Today is Mardi Gras. The traditional colors are purple, green and gold. Why? Gold represents power, green stands for faith and purple, justice.
Now you know why I have four purple bicycles and have long been drawn to the color. All right, I didn’t know about the symbolism when I was a kid. Or maybe I did, subconsciously…
And perhaps that knowledge, conscious or not, guided my naming myself Justine. My mother told me, long before I began my gender affirmation process, that she would’ve given me that name had I been assigned the female sex at birth.
Knowing that made my gender affirmation (what was previously called the “gender transition “ or “sex change”) seem even more like justice after the decades I lived as male. Thus, my name and favorite color, which I love for their beauty, seem completely just on Mardi Gras, and every day.
