When MtF trans people of whatever hue get together, they will often talk about the same stuff. Body hair removal, for instance. A common response I elicit at this point is one of envy from those who are undergoing painful full body laser treatment, because I am fortunate enough to naturally not have much to laser. A patch of hair on the chest, that's it.
I'll usually respond with a jokey "Well you've got petite size 9 feet you B**ch!", because the chances are they'll be sporting a to-die-for pair of boots that will simply never be seen in a size 15.
It's something to consider, isn't it. We all dwell on our worst points, how about our best points? I have almost defined myself by my size, but here I am with an enviable lack of body hair.
I should remind myself, I'm lucky enough to have a slim figure, great legs, and thick slightly curly hair that I've had natal women envy since I've grown it out.
You should do the same, list your assets first. It don't 'arf make you feel better!
Showing posts with label height. Show all posts
Showing posts with label height. Show all posts
Friday, 10 February 2012
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Going solo
Last night my wife and I joined a couple of friends for a meal at an Italian restaurant in a nearby town. Four friends out on a weekday evening. Why was this worthy of a blog post? The evening was arranged at my wife's instigation, and I was there not as my usual scruffy bloke but as my best shot at a stylish-yet-casual Jenny in LTS jeans and a Desigual top under my grey LTS trench coat.
That's right, my wife was extending her comfort zone by arranging an outing with me as Jenny. Previously any such outings have been in the company of our local support group and she has not always been at ease even then. That she voluntarily made such an effort I find to be demonstration enough of why she is worth whatever efforts I can make to hang in there for her.
All things considered, the evening went very well. I was severely spooked though when on drawing to a halt in the car park a slightly dodgy looking bloke appeared at the car window. It turned out he was completely harmless, he merely wished to share his frustration at the ticket machine being out of order.
So for the first time I was out in public in Jenny mode, almost solo. Just the two of us meeting our friends, no support group for protection. Passing through a familiar space, past other couples, even a group of teenagers. No darkness to hide in, it was about twenty minutes before sunset. The big surprise was that I didn't notice anyone spot me. Not even the bloke in the car park. Were they suddenly smitten with blindness or something? I flatter myself I don't do a bad job, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't still have something of the bloke about me. And with my size I'm certainly difficult to miss.
I think I managed it not through a feat of passing but one of not standing out. My efforts not to deliver any unexpected cues had paid off, and for those passers-by engrossed in their own concerns I simply didn't feature on their radar. My outfit passed the "Could I imagine my sister or my cousin wearing this?" test so I succeeded in looking just enough like a tall natal girl as they are that nobody made the effort to look any further.
Yes, we had plenty of nerves. I've been ready for this for a long time, waiting for my wife to feel strong enough to be comfortable with it. However ready you might be for this moment, it's always going to be a challenge. But as is the only way to proceed with these things we just went for it and had an enjoyable evening. I am hugely indebted to my wife for feeling able to come this far, and to our two friends for their company and support.
It is going to be increasingly difficult to keep this in the box, but I know the alternative of not doing so would have eventually been far worse.
That's right, my wife was extending her comfort zone by arranging an outing with me as Jenny. Previously any such outings have been in the company of our local support group and she has not always been at ease even then. That she voluntarily made such an effort I find to be demonstration enough of why she is worth whatever efforts I can make to hang in there for her.
All things considered, the evening went very well. I was severely spooked though when on drawing to a halt in the car park a slightly dodgy looking bloke appeared at the car window. It turned out he was completely harmless, he merely wished to share his frustration at the ticket machine being out of order.
So for the first time I was out in public in Jenny mode, almost solo. Just the two of us meeting our friends, no support group for protection. Passing through a familiar space, past other couples, even a group of teenagers. No darkness to hide in, it was about twenty minutes before sunset. The big surprise was that I didn't notice anyone spot me. Not even the bloke in the car park. Were they suddenly smitten with blindness or something? I flatter myself I don't do a bad job, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't still have something of the bloke about me. And with my size I'm certainly difficult to miss.
I think I managed it not through a feat of passing but one of not standing out. My efforts not to deliver any unexpected cues had paid off, and for those passers-by engrossed in their own concerns I simply didn't feature on their radar. My outfit passed the "Could I imagine my sister or my cousin wearing this?" test so I succeeded in looking just enough like a tall natal girl as they are that nobody made the effort to look any further.
Yes, we had plenty of nerves. I've been ready for this for a long time, waiting for my wife to feel strong enough to be comfortable with it. However ready you might be for this moment, it's always going to be a challenge. But as is the only way to proceed with these things we just went for it and had an enjoyable evening. I am hugely indebted to my wife for feeling able to come this far, and to our two friends for their company and support.
It is going to be increasingly difficult to keep this in the box, but I know the alternative of not doing so would have eventually been far worse.
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
Cultivating a style
Until now, clothing has not emerged as a topic on this blog. You see, because we're all serious about this business, we can't be caught talking about frivolous things like clothing. That would make us all sound like a bunch of transvestites, and we couldn't be having that, oh no.
So apart from the occasional rant about socks, I've kept schtumm on the subject. But a few weeks ago Lucy revealed "It ain't about the clothes" to be a deplorable cliché, and that opened the floodgates, at last I can hold forth on matters of fashion.
I suspect it must be something we who are born male bodied but aspire to be female all suffer from at some time or another, an obsession with passing. (Do FtMs share this, or do they lapse into comfortable blokedom and not have a care how they look?) Some girls never seem to lose it and no matter how far into stealth they run or how much painful and expensive FFS they endure they still see the bloke looking back at them in the mirror when nobody else can detect a trace of him. Others take a diametrically opposite tack and flaunt their impassability, shaking off adverse comments with boundless self-confidence. I admire this last group of ladies immensely, they seize life and just go with it in a way I simply would not have the courage to do.
My obsession with passing has largely er... passed. It took the form not of an obsession with making myself passable but a crushing depression that as an oversized bloke I'd never make it or fit in as an extreme oversized woman. The experience of going out presenting as female has taught me that the whole experience has a lot more to it than simply how you look, and that a face that betrays your origins or physical size that makes you the first person people look at in a group are only components of a much wider mosaic of female presentation.
In short, to be accepted as female you don't need to pass as such, but to mount a credible picture, to present to the world with style. And it is acquiring that style that has replaced passing for me as a consuming interest in this line, particularly at this time of year when the sales can place so much temptation before you.
Compared to some in my position, I am fortunate in my history. I was never a closet crossdresser. As I spent my early adulthood suppressing all this, I never had a stash of clothes, I never had awkward visits to charity shops, there was no cache of lingerie for my wife to discover and I never purged. So I never evolved an inappropriate look or wardrobe and I never found myself tempted into any of the multiple "scenes" that hover round the edges of our grouping. As my friend Dawn puts it, "It all looks like a lot of fun, but you wouldn't wear it to Tesco now, would you!".
Instead, as I began to explore cross-dressing as an adult I did so in the company of my wife. I was able to tap into her enviable sense of style as well as to expand on my own tastes and in doing so I hope I managed to avoid the more grievous faux pas that so many women, both FaB and otherwise fall in to. I might only have had the mirror and my wife as critics at the time but I avoided the "Mutton dressed as lamb", the "Mother-of-the-bride", the "Bet Lynch", and worst of all for a tall girl, the "Short fat girl on stilts"1. So at least when I stumbled from the closet, I knew I didn't have to worry whether my clothes were age or occasion appropriate, my wife's training through many hours of sitting together drinking coffee and people-watching had seen to that.
It comes down to why you decide to crossdress. My simple desire in all this is to be accepted as female in my everyday life. For reasons I've covered in depth, that isn't about to happen, but part of keeping the girl quiet involves dressing as though that were the case. So when making my choices the consideration is: If I were full-time, would I wear that to work, or would I wear it to Tesco? Thinking about the outfits some of my female colleagues choose to wear to work, that's a rather wide target.
One of my biggest surprises in all this is that I have become a label victim. No, I don't flash my wad by wearing designer logos in an attempt to prove to the cognoscenti that I too have no taste, instead I've found myself becoming very picky about the brands I buy. It was inevitable that I would not look at brands aimed at different groups such as teenage girls or petite women, but I've found the brands that have the style I want, and have become a devotee of their products. Hardly surprising when you think about it, it's one of those Duh! moments, I'm just doing exactly what I've observed all the women around me doing for years.
My sister made an observation to me a few months ago, that I have never cared for my clothes as a bloke. In fact what she said as someone who was five years old when I was born, was that when I was a very young child I didn't like wearing my little boy clothes and couldn't wait to take them off. Now she knows all about Jenny she said, so many things about me made sense to her.
So I've cultivated a style. I'm not flattering myself that it brings passing in itself, but that's not the point. My wardrobe contains outfits in which I feel confident because I feel they flatter my ungainly shape, fit in with the environments I wear them in (Or would wear them in, in some cases) and do not draw attention to me in themselves. And if there's one thing that all those years of people-watching have taught me, it is that if I've achieved those three things then I'm ahead of the game compared to a significant number of the people who pass our coffee shop window. And none of them ever think for an instant about passing.
Good luck to you all in the sales!
1A lot of female clothing in larger sizes is designed to flatter short fat women. If a girl with legs up to here wears those kind of clothes that's what she looks like.
So apart from the occasional rant about socks, I've kept schtumm on the subject. But a few weeks ago Lucy revealed "It ain't about the clothes" to be a deplorable cliché, and that opened the floodgates, at last I can hold forth on matters of fashion.
I suspect it must be something we who are born male bodied but aspire to be female all suffer from at some time or another, an obsession with passing. (Do FtMs share this, or do they lapse into comfortable blokedom and not have a care how they look?) Some girls never seem to lose it and no matter how far into stealth they run or how much painful and expensive FFS they endure they still see the bloke looking back at them in the mirror when nobody else can detect a trace of him. Others take a diametrically opposite tack and flaunt their impassability, shaking off adverse comments with boundless self-confidence. I admire this last group of ladies immensely, they seize life and just go with it in a way I simply would not have the courage to do.
My obsession with passing has largely er... passed. It took the form not of an obsession with making myself passable but a crushing depression that as an oversized bloke I'd never make it or fit in as an extreme oversized woman. The experience of going out presenting as female has taught me that the whole experience has a lot more to it than simply how you look, and that a face that betrays your origins or physical size that makes you the first person people look at in a group are only components of a much wider mosaic of female presentation.
In short, to be accepted as female you don't need to pass as such, but to mount a credible picture, to present to the world with style. And it is acquiring that style that has replaced passing for me as a consuming interest in this line, particularly at this time of year when the sales can place so much temptation before you.
Compared to some in my position, I am fortunate in my history. I was never a closet crossdresser. As I spent my early adulthood suppressing all this, I never had a stash of clothes, I never had awkward visits to charity shops, there was no cache of lingerie for my wife to discover and I never purged. So I never evolved an inappropriate look or wardrobe and I never found myself tempted into any of the multiple "scenes" that hover round the edges of our grouping. As my friend Dawn puts it, "It all looks like a lot of fun, but you wouldn't wear it to Tesco now, would you!".
Instead, as I began to explore cross-dressing as an adult I did so in the company of my wife. I was able to tap into her enviable sense of style as well as to expand on my own tastes and in doing so I hope I managed to avoid the more grievous faux pas that so many women, both FaB and otherwise fall in to. I might only have had the mirror and my wife as critics at the time but I avoided the "Mutton dressed as lamb", the "Mother-of-the-bride", the "Bet Lynch", and worst of all for a tall girl, the "Short fat girl on stilts"1. So at least when I stumbled from the closet, I knew I didn't have to worry whether my clothes were age or occasion appropriate, my wife's training through many hours of sitting together drinking coffee and people-watching had seen to that.
It comes down to why you decide to crossdress. My simple desire in all this is to be accepted as female in my everyday life. For reasons I've covered in depth, that isn't about to happen, but part of keeping the girl quiet involves dressing as though that were the case. So when making my choices the consideration is: If I were full-time, would I wear that to work, or would I wear it to Tesco? Thinking about the outfits some of my female colleagues choose to wear to work, that's a rather wide target.
One of my biggest surprises in all this is that I have become a label victim. No, I don't flash my wad by wearing designer logos in an attempt to prove to the cognoscenti that I too have no taste, instead I've found myself becoming very picky about the brands I buy. It was inevitable that I would not look at brands aimed at different groups such as teenage girls or petite women, but I've found the brands that have the style I want, and have become a devotee of their products. Hardly surprising when you think about it, it's one of those Duh! moments, I'm just doing exactly what I've observed all the women around me doing for years.
My sister made an observation to me a few months ago, that I have never cared for my clothes as a bloke. In fact what she said as someone who was five years old when I was born, was that when I was a very young child I didn't like wearing my little boy clothes and couldn't wait to take them off. Now she knows all about Jenny she said, so many things about me made sense to her.
So I've cultivated a style. I'm not flattering myself that it brings passing in itself, but that's not the point. My wardrobe contains outfits in which I feel confident because I feel they flatter my ungainly shape, fit in with the environments I wear them in (Or would wear them in, in some cases) and do not draw attention to me in themselves. And if there's one thing that all those years of people-watching have taught me, it is that if I've achieved those three things then I'm ahead of the game compared to a significant number of the people who pass our coffee shop window. And none of them ever think for an instant about passing.
Good luck to you all in the sales!
1A lot of female clothing in larger sizes is designed to flatter short fat women. If a girl with legs up to here wears those kind of clothes that's what she looks like.
Thursday, 16 September 2010
My life in Hobbiton
On my mobile phone there is a picture of me. One of very few showing me presenting as female. I'm not one for posting pictures of myself online so I won't be sharing it with you, but it's a picture of me taken on our return from Saturday evening's support group meeting just before I disappeared upstairs to revert to scruffy bloke mode.
I'm standing in the sitting room of an ordinary British house, my wife is sitting in an armchair on the other side of the room taking the photograph. I'm wearing a tan pencil skirt and a colourful Desigual top, I feel great and looking at the photo I surprise myself by how good I look. Sure I'm no oil painting, but for once I see myself and don't see the bloke straight away. A bit of a shock really.
So the picture shows a woman standing in a room. But there's something wrong. She's wandered into the abode of a hobbit. The doorway and fireplace, the sofa, even the picture on the wall are out of scale, it's like seeing a doll's house with a Barbie that's a tiny bit too big for it.
For the first time I am seeing myself in girl mode as others see me. I'm used to tall women, I come from a family of them, but not even in my cousin who's only a couple of inches shorter than me have I seen this look of being out of scale to the surroundings. I always knew that for me there could be no stealth, but I'm now really beginning to appreciate what that would look like.
It's not really put me off, but it's a slightly bitter-sweet moment. To look so relatively good in a picture and to simultaneously look slightly wrong. Still, I should take heart. Only a year ago I never thought I could ever look as I do in this picture, I've come a long way since then. And if I walk amongst hobbits there's something else to be happy about. They have hairy feet, and I don't!
Good night!
I'm standing in the sitting room of an ordinary British house, my wife is sitting in an armchair on the other side of the room taking the photograph. I'm wearing a tan pencil skirt and a colourful Desigual top, I feel great and looking at the photo I surprise myself by how good I look. Sure I'm no oil painting, but for once I see myself and don't see the bloke straight away. A bit of a shock really.
So the picture shows a woman standing in a room. But there's something wrong. She's wandered into the abode of a hobbit. The doorway and fireplace, the sofa, even the picture on the wall are out of scale, it's like seeing a doll's house with a Barbie that's a tiny bit too big for it.
For the first time I am seeing myself in girl mode as others see me. I'm used to tall women, I come from a family of them, but not even in my cousin who's only a couple of inches shorter than me have I seen this look of being out of scale to the surroundings. I always knew that for me there could be no stealth, but I'm now really beginning to appreciate what that would look like.
It's not really put me off, but it's a slightly bitter-sweet moment. To look so relatively good in a picture and to simultaneously look slightly wrong. Still, I should take heart. Only a year ago I never thought I could ever look as I do in this picture, I've come a long way since then. And if I walk amongst hobbits there's something else to be happy about. They have hairy feet, and I don't!
Good night!
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Exploring my height issues courtesy of my mother
My mother and I had a Long Chat yesterday. Since I came out to her as you might imagine we've had one or two Long Chats. I feel very lucky to have a mother with whom I can talk about this stuff.
In particular yesterday she returned to a theme she's touched on before, while she's happy to accept me for what I am she really doesn't like the idea of my dressing, physically presenting female in the real world or otherwise is beyond her comfort zone. Not really surprising, it's a hell of a lot for a mother to have to contemplate.
What I found interesting was her reasoning, it relates to my height. You see, my mother knows what it's like to be the tallest woman in the crowd from the days when the average female height was much shorter than it is today. She's in her eighties now, but back in the 1940s and 1950s as a young woman who stood over six feet tall she found herself the butt of many cruel jokes and insensitive comments. My quest for size 15 girl shoes pales into insignificance compared to her quest for size 9s back in the Austerity years, her feet were so seriously harmed by ill-fitting shoes that she had to have corrective surgery on them. She's been a customer of Magnus and Long Tall Sally for decades. Great. I shop at the same places as my mother.
In short, she speaks from a position of authority when it comes to people's reactions to women of height. And she does not want me to experience what she had to, but with the added twist of being rather obviously transgendered. She's had her fair share of misgendering too, for that matter.
I haven't confronted her directly with Jenny mode. She has to have guessed I dress, but she's never asked me directly and I haven't told her specifically that I do. But I have surprised myself with how well I have managed at it, and I told her yesterday that if going out dressed was what I chose to do then I'm sure I'd be able to do a good job. I know my passing skills are weak - at best I struggle at feminity, at worst I have something of the bloke about me - but the effect for which I have striven is one of having made an effort to look presentable. I tried to put that into words for her because I was worried she was imagining me going forth as a grotesque parody of a pantomime dame, this was when she went into depth on her height concerns.
I think my insecurities about my height and presenting female can be attributed to a mixture of my mother's reaction and my own experiences as an oversized bloke. I've certainly heard her on this theme before, though not until now directed at me. Stupid really, it helped keep me in the closet for years during which I really should have come to terms with everything. It's a wall from which bricks are slowly falling away, but it's not quite gone yet. I wonder whether my mother's version of that wall, for herself or for me, will ever lose any bricks.
In particular yesterday she returned to a theme she's touched on before, while she's happy to accept me for what I am she really doesn't like the idea of my dressing, physically presenting female in the real world or otherwise is beyond her comfort zone. Not really surprising, it's a hell of a lot for a mother to have to contemplate.
What I found interesting was her reasoning, it relates to my height. You see, my mother knows what it's like to be the tallest woman in the crowd from the days when the average female height was much shorter than it is today. She's in her eighties now, but back in the 1940s and 1950s as a young woman who stood over six feet tall she found herself the butt of many cruel jokes and insensitive comments. My quest for size 15 girl shoes pales into insignificance compared to her quest for size 9s back in the Austerity years, her feet were so seriously harmed by ill-fitting shoes that she had to have corrective surgery on them. She's been a customer of Magnus and Long Tall Sally for decades. Great. I shop at the same places as my mother.
In short, she speaks from a position of authority when it comes to people's reactions to women of height. And she does not want me to experience what she had to, but with the added twist of being rather obviously transgendered. She's had her fair share of misgendering too, for that matter.
I haven't confronted her directly with Jenny mode. She has to have guessed I dress, but she's never asked me directly and I haven't told her specifically that I do. But I have surprised myself with how well I have managed at it, and I told her yesterday that if going out dressed was what I chose to do then I'm sure I'd be able to do a good job. I know my passing skills are weak - at best I struggle at feminity, at worst I have something of the bloke about me - but the effect for which I have striven is one of having made an effort to look presentable. I tried to put that into words for her because I was worried she was imagining me going forth as a grotesque parody of a pantomime dame, this was when she went into depth on her height concerns.
I think my insecurities about my height and presenting female can be attributed to a mixture of my mother's reaction and my own experiences as an oversized bloke. I've certainly heard her on this theme before, though not until now directed at me. Stupid really, it helped keep me in the closet for years during which I really should have come to terms with everything. It's a wall from which bricks are slowly falling away, but it's not quite gone yet. I wonder whether my mother's version of that wall, for herself or for me, will ever lose any bricks.
Saturday, 29 May 2010
It's not easy being green
It's a curse sometimes, being born to grow up this way.
Everywhere I go, people have a second look at me. They point, stare, nudge their friends: "Have you seen Him!".
I get called names, I'm made the butt of decidedly unfunny jokes by infantile wags, and I'm expected to find them funny too. When I was much younger I was picked on because of it, bullied at school.
Drunks want to pick fights with me. Men with squeaky voices react aggressively to my presence. Sometimes pasty-faced women in ill-fitting tracksuits do too. People are not afraid to voice opinions about my private parts in public. I'm expected to see that as entirely reasonable, funny even. Pretty much average in case you were wondering, sorry to disappoint.
Some products and services are unavailable to me because of what I am. Some airlines won't fly me, others expect me to pay extra to sit in a separate part of the aircraft. Some car dealers will not offer me a product I can use. There are leisure venues that point-blank refuse to let me use their facilities. I'm reduced to buying clothing from specialist suppliers for people like me, and even then I sometimes get insensitive treatment from their staff.
I've had medical issues because of all this. I'm lucky, other people like me have had significantly worse problems than mine.
Nobody rushes to the defence of people made this way. Film and television portrays us as aggressive thugs at worst, lumbering simpletons at best. If we do defend ourselves, we're automatically in the wrong. Among ourselves, we're all pretty annoyed about being faced with the stuff I've just been talking about, but since it's not illegal, there's nothing much that can be done about it. Just suck it up, put up with it, live with it, move on. Can't you take a joke?, they say.
Even the sodding door frames are too low for me. No, it ain't easy being green.
Everywhere I go, people have a second look at me. They point, stare, nudge their friends: "Have you seen Him!".
I get called names, I'm made the butt of decidedly unfunny jokes by infantile wags, and I'm expected to find them funny too. When I was much younger I was picked on because of it, bullied at school.
Drunks want to pick fights with me. Men with squeaky voices react aggressively to my presence. Sometimes pasty-faced women in ill-fitting tracksuits do too. People are not afraid to voice opinions about my private parts in public. I'm expected to see that as entirely reasonable, funny even. Pretty much average in case you were wondering, sorry to disappoint.
Some products and services are unavailable to me because of what I am. Some airlines won't fly me, others expect me to pay extra to sit in a separate part of the aircraft. Some car dealers will not offer me a product I can use. There are leisure venues that point-blank refuse to let me use their facilities. I'm reduced to buying clothing from specialist suppliers for people like me, and even then I sometimes get insensitive treatment from their staff.
I've had medical issues because of all this. I'm lucky, other people like me have had significantly worse problems than mine.
Nobody rushes to the defence of people made this way. Film and television portrays us as aggressive thugs at worst, lumbering simpletons at best. If we do defend ourselves, we're automatically in the wrong. Among ourselves, we're all pretty annoyed about being faced with the stuff I've just been talking about, but since it's not illegal, there's nothing much that can be done about it. Just suck it up, put up with it, live with it, move on. Can't you take a joke?, they say.
Even the sodding door frames are too low for me. No, it ain't easy being green.
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