Tag Archives: My thoughts about what I read

Fairest by Meredith Talusan

According to what I have read from the book “Fairest” by Meredith Talusan, I could understand that Meredith Talusan was an albino born in the Philippines who came from a peasant family, but eventually moved to the United States to live better and where she needed to learn the language perfectly so that she would not sound like a person with her native accent and everyone would stop considering her as an American because of her whiteness. She felt self-conscious about her body for looking like a man, and so she decided to transform herself to become like a woman since inside she considered herself a woman. Her courage to show that she wanted to act and dress like a woman was extremely low because to others she always looked the same, a person who never changed. So, she was afraid of being judged by how she would look in women’s clothes, until she saw with her own eyes, that when she wore her friend Lucy’s clothes to the Drag Night party everyone called her, “you look like a real woman”. I can tell she was flattered and beautiful by how she looked and how others looked at her, everything about her was perfect until she stood in front of the mirror to look at who she was in the real life.

Three of the most talked-about themes is when Meredith tries to say she wants to be accepted. Second, that she shows weakness when no one wants to be her friend because they think she is a weird person. And third, love, she is loved by certain people and one of those people is her grandmother. Also, she is admired for being white and blonde-haired. After witnessing gender and sexuality in a trans person, I can confirm that they feel the fear of being mistreated if their true selves come out, and instead of looking at them for who they are, they look at them as disgusting people.