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When everything is said and done, in theory, it should be easy for Marty to look like a boy. After all, he’s got a brother and a dad, how hard can it be?
Turns out, pretty hard. George and Dave have very different ideas on what Marty should do, so much so that he leaves mid-way through an argument and goes to his room, muffling a frustrated yell with his pillow.
Marty decides that he probably needs to find some sort of model to base his new self off of, but there’s no way he’s gonna want to see Dave or George shirtless in any capacity, and he needs to have options.
This turns into a very embarrassed plea to Linda to buy him an issue of Playgirl, where, indeed, many different shirtless men abound. She does, regretfully, after telling him that he owes her and not to expect her to buy any other issues in the future… although Marty sees her sneaking a copy into her room later. He makes a mental note, just in case―she might be eighteen and legally allowed to buy it, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be good blackmail later on.
What he didn’t bank on was his dad walking in on him staring at one model’s chest, and wildly misinterpreting the situation. Marty turns a bright shade of red and tries to explain through his spluttering that it’s not a thing, he was just wondering what he would look like with that chest, but George backs out of the room and flees down the hallway, leaving Marty in humiliation.
It’s never mentioned again, thank God, and Marty doesn’t want to bring it up either, but he guesses it is kind of comforting that George isn’t gonna whack him with a belt or whatever if he was gay anyway.
About a week after the incident, Marty decides he wants a haircut. It’s the subject of much debate in the family, which is a little annoying, considering it’s his hair, but eventually Dave takes him out to the backyard with a buzzer in hand and pair of scissors in the other, and gives him his first haircut.
It was short before, but he ends up butchering it so poorly that the family has to take him to a salon to get it cleaned up, much to Marty’s embarrassment, who wears sunglasses and a baseball cap on the way there to try and hide his face. (To his family’s credit, they do take him to a place outside Hill Valley for anonymity, but it doesn’t help much when he still looks stupid anyway.)
The salon seems fine, aside from a strong smell of hairspray that’s probably eroding the ozone layer all by itself, but the hairdresser he’s assigned is… discomforting. The stylist, turning Marty’s face this way and that, decides to try and “frame the face,” with whatever layers she can bring out, until Marty catches on that she wants to give him a pixie cut, which, no way, no how.
“I don’t need it to look pretty or anything. I don’t want to—to look like a girl or anything,” Marty says, stubbornly, almost daring her to contradict him.
The hairdresser, understandably confused, tilts her head at him. “You mean you want... you don’t... you’re a tomboy, sweetie?”
Marty has heard that word too often, and the tacked-on sweetie does not help. But there’s no way he can possibly say the truth, not to the hairdresser, not with all these people around.
“I’m—I just want it to look like a boy’s,” Marty says, his voice faltering a little bit.
The hairdresser doesn’t take the hint, but starts polishing up her scissors. “All right, honey, but it might be harder to find a boyfriend that way, you know,” she warns, “I guess this is probably for a play or something—"
“Yes,” his family says together emphatically, and Marty seizes the opportunity.
“It’s for—uh—Fiddler on the Roof,” he says quickly, offering up the first name that springs to mind, remembering flyers advertising it tacked up around his middle school locker. “I’m... the fiddler.”
The hairdresser looks significantly more relieved, and proceeds to chat up a storm for the next hour as Marty watches thick clumps of hair fall to the floor. And when she’s finished—man, does he feel… different. Different and good. It’s not quite him, not yet—it’s a classic cut, like his dad’s, because George insisted his first haircut be “something respectable, you can grow it out later.” He feels like he’s seeing his face for the first time, too, or maybe it was all just obscured by hair before. Marty almost gets happy tears in his eyes before he pushes them down, not-so-subtly wiping his eyes with his jacket sleeve. The rest of the family don’t seem to see, though, thankfully, mostly because Linda seems to take an interest in the boutique afterwards, grabbing a business card on the way out.
There’s no way they’re going back there, though, Marty can’t keep saying he’s cutting his hair for a play, and they can’t go to a different hairdresser every time he needs a haircut. And since he’s the baby of the family, no one trusts him to do his own hair. They barely trust him with scissors in his hand. So the task falls on Lorraine—until Linda volunteers to cut his hair, who’s read up on the latest tips in hairdressing, in whatever magazines she gets.
It’s okay, definitely better than Dave’s, but once he’s started growing it out shaggy, it starts looking more like what Linda’s got and not what the guys in his grade have. Marty thinks, dejectedly, that he might only get a good haircut once or twice a year, until he finally finds a good reference picture in the back of his closet—some old hockey calendar, with player headshots and team stats. Wayne Gretzky is his favorite—Marty doesn’t know anything about the way he plays or how he scores, but man, that mullet is sweet.
With the calendar, Linda’s understanding of how he wants his hair improves exponentially, and she even starts skimming men’s magazines at the K-mart to see if there’s anything on haircuts there, so she can understand it better. (According to Marty’s understanding, none of her guy friends will let her practice on them, making Marty her first, and best, dude customer.)
So the hair situation is covered for now, and he enters high school pretty confident that he looks like pretty much everyone else.
But then the shit hits the fan, and everyone finds out, and you know that story.
Even though everyone knows, Marty still wants to pass—so maybe, just maybe, some teacher will slip up and call him Mister, or a boy, or just something other than what he’s used to.
Marty hates, hates, hates his chest. The layers do help, but there’s still a noticeable bump when he’s not wearing that vest he found in the back of Dave’s closet, and it just gets worse as he takes the layers off. It’s not until he’s staring at himself in the mirror one night, pressing firmly against his chest with his hands, and he thinks “ha, they kinda look like Chuck Norris pecs,” and the beginnings of a plan start to form in his mind.
Maybe the problem isn’t with trying to cover it; maybe he needs to try and attack his chest directly. Marty obviously can’t use his hands to press down on it all day, but he notices a slight difference in bras—sports bras compress more than regular ones—and gets the genius idea to wear two overlapping ones at once.
Genius, until Marty gets completely winded in gym class and ends up nearly fainting before he scrambles into the locker room. He recovers after ripping them off, damp with sweat, and sits on the bench, heaving deep breaths, until he finally feels like he can breathe right again. Marty can see his back in the mirror and winces—there’s angry red marks and clear indents in his skin where the bras had been, and he touches them gingerly.
He ends up going to the nurse’s office, though, and Lorraine takes him home; partially because his teacher thinks he’s suffered an asthma attack and partially because he really doesn’t want to face his class after that.
His mom is... conflicted, to say the least. She chews him out over the sports bra thing, but when Marty asks her what the hell he’s supposed to do instead, she snaps at him to watch his mouth and falls silent, her face searching.
It’s not until later that evening when he finally figures something out—and it’s with the help of his homework, believe it or not.
Marty’s slumped over his history textbook, eyes barely cracked open, reading about the flapper movement in the ‘20s. Reading in bed was a bad choice—he’d become tired from the moment he flopped onto his covers, and not even the pictures of pretty blondes in short, glittery dresses are keeping him awake.
The flappers sought to undermine classic beauty conventions of the era by striving for a “boyish” look. One example were women who bound their chests with specially-compressing undergarments, or even had breasts surgically reduced in order to achieve the fashion…
Marty’s eyes snap open.
The next day after school finds Marty with a stack of books on flapper fashion piled high in his arms, and after he hastily checks them out, muttering “school project” to the librarian, he pores over them at home.
Most of the books don’t go in depth on how the flappers bound their chests, or even mentions it. But in the very last book he looks at, there’s a gallery of photos, all pieces restored and put in museums, and—a tattered, lacy thing called a binder.
Marty stares at it. It looks a lot less complicated than he thought it might have been—it really looks like a tank top, just kind of frilly. The caption informs him that it’s made of nylon, which seems about right, and Marty’s pretty sure he can get that at Jo-Ann Fabrics or something. He’s never sewn anything in his life, though, not even when Lorraine tried to teach him a few years back.
But when he starts to plan out making it, the textbook goes missing for an entire week . This is pretty normal in terms of Marty’s possessions, but right when he’s beginning to panic and tear his hair out looking for the damn thing, it reappears in his backpack, and the next night, a hand-sewn binder is folded neatly near his door. A Post-It note is taped to it, too, and in Lorraine’s handwriting, it reads, Tell me if it doesn’t fit.
On the back is a firm warning—Do not wear this in PE.
Marty thinks of fighting her on it, but figures she’s already done her part, and it would be kind of an asshole move if she had to get called every time he almost fainted during gym. So gym’s probably still going to be hell for him. But at least he’s not alone in that.
Marty carefully brings the binder into his room and wriggles into it, feeling the fabric hug him in a way he’s never felt. He tentatively looks down.
He’s flat. Holy shit. His chest has never been less noticeable before, and Marty scrambles to the mirror, staring at his chest and twisting and turning to get a better look at it. It looks even better when he wears everything over it, and he can’t stop running his hands over his chest, marveling at how subtle it is. A happy laugh escapes him, and soon Marty is locked in a laughing fit, eventually flopping back on his bed and grinning at the ceiling.
He wears it to school the next day, and although no one addresses him any different, he does get a few weird looks, like they’re trying to figure out what’s going on. He even gets an especially entertaining look from the lunch lady, who drops his splatter of spaghetti on his plate with suspicion, as she’s obviously scrutizing him.
The way home he spots a poster asking for volunteers for some sort of experiment, and Marty’s heart jumps. It’s the perfect opportunity to see if a stranger will be able to figure him out, and, better yet, it’s that weird doctor guy that lives in the rich neighborhoods, so he’ll be able to get a good glimpse at whatever the hell’s going on with him anyway. He’s heard way too many rumors about him to pass this opportunity up.
Right before he leaves, Marty’s rummaging in the sock drawer, then pauses—then shoves a rolled-up bunch of socks hastily down his pants, feeling embarrassed, and almost hoping people don’t look at him, in case they think what the hell is going on down there?
But there is the slight, slight chance that it might help him look like a dude. And that’s a chance Marty’s willing to take, even with a complete stranger.
So he skateboards over, noting the sign directing him through the fence gate. Marty takes a deep breath and rings the doorbell, his foot tapping anxiously.
Here’s to hoping.