In one of my recent photo projects, I am standing in a black velvet high-neck cropped top with built-in gloves and fuzzy glasses, with photographs of myself covering the rest of my body. Different poses, different expressions, different versions of me are everywhere. It is excessive. Maybe a little narcissistic, but definitely intentional.
To understand why I wanted to literally wear myself, you first have to understand Zortifa.
My last name is Sorto. Growing up in a Salvadoran family, I learned that a family name could carry weight. There were expectations around what a son was supposed to look like, how he was supposed to act, and who he was supposed to become. But I also grew up hearing homophobic remarks from family, from people I loved, and from the culture I was learning how to exist within.
As I got older, I realized I did not want becoming a successful son to mean becoming somebody I did not recognize.
So I started changing things. I got piercings. I highlighted my hair. I grew it out and curled it. I wore fake hazel contacts because I liked the way I looked in them. I started using makeup to cover my rosacea. None of those things alone were some grand act of rebellion, but together they meant something to me. I was learning that I could participate in creating myself.
Somewhere in that process, Zortifa appeared.
The name still holds onto Sorto, but the ending sounds feminine to me. I liked that. Zortifa became a way of keeping where I came from while changing what I believed I was allowed to become. It felt like I was taking my last name and reshaping it into something that could actually hold more of who I was.
Elwim is not Zortifa, but Zortifa is Elwim.
Zortifa is louder. More exaggerated. More fearless. Zortifa is willing to play with femininity and masculinity without sitting there asking which one I am technically allowed to do. There is something almost like drag in it for me, not because I consider Zortifa a drag character, but because there is a performance involved. Sometimes performance gives you permission to express something that was already there.
The kindness in Elwim is still there. So is the insecurity and that little thought in the back of my head wondering what somebody else might say when I walk into a room.
Zortifa just gives those thoughts less authority.
Sometimes I describe it as feeling like myself without contamination. By contamination, I mean the expectations, shame, family roles, ideas about masculinity, and other people’s opinions that can get mixed into the way we understand ourselves before we even get the chance to decide who we are.
That does not mean Zortifa fixed everything.
Sometimes I wonder whether I know Zortifa better than I know Elwim.
I came out in my late teens, and Zortifa has really grown with me in my twenties. Part of me knows this confidence probably developed because I did not always feel affirmed for who I was growing up. When something helps you survive, it can become difficult to imagine who you are without it.
Maybe that is why putting the piece together felt more emotional than just mounting a bunch of pictures of myself onto a board.
Covering myself in photographs became almost like building a shrine to confidence. Some are polished. Some are strange. Some never made it onto Instagram. They are not all perfect, but together they helped construct the person standing in the photograph now.
The glasses cover part of my face, but I am still the lens through which I see my own life. The fuzzy textures feel luxurious to me. The velvet feels delicate, because I am delicate too. I do not think delicateness has to cancel out power.
And yes, there is ego involved.
I think sometimes we are taught to be embarrassed by openly liking ourselves. Too much confidence becomes narcissism. Too much sexuality becomes inappropriate. Too much femininity becomes a problem. Too much of anything becomes something other people feel entitled to correct.
I spent enough time feeling like I was not enough. I am interested now in what happens when I allow myself to be too much.
That has changed the way I approach photography too. I used to wonder whether a setting was beautiful enough for a picture. Now I ask something different. Does the background create the aesthetic, or can I?
I can take a picture next to a trash can and still eat.
Sometimes I do not need the background. The background needs me.
Art is subjective. I do not have to wait for a photographer, an editor, or somebody with more authority than me to decide that I am worth looking at. I can control the pose. I can control the movement. I can decide which photograph feels beautiful, strange, ugly, sexual, funny, or interesting.
I am an artist.
I can be my own muse.
That does not mean I think everything I create is perfect. Sometimes I like the shot a photographer might throw away. Sometimes beauty comes from what an image makes me feel rather than how closely it follows somebody else’s rules.
Lady Gaga has always inspired me for a similar reason. She did not become interesting by recreating everything the world already had. She created something that felt like her. I think we are put into boxes so easily that eventually we stop noticing the walls.
I have already broken out of a few of mine.
I am part of the first U.S.-born generation in my Salvadoran family. I was the first in my family to graduate high school and the first to earn a college degree. I became a veteran. I earned my master’s degree, and now I am working toward a doctorate.
I feel iconic saying that.
Not because I think I am better than anyone else, but because the younger version of me did not always know whether being fully himself and becoming successful could exist at the same time.
Now I know they can.
Zortifa gives me confidence, but they also leave me with questions. How much of Zortifa is armor? How much is art? How much is simply me? Will there ever be a version of Elwim who does not need to perform confidence first?
I do not know yet.
Maybe I am not supposed to.
For now, I can look at that photograph and see all of those versions of myself attached to one body. Masculine, feminine, insecure, confident, soft, sexual, strange, successful, unfinished.
They are all Zortifa.
They are all Elwim.
Becoming my own muse was never really about inventing someone better than myself. It was about finally giving every version of myself permission to exist. Giving myself permission to exist.
So I must adore what I have become.
