The author meets Snapper, age 8, for the first time. Courtesy of Shaley Howard In 2015, I had the honor of being featured on a billboard for the Portland Timbers soccer club. The process of being chosen was intense.
Hundreds of Oregonians competed for online votes and pushed for their photo to be selected. After a week of voting, my picture was picked as a winner! As a butch lesbian who always felt like an outsider, I was honored, humbled and terrified all at once. I had spent much of my lifetime hiding who I was from the world.
But there I was, on a 20-foot billboard, muscles flexed, as I posed with two axes over my shoulders in an image that flaunted a bravado and confidence that I never could have imagined. Advertisement What a transformation I had made from a closeted little girl who was scared to admit she was gay to an out, big butch lesbian on a billboard. It was a very proud and monumental moment of my life, and it led to my meeting a young girl named Snapper.
A few years after the billboard went up, a client asked if I’d meet with her friend, whose 8-year-old daughter, Snapper, had come out as gay. I was confused as to why this young girl wanted to meet me, as she knew nothing about who I was except that I was on a billboard. I neither had children nor particularly wanted them, so was lost as to what I could offer this young girl.
Advertisement The author is shown in an image used on a 20-foot billboard for the Portland Timbers. Courtesy of the Portland Timbers F.C.
