Throughout middle and high school, Chen made accommodations to avoid awkward encounters, like the first day of gym in sixth grade when she begged the teacher to go into the locker room before her and tell everyone else that it was okay, she was a girl, she was in the right place. From then on, Chen ran home after school to use the restroom.
Michelle Chen wore “boy’s” clothes and kept her hair buzzed until one day in third grade, while she was leaving the girls’ restroom, several teachers stood there, responding to a complaint of a boy in the girl’s restroom. “But it absolutely crushed me inside.”Īfter that, the young Chen avoided going to the bathroom at school, opting to wait until she could run home after school because her house was the only place she felt truly safe. “I had to laugh it off at the time,” Chen said. Several teachers stood outside the door, responding to someone’s complaint that there was a boy in the girls’ restroom.
This wasn’t a problem until one day in third grade, while she was leaving the girls’ restroom at her elementary school in Ohio. From the time software engineer Michelle Chen was little, she loved wearing “boy’s” clothes and keeping her hair buzzed.