Help, My Hands Are Trans!

And Other Bedtime Stories

Mystery Hands

What’s moving you these days? Like, where are you finding your passion?

Some get their kicks from live streaming their entire existence on that clock app, gambling like it’s their last day on earth, or consuming potted plants “to see what happens.” I’m leaning into the addiction of old photographs. Digging through dusty tubs in warehouses to find one that tells me a story. It’s extra special when I spot a tattered press photo. I think of the physical history of the print. The one I’m sharing today is yellowed from smoky newsrooms. And the dog-eared corners are crumbling, maybe from the chaos of a hot scoop — or from those old-school development chemicals that peel off a layer of skin every time I touch it. It makes me think about the thousands of bland stories pitched around the world on slow news days. Case in point: one of my favorite press photos that I’ve lovingly named, Mystery Hands.

This 8” by 10” black-and-white photograph features a smiling young person in a suit, seated at a typewriter, holding their hands up as if to say, Don’t mind me! I’m just here to type.

The caption on the 2024 eBay listing read:

A young man displaying his hands that look like a woman’s.

Say less.

When I first set eyes on this 1928 press photo by ACME Newspictures, I wanted to know everything — while simultaneously wanting to know nothing. Maybe I’m unwell, too high on speculation. I needed to see the image in person, off-screen. You know, for clues. I was fixated on the inciting incident of “the hands.” So, I bought it.

When the photograph arrived at my door wrapped in a rigid mailer, nestled beside a printed receipt like its own plane ticket, I flipped it over to find the following words scrawled in pencil, probably from a news editor:

“Masculine” type often found in women’s hand.

What in the Roaring Twenties Gender Enigma™ is going on here?

“Masculine” type – I knew there would be clues!

I don’t know what article this photo originally accompanied, and honestly, who needs the truth when you can linger in the space of not knowing! Was the photo for an exposé on women infiltrating the typing pool, their fingers stealthily clacking out code for the patriarchy? (Unlikely since typing gigs, and typewriters in general, were marketed to women in the early 1900s.)

Was this image about a literal image of a woman appearing in this pair of masculine hands, a vision, like some Jesus-shaped Flamin’ Hot Cheeto? (Something I can’t see, even when I squint.)

Was it a generalization about boys with “delicate” hands being recruited for fine office work while their burlier peers hauled coal and crushed bricks with their bare hands? (Maybe. Weird, though — and a perfect setup for a lovely middle-grade graphic novel.)

Perhaps it was about a less visible type of person. Someone with sir-ma’am-sir mode activated. They showed up in the workplace, dressing sharp, standing out among the Dorothys and Pegs at the surrounding desks. (We might be getting closer.)

The point is that someone pitched this story. The story of The Hands. And somewhere between photographing our star typist, developing the film, passing the photo around a newsroom, scribbling notes on the back, filing it in a cabinet for a lifetime, and the archives finding their way to a reseller who would list it on eBay nearly 100 years later… much of the context for this image was lost in translation.

Not to ignore the other scribbled note on the back of the press photo:

single-action direct forceful

–which kind of made me feel attacked? Now this I researched. All I found was firearm terminology. Maybe it meant something else back then — newsroom shorthand or a cryptic editorial direction? Like, is this a note on how to crop the photo? Or how the journalists felt about the “general vibe” of the hands (totally their 1928 language, not mine)?

What I do know is that this image captures something deeper — and queerer — than it ever intended to.

Who decides what masculinity looks like? Or femininity? Or good typing finger posture?

Why is “a young man displaying his hands that look like a woman” the sales header, when it could be, Hands With Excellent Cuticles Holds Space for Gender Fluidity and/or Child Labor in the Workplace?

I decided to keep the purchase receipt as a reminder: gender is forever interpreted through someone else’s lens. It’s a dance, or a tug-of-war, between the eye of the beholder and the person beheld… against their will. To me, it looks like soft hands and a jazzy tie with a boy band hair flip belonging to a person who was both 12 and 43. The smiling power of someone refusing to be categorized in 1928, and again in 2025.

To others, this could just be a weird old photo of a kid showing their age through their fingers, who just happened to sit behind a typewriter because the chair was the right height.

As soon as I finished the first draft of this newsletter, I held my hands up to see what story they might tell. I saw rounded nail beds and irritated cuticles — the hands of a lifelong picker, always nervously scraping or pulling something apart. I saw a mess of dark hair across the knuckles that crawled down towards my arm. Sasquatch-coded. They looked busy. Bored, but lived-in. They also looked like they desperately needed a manicure.

I think about this one scene in Beaches way too often, when Hillary (played by Barbara Hershey, underrated queen) is gravely ill, aware the end is near, and becomes fixated on her mother’s hands. She needs to remember them. The shape, the gesture, the feeling of them! She rifles through piles of photos looking for proof. As if seeing those hands could anchor her to who she is — and where she came from.

That’s what I think about when I look at this photo from 1928.

The hands in the photos aren’t mine. But they feel like they belonged to someone I might’ve met in another life. Or maybe just someone I would’ve wanted to know, or at least be frenemies with.

That’s why I collect these snapshots and stuff them into my Brag Book like some question-mark-shaped queer history sticker album.

Because when the world tries to tattoo a headline on your forehead like EXTRA! EXTRA! MAN-WOMAN HANDS SHOCK NATION! — the only thing to do is hold your hands up and say, Don’t mind me! I’m just here to type.