My body and my identity

Last week I shared some thoughts on the struggle transgender women (in particular, though transgender men and gender fluid people probably face similar issues) in finding the balance between trying to appear in a way that society will accept them more readily as women while not subscribing to or perpetuating restrictive ideas of what it means to be a woman. Today I want to look at this from a different angle, specifically the intersection of transgender identity and body image.

I have heard from others and read some accounts of transgender people who grew up with such a profound dislike for their physical bodies that it was almost unbearable. I didn’t have the strong of a feeling. But neither can I say that I was ever fully at home in my skin. I never could match the ideal male image, but never particularly wanted to except in those awkward youth years when I thought I was a cisgendered male and was jealous of all the attention the good-looking, athletic boys got from girls. As I matured I developed a functional relationship with my body and appreciate that I had a spouse who was very non-judgmental about my appearance, by which I mean that she loved and accepted me as I was, whether I fit some ideal image of manliness or not. But I didn’t really like my appearance. I hated that I was rather hairy. I grew a beard for a period of time and really HATED it. The same with mustaches.  I dreamed of having long hair but never had the courage to actually try to grow it out. In the social circles I ran in most of my life such an act would not necessarily have been scandalous but it certainly would have been very unusual and looked upon with some serious questioning.

At the same time I knew that I admired the female form, not in some lustful, lascivious way. I wasn’t a peeping tom. I wasn’t a voyeur, striving to get a forbidden peep. I loved the feminine appearance because it was feminine. I liked smooth skin, long hair (though I would not say that a woman must have long hair to be a woman, nor to be beautiful), and various other attributes that are more associated with femininity than masculinity. I’m sure I was to some extent more in love with some ideal of feminine beauty than the actual diverse reality, though as I’ve come to understand and accept myself and as I’ve embraced feminism I have made great strides in affirming that women come in all shapes and sizes and this does not define them as women nor does it establish their value as people.

When I began to transition I finally had the freedom to begin to shape my outward appearance to match the person I was inside. I could find the outward image that best reflected me. This required making changes to the body. I wanted to reduce body hair. Hormone therapy is very helpful in this regard, though it doesn’t entirely eliminate it and does very little at all for facial hair (dang it!). I started with shaving my legs. Later I began having my chest and back waxed regularly (much easier than trying to shave them all the time!) and eventually started shaving my arms as well (though eventually I would like to try waxing those as well.) I often shave my face more than once a day. I still feel most self-conscious about that, but have had girl friends tell me that I look just fine and not to worry about it. After several months of working on various aspects of body hair I’m pretty happy with the result. I will need to continue to maintain it but don’t foresee any radical changes in this area.

I began growing my hair out early in my transition. Now, several months later, it still isn’t anywhere near the length I’d like it to be, but it is slowly getting longer. Thankfully early on my mother took me to her salon where I was introduced to a fantastic stylist who has worked with me since then to shape the look of my hair as it grows out. Beginning in the summer I started coloring it and really love the result.  I will continue to work on the length and will definitely keep coloring it, but I’m very happy with this part of my appearance now as well.

In terms of body shape, I did not have a particularly strong felt need to reshape myself. Early on I experimented with bras to create the appearance of breasts but after a short time decided that I would rather be my natural self in this regard. I have allowed the hormones to do their work which has definitely created some growth in this area and I am happy with the more feminine look it has given me. Some of the transgender women I know really want to have pronounced breasts, and that’s fine for them. I recognize that women have a wide variety of breast sizes and don’t feel I need to fit any particular image in this regard. Perhaps I’m fortunate in that I know many women in the dance community whose lean, muscular bodies often come with smaller breasts, so I am very comfortable with the idea that being a woman does not require clearly pronounced breasts. I’ll let the hormones continue to do their work but don’t foresee myself doing any other augmentation in this area.

Another area that many transgender women want to address is voice and speech patterns. I determined early on that this was of no concern to me. My voice is my own. It’s not particularly feminine and I will still be mistaken on the phone for a man, but I don’t want to change it. I like my voice. I guess I wish I could sing in a more female range, but that might take more than simple voice therapy and I’m certainly not ready to do any surgical alterations.

The big step of course for many transgender women is to have sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) in which one’s male organs are removed/transformed into female. I’m not going to detail the process here. You can look it up online if you’re curious. From what I have heard and read it is a very intense procedure, not particularly pleasant in the recovery process and incredibly expensive. Since most insurance plans do not cover this, it remains out of reach for many transgender people, whether they want to pursue it or not. That would certainly be the case for me. But the transgender community also recognizes and affirms that this step is not necessary to be transgender either. In fact none of the changes I’ve talked about today are necessary, because being transgender is not about your appearance. It’s about your identity. The appearance is only a reflection of that identity and varies for each individual. At this point on my journey I don’t feel the need for SRS and don’t expect to pursue it. Sometimes I think it would be nice to change that physical attribute, but I don’t feel a deep necessity to do so in order to be whole. That may still change, but even if it does SRS will remain out of reach without some significant changes in health insurance requirements.

My outward appearance continues to change as I grow into my identity. I like what it has become and feel a far greater contentment with my body than I ever did before. I can look at myself in the mirror and feel good about my appearance. It’s an expression of who I am inside, not of who someone else thinks I should be, nor of my own perception of what someone else thinks I should look like. And really I hope that’s true for all of us, whether cis- or transgender.

This is me after my most recent visit to the hair salon.