Mia Xiang Speical to the Chronicle
“I change my hair every week,” said Ume Ni. “I just have so much fun with my makeup and hair; it’s such a creative outlet for me.” Ni caught people’s eye with her purple hair and natural and pretty makeup look.
Ni, who grew up in Georgia, is a 19-year-old first-year business major at Hofstra University. She is transitioning from a boy to a girl.
Initially, she spent a long time thinking of names, because she can’t go by her birth name anymore. “It doesn’t suit me in any way,” said Ni. “My friend and I basically just researched about different names, and I really liked that one.” According to one of her friends, it’s actually a brand sour plum candy. “I didn’t know that, I guess my name means sour plums then.”
Ni is a member of the yo-yo club at Hofstra, which she claims is probably one of the biggest reasons why she got accepted in the Hofstra, “I applied way too late, it’s three months after the deadline. But my essay was all about how I started on my own yo-yo company in high school,” Ni said. She did relatively well for a while before she merged with a larger company which has all the assets and is easier for them to make the yo-yos using Ni’s designs. “It took me seven months to make ten yo-yos, and they can get over 3,000 made in a week.”
The dorm assignment Ni received was with men, which she doesn’t really mind. “They have less maintenance,” said Ni. “I have more of my stuff in the bathroom, so it’s easier for me, because they don’t put that much there, they just have their toothbrush, washcloth, and face wash. And I have everything.”
Another reason Ni doesn’t live with girls is it’s a little bit hard for her right now since she hasn’t told the school all of her situation. If she did, it might end up on record. “I can’t have my parents finding out right now, it’s just something they don’t need to know yet,” said Ni. “It’s because initially when they thought that I was gay, they did not take it well, and they always make fun of me.”
“I only recently told my cousin and step-siblings. But they're too young to quite understand how much of an impact it is” said Ni. “When I’m with all of them, I look and dress like a boy at home, and talk like a boy, it's not really that different for them.”
“Everyone’s been really nice to me, my roommate didn’t blink an eye when he saw me put on my bra, he’s fine with it.” Fortunately, Ni’s dorm experience is pretty good so far.
“I mean it seems like it's something that she really wants, so keep going. Don't let people bother you,” said Columbus McKinney, one of Ni’s roommates, a freshman electrical engineering major.
In addition, McKinney’s dad and friends understand Ni’s lifestyle as well. Ni said: “His dad walked in, and he just started talking to me, he didn't care what I looked like or anything. And none of his friends gave me a second look. So it was nice.”
Ni’s patient and frank expression of her life oozed confidence, and she looked very comfortable and satisfied with herself..
Last summer, Ni started taking hormones to change her body and will continue for a couple of years since it’s a slow-working process. Ni expressed her regret that she hadn’t figured herself out sooner, so that way she could delve with this during her first stage of puberty, rather than going through it now.
“I have gained over 15 pounds, which is good. And the main thing about it is I’m basically going through emotional puberty again, it’s very weird. You just kind of go back like three years in your life when puberty first started, it almost sucks.”
Ni plans to get gender affirmation surgery in the future, and it seems like it doesn't perturb her when asked about how she will manage the pain, “I just think about how the future is going to play out for me and how everything is going to be the way that I wanted afterwards,” said Ni.
Ni criticized Indiana’s Governor Mike Pence signing the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which is the most passionate LGBT argument currently. “I don't understand people that use religion as a reason to be against gays or LGBT [people]; it is completely invalid to me.”
An Associate Professor of the Political Science program at Hofstra, who is the instructor of Ni’s American Politics course, described the law’s irrationality: “It comes in 2015 when the whole trend in America is to be more open and accepting,” he said. “Pence is playing all innocent now: ‘Oh no, this is just for religious liberty.’ Baloney. It's appealed to the haters and the bigots, who are anti-gay.”
He is aware of Ni’s lifestyle and respects her choice. And Ni agrees with his point of view on Indiana’s “Religious Freedom” law.
When recalling her childhood, Ni said: “I grew up in a primarily female-dominated household, and I played with my sister’s Barbie more than she would.”
As a transgender person, Ni experienced prejudice and discrimination like other LGBT people. “I had people message me, saying some of the most vulgar things to me when they realized that I'm a trans. One of them was trying to convince me that my lifestyle was wrong, and there was no reason for me to change and everything,” said Ni. “When I'm walking at the mall, I remember the very first time, I was walking, and people all turned to look at me at once.”
Ni pictures her future family with an adopted baby in it, “I need to figure out whether I want to do like a surrogate mother or… I was thinking about adoption, because there are so many unwanted children per se, then why should I leave them and just create another one, there is no reason for that.”