Looking down from a great height
I just got back from the fundraiser I was volunteering at tonight, and had an experience I wanted to share.
Throughout the evening, and particularly later in the evening as I was more and more tired and my mental filter dropped, I found myself looking down and being somewhat awestruck at the sight: Boobs (my boobs!) in a dress (my dress!) framed by hairless arms topped with painted nails (my arms and nails!) leading down to smooth legs (my legs!) ending in heels (my heels!) tipped with painted toes (my toes!).
This was the most femininely I’ve dressed up since starting to transition, and even though I was exhausted from helping out rather than having fun, I sort of couldn’t get over the experience.
The getting-together of the outfit was still rather stressful (my roommate can attest to that) and the dress I was planning to wear definitely looked better in the dressing room and did not, in fact, fit me. But I got my nails done today, and managed to get my hair together in such a way that wasn’t unacceptable, and I looked pretty. So there.
(As a postscript, I do have to admit I feel something like a bad feminist after tonight. On the way to the event, someone creepy man at a crosswalk commented on how he liked my legs, and I of course was disgusted. But also secretly more than a little flattered. Likewise for the guys who checked me out on the street.)
Themocracy
I am glad that you enjoyed the event and felt confident in how you presented yourself! I am glad that you are comfortable feeling pretty, looking pretty and DOING the pretty!
Thanks for the well-wishings, and for stopping by! =)
Looks like you’ve discovered a dirty little feminist secret: sometimes unwanted male attention is not so unwelcome. Though I am a female-bodied queer radical feminist only attracted to women, I am sometimes mildly flattered by male attention. Sure, it is often gross but when it is not gross it makes me feel a little good. I too feel like a bad feminist because of it, but I think the reason I am flattered is because I am so insecure about my body and appearance and I appreciate the validation, even from an unwanted source.
I hope it is ok to say this, but perhaps it is a similar experience for you, because of the relative newness of presenting so femininely and your anxiety about passing? You were validated, you were seen as a woman, and not just a woman- a hot woman!
I have never admitted this before, feels kind of good. Can’t wait to explore this further with you.
Thank you both Rebecca for the OP and you Ash for your comment (I hesitated to admit it before you replied). I totally relate to both and it definitely feels like a dirty secret to me. The mixture of being flattered by validation as a woman, guilt for that feeling and then finding it generally weird as I’m also married is a bit hard to get my brain round! It’s like “Wow, if a straight cis guy checks me out then I must not be so bad as I think.” followed immediately by “Wtf! Stop leering at me!”. And yes, it does play right into passing anxiety too for me. One of the revelations for me in transitioning has been just how the way many men look at women feels like on the receiving end. I knew it before as an issue, saw it happening, but experiencing being the subject of it is a whole other thing.
Ha! Yeah, that’s pretty much what my thought process was last night.
That’s been an eye-opening experience for me, too. I need to flesh out my thoughts in a full post at some point, but I’m definitely becoming more aware of A) behavior that I have that I’m not thrilled with, now that I have a better idea of what it’s like to be on the receiving end, and B) the ‘acceptable’ (or, at least, culturally expected) behavior of others that I’m less willing to put up with now that it’s potentially directed at me.
I think you’re spot on. I can totally imagine, however many months or years from now, being in a better body-image place (hopefully!) and being able to “just” be disgusted by unsolicited comments. But, since I am more than a little anxious about passing, it was a really validating experience to hear this creep’s comment.
Even more so when a friend from who I am interested in hearing how I look also said I had great legs. =)
Very exciting! I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with dressing up because it was such a pain in the ass, but as I’ve gotten older and acquired better style, it’s more been fun. I feel like I’m just emerging from a decade of really poor fashion choices.
Don’t worry too much about the bad feminist thing – as a cis woman I have similar thoughts all the time too. Like, “ugh, creep! … … is he cute?”
Thanks for stopping by, Lindsay! I agree that finding styles/outfits/looks that can be worn with flair does make dressing up more fun. I wouldn’t say I’m there yet, but I’m working on getting better…
As for the creep, yeah, that seems to be the consensus from most (trans and cis) women I’ve talked to: it’s both creepy and flattering.