Marcelas’ grandmother (his caretaker) and physician must have missed the memo from the American College of Pediatricians.
The sympathetic story via CNN: Sometimes it’s hard to be what you want to be when people only know you for what you used to be. This is the challenge facing Marcelas Owens, who just turned 17. For much of life, people have only known Marcelas as the “Obamacare kid.”
He was the chubby 11-year-old African-American boy who stood next to President Barack Obama as he signed Obamacare into law at a White House ceremony on March 23, 2010. He was the miniature health care activist in the black vest dwarfed by powerful lawmakers in a famous photo of that moment. He was a modern-day Peter Pan, perpetually frozen in childhood even as the news cycle moved on.
But so has Marcelas. As supporters prepare to mark the sixth anniversary of Obamacare’s signing, Marcelas is marking another rite of passage — as a transgender teen. After years of questions, she is starting to tell family and friends what she has long known: Though born male, she’s long identified as a female.
“I’m going through a reinvention process,” she says. “I’m growing into adulthood. I’m not the Obamacare kid anymore.”
Marcelas doesn’t look like a kid anymore. The chipmunk cheeks are gone. So is the baby fat. And the voice is deepened. She’s a teenager now. She listens to hip-hop artist Drake and Michael Jackson. Hangs out at the mall with friends. Even writes songs to express what she struggles to say to others in conversations.
Each March, Marcelas goes through a ritual. She gets calls from the media to talk about her front row seat at a historic moment. She’s proud of her role in Obamacare. And she understands why people would be curious about that kid in the White House picture. “If I wasn’t me, I would like to know, where did he go?” Marcelas says.
She wonders, though, how people will react to her answer. Will they still like her now or do they prefer the kid in the photograph?
She calls that kid the old Marcelas, understands the world saw her as a boy and is OK with using male pronouns for that period of her life. “I like it that I can be called the Obamacare kid, but in some ways I wish I could look past the Obamacare kid and become Marcelas and people would have the same reaction to me that they had with the Obamacare kid.”
Marcelas lives in a townhome in Seattle with two younger sisters, Myanna, 12, and Monique, 13, and their grandmother, Gina Owens. On March 10, Marcelas celebrated her 17th birthday with her family by eating beef tacos with cheese and a birthday cake topped with white frosting.
The first person she told about being transgender was her grandmother, who took over raising the three siblings after their mother, Tiffany, died at 27 from pulmonary hypertension.
Owens shared her reaction to Marcelas’ announcement in a Facebook post last week. It was addressed to “My first born grandchild.” Owens wrote:
“On this day [March 10] you were born to the world as your mother’s 1st child. You are 17 now, and have in so, so many ways, made your mom & me very proud. We both have watched you grow & become the person you are today.
“So today, on your 17th birthday; I tell you AND the world; My grandson is on a new journey in life… I am so happy that SHE has trusted our relationship enough where SHE felt more comfortable sharing with me first; BEFORE the rest of the world… I give my heart & blessing to HER. I LOVE YOU AND YOUR COURAGE IN LIFE, MORE THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW. Walk your journey in love & light.”
Owens says, though, that it wasn’t easy at first to hear the news from Marcelas. “I didn’t like the idea,” she says. “For me he was born into the world as Marcelas Owens, the boy his mom created. That’s how I wish he would stay. But I also told Marcelas that he’s always had the ability to think through things himself. And he’s always had the foresight to talk to me.”
Marcelas may have some difficult days ahead, but she’s had them before. The world may only know Marcelas as the cute kid who stood next to Obama, but few know about the pain Marcelas had to endure to get there.
Even as just a boy, Marcelas had these questions: Why was he never interested in playing the games other boys played? Why did he like trying on his sister’s clothes? Why did he feel he was born in the wrong body?
He started searching for answers. He went online and learned about transgender people. When he was in the fifth grade, he chose to write a class paper on a transgender woman. “She was saying that when she was little she always identified more with girls,” Marcelas says of the woman. “I started realizing that I did the same.”
Marcelas didn’t know it at the time, but he was moving from being involved in one explosive political issue to another — all before reaching adolescence. On the surface, though, Marcelas remained the Obamacare kid. He became an honor roll student, graduating from middle school magna cum laude with a 3.8 GPA. He got awards for being a community activist. He dutifully gave interviews each year when Obamacare’s anniversary came around, once even wearing the same blue tie and vest he wore at the White House signing for a television interview.
But in private, he continued to dress in his sisters’ clothes, buy girl’s clothes on the side and hurriedly wipe off the makeup on his face when his grandmother returned home. “I kept it to myself for a long time,” she says now.
Marcelas, though, outgrew the just-an-average-boy facade she had maintained, just as she outgrew the black suit she wore at the White House signing. At 16, she decided she wasn’t going to wipe the makeup off her face anymore. She was going to tell the person she loved the most.
It was an autumn evening near dark and her grandmother was downstairs watching television. Marcelas put on a black wig, a red-and-white striped skirt and pink lipstick. Then she walked downstairs and stood before her grandmother. Owens didn’t bat an eye, Marcelas recalls. “Grandma, if I wanted to be a girl, what would you tell me that I should do?”
Owens thought Marcelas was joking at first. Then she realized her grandchild was serious. She told Marcelas that if she wanted her honest opinion, she preferred that she would stay a boy. “But I would respect you if you decided to change and be somebody else,” she said.
She hugged Marcelas, who returned upstairs — where her sisters gave her tips on wearing makeup the right way. Marcelas says she didn’t wear a skirt and makeup to shock her grandmother. She just wanted to get it all out at once. “I wanted to tell her how I felt but also show her how I felt.”
Her grandmother’s acceptance came as a relief. “Even though she preferred me as a boy she respected my choice to choose,” Marcelas says. “That gave me a sort of blessing.”
How did Owens, though, do in a moment what some people struggle a lifetime to do — accept someone they love as transgender? “I already had in my mind an inkling, so I really wasn’t shocked,” she says.
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