure I raised that shoulder and lowered the other one to help keep the bag from sliding off.

Unintended result: The Carly you see in that photo. The first Carly the world ever saw.

Now you know.

We’ve come a long way

My hair journey has had some wild moments, with pinks and purples and reds and such. Now I’m leaning into my natural color, which I discovered was a glorious white/silver after the other colors faded away.

I still say I look better walking away from you than I do face to face.

Five years ago, I had fun turning Sepia Carly into the focal point of my wallpaper, or background, on Twitter. It was fun because it was so unlike me: calling attention to myself, and doing so in a way that’s a little over the top if you’re not in on the joke.

I’m talking about presenting the photo as art in a gallery. The words are serious and real.

It says she’s Carly, and that she used to hate looking at herself. … And then one day she realized who she really was, and everything changed. That’s so very cool.”

It is.

This will be by far the scariest year of my transition so far, and of my life. I wanted to begin it with a pleasant memory. I don’t know how many of those I’ll have after the 19th. I’m really struggling right now. I sleep 12 to 16 hours a day, and I almost never leave my bed. It’s a good thing I learned how to post with my phone. I can do it even under a blanket fort.

I’m still in 16 kinds of pain. But a delivery person handed me something over the weekend and said, “Have a good one, ma’am.” It cost them nothing to say, and it made the pain vanish for a few hours. A respite from constant struggle is as good as it gets now.

Sending love.

♥

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