The day I learned something about being a bloke

    It may be something on which I have commented before, and it's certainly something I find I share with some others in my position, the difference between my attitude to my appearance depending in which gender I am presenting. Simply put: as a bloke I am scruffy, as a girl I am obsessive. I hate dressing smartly as a bloke but live to dress smartly as a girl. Of course I understand that variety in a wardrobe is essential and were I to go full-time it would be difficult to imagine myself pruning apple trees in anything significantly different from the scruffy clothes I wear for that task at the moment, for example, but my point is that I never have the slightest desire to be smart as a bloke and the opposite is the case for my female presentation.
    You will never catch me wearing a suit to work. You wouldn't even catch me wearing a suit to work were I presenting female as it happens, in further reinforcement of my point above they do not work well on a girl of my size, forming a huge block of dark colouring that does little to flatter or divert the emphasis from my height. Plus Tim Gunn says they are dowdy, and who am I to argue with that, however much the 1980s might have inserted themselves into my mind as a teenaged closet t-girl!
    I had always considered my aversion to smart clothing to be simply part of being a bloke. You know, the slob stereotype. But if I don't fit in with the rest of being a bloke or the rest of that particular stereotype, why should I fit in with that facet? So a few weeks ago I decided to satisfy my curiosity, and asked a few of my male friends how much they cared about their appearances as blokes. My sample was limited as there are not many blokes who know about Jenny, but the answers I got surprised me. They are far more obsessive about their appearances than I realised. Sure, they might sometimes pay lip-service to a scruffy bloke idyl, but in reality they care about what they wear and about their personal grooming in a way that as a bloke I never have. C in particular was insistent about suit-wearing, he believes he does not give the right impression without one.  Particularly interesting though was this quote from K, who's a transman.

 I hated the girl I was seen as, so never took care in my appearance at all, was scruffy, was unkempt and didn't care what others thought...as male I am definitely somewhat different, I like to take pride in what I wear and what I'm seen as.

    And the moment I read that from K was the moment at which I realised that although I have spent many decades learning to be a bloke, there are aspects of it that I have just never "got".
    Will I make more of an effort with my appearance as a bloke? I can't say it enthuses me but I have to try. It is unfair on my wife to pair her with an oversized slob. Fortunately in exploring my female presentation over the last few years I have improved my general demeanour significantly and some of this has rubbed off on my day-to-day existence.
    But you still aren't going to see me in a suit.