By: Josh Gonzalez
Pronouns (They/Them)
Pennsylvania, USA
“We fight back with radical joy and I really believe that to my core.”
Josh Gonzalez is a painter in Pennsylvania who was told at seven years old that they were too old to play with dolls. Their collection was packed up and sold at a garage sale.
They started collecting again at eighteen. The dolls have been in their paintings ever since.
My Story
“It definitely seemed (to me at least) like the kids I grew up with knew I was queer before I got the chance to.
For example: when I was in middle school in New Jersey (awful place for middle school btw) I would spend my recesses alone because I quite frankly, had no friends until about eighth grade. I would travel all the way to the back of the gated courtyard so I could do my best to avoid confrontation and stare out longingly to the outside world, away from middle school hell and fantasize about my freedom. I would post up with a sketchbook in hand, drawing and writing my comics about a group of vigilante girls who went around punishing men who abused their power called the “Maneaters”. I thought I was clever but really, I was just a big fan of the Nelly Furtado’s album Loose at the time. Either way, it was during that point in my life when my peers began to parse that I may have a little sugar in my tank. Little boys and girls would flock over to my neck of the woods and lead with the age old “can I ask a question?”
It’s always the same question—”hey, are you a dirty little f****t?” I’m embellishing but that’s what it felt like at the time.
It wasn’t until my sexual awakening—Mr. Tumnus from the Chronicles of Narnia of course, when I started to think that I may have a thing for guys—at least guys who were half goat.
I came out to my older sister at first at 11 years old, she kept the secret for a while until I finally decided that a contained car ride to the mall with my whole family was the time to drop the b*mb. My mom had the hardest time with it because she never had a gay bestie in her lifetime, now she’s a good Judy and has come to accept my fruitiness and things are more or less copacetic. Still one of the top 10 most awkward times of my life, coming out in general is so awkward? Like why do I have to come out to put everyone else at ease?”
Barbara Millicent Roberts
Asked what shaped them, Josh did not name a person exactly.
“Barbara Millicent Roberts (aka Barbie) was a big part of my life as a child and is still to this day.
As a kid with no friends and two older siblings that grew out of doll-hood before they could play Barbies with me, I spent a lot of time talking to my dolls, dressing them up and making story-lines that emboldened my creativity.
My mother was a collector, to this day she has the most fab selection of Barbies I’ve ever seen. I used to stare at them in their protective boxes, begging to be set free and played with—I felt like a boxed barbie myself as a kid. It’s funny, my mom was always fighting my father and his family about me playing with dolls—they’d always blame her and say that she was turning me into a soft queer by letting me play with my toys but they were my friends and she knew that. My moms family wasn’t as well off as my fathers, as a young girl her family couldn’t afford to buy her any Barbies, when she and my Dad had gotten together, he started buying her dolls, the very same ones I grew up idolizing.
At one point, I almost got in trouble with the church because of my Barbie obsession. My mother was asked to pack up all my toys and bring them to my school (I went to a private Catholic school as a kid), they wanted to see what I was playing with to confirm what Mrs. P already knew (f*g). They wanted to take away all my dolls and donate them to little girls but my mother didn’t let them.
Eventually, my fathers family won and my parents packed up all my dolls and sold them at a garage sale when I was seven because I was “too old” to stay playing with dolls at my big age of SEVEN years old.
Years went by and I, like my mother, started collecting at 18. Just after graduating high school.
Barbie became a big reference in my art, constantly appearing as a focal point in my body of work as a painter.
I even have a doll account now @girls_on_the_shelf where I live out my Barbie fantasy and heal my inner child.
How I Describe It
“This feels like a tough question though I know it wasn’t supposed to be.
Personally—I am trying to live a life that is full of many experiences, I think the only way to know yourself is to put yourself out in the world and see who comes back when it’s time to come home.
I’m queer, yes, but I don’t see that as my experience as much as I see having brown curly hair as my experience. It’s something I have experience in—but does not encompass all that I am.
I am still experiencing everyday—we all are. As I continue to age as a twenty-three year old (give or take an additional six years…), I realize it’s less about the type of experience and more about lending ourselves to being open to new ones when they come knocking.
I think currently—I’m teaching myself to wiggle less in my discomfort and try to understand why a certain experience is really bugging me. what does that say about me and what I’m lacking or gaining from life?
I hope that long winded explanation tracks—if not, thats’s okay too.”
Breaking Assumptions
“That I’m a bad friend.
I used to be so worried about being perceived as a bad friend—I still do but I care less now because I know it isn’t true.
I remember speaking with my therapist (shoutout Marcella) and asking her if I was the reason why so many friendships I had fell through. Obviously she’s biased from my POV but she told me something that I needed to hear in my early twenties which was that it is so incredibly common to fall in and out of friendships as we age. This completely went against my D*sney channel education that taught me that I should maintain all my friendships from childhood forever even if we no longer have anything in common. As we spoke further and I recounted what had caused some of these relationships to fall apart, I slowly realized that so many of them dissolved from boundaries being crossed on both sides—myself placing boundaries on how I wanted to be treated ex: giving up on a friend who goes MIA every time they have a new partner, or, realizing that someone has morals that don’t align with my own in a way I can’t look past.
I’ve never hated any of these people, I don’t believe in grudges or hating those you once loved but I believe it’s okay if we need to part ways because the friendship/relationship no longer works. The door will always be open, I just won’t be waiting outside it anymore trying to pull them in.
It’s a certain kind of peace that allows me to go about my life with an open heart.”
Looking Forward
Asked what they want more of in media, Josh answered in one word.
“Joy.
Just joy. We’re overwhelmed right now with constant access to traumatizing news with little reprieve from the horrors of the world trying to consume us so we can’t fight back. All this information is important obviously, but we need to fill our own cups if we’re going to continue fighting for one another. We fight back with radical joy and I really believe that to my core.
Go on more walks, slow down. Lean in for the punchline, talk to your neighbors, play with your cat that extra five minutes, bake something to share. It sounds so small but leaning into joy is so important.
I want to see more people living their lives truthfully and with joy as the focus.”
One Last Thing
“Keep f*cking up.
I f*ck up all the time and lately I’ve been feeling less and less afraid to do so. I don’t care anymore about being perfect, I just want to figure my own self out and have a fun time doing it.
Who cares if it doesn’t go well? You made the decision and now you’ve got to live with it, instead of punishing yourself for trying, give yourself a pat on the back for doing what others were too afraid to do and knowing it may not work out but doing it despite it.
Go live your life and stop caring how anyone else perceives it, online or otherwise.”
Connect
Follow Josh Gonzalez here:
Instagram: @josh_lately_
Dolls: @girls_on_the_shelf
