Biology has always ruled Julia Grey’s life. So it was only natural she’d come to Georgia Tech to major in Biomedical Engineering.
Julia Grey has a habit of speaking in front of large crowds. You wouldn’t know it from her soft-spoken voice, but it’s something she often gets pulled into like a magnet. Her passion compels her. It compelled her to refuse to be silent at the memorial of Scout Schultz, shouting for action. It compelled her to stand at the front lines when a far right Christian group attempted to protest at Georgia Tech. She stood in front of the some 100 students gathered, waving a Pride flag, starting up chants and using humor to deflect the bigotry. When voraciously insulted by the protesters, she shrugged it off unbothered, committed to fighting back. Often she would smile sweetly at their insults. She had heard it all before.
Julia grew up playing basketball on the boy’s team. It’s there that she found her love of rap music, but also where her differences came into sharp relief. Inside, she didn’t feel like the other boys on the team. She struggled with her identity until she found Andreja Pejic, an androgynous model who later came out as transgender. Pejic profoundly inspired Julia, allowing her to feel like it was okay to be who she was. In Pejic, Julia saw herself. Still, external acceptance did not come easily. Her parents sent her to a “Pray the Gay Away” camp and eventually Mormon school, where she was the odd one out, a tall Jewish lesbian girl among devout Mormons. There, she was singled out and looked down upon. But Julia knew she couldn’t escape who she was. Forced to resort to black market estrogen, she persevered, driven by the hope that her external self would match her inner self. In her words, “I would rather be hated for who I am than accepted for who I’m not.”
Finally allowed to be who she always felt she was inside, Julia finds empowerment in femininity. There’s a sharp loss that accompanies not being able to grow up as one’s own gender. Things like makeup seem simple to cis women, but to Julia they embody the adolescence she lost. She puts on makeup now to empower herself and embrace femininity. Her difficult adolescence inspired her to major in Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech with the hopes of becoming an endocrinologist in order to help transgender youth.