The Girl in your Mirror

I don’t believe that “passing” is a real thing. I don’t believe that passing is something we should be striving for. I think trying to achieve that can hold us back.

It held me back.

I didn’t start going out en femme until about a dozen years ago, when I was in my mid-thirties. I sometimes think about all the years when I wanted to go out but didn’t because I was… too tall? Too masculine? Too afraid? Too self-conscience? Too… all of that?

I wanted to pass. I really did. And I wanted to pass for three reasons:

1. Anonymity. I didn’t want to be recognized.
2. Safety. Non-binary people are ridiculed, harassed, and attacked.
3. I wanted to be so beautiful that no one would know the gender I was assigned at birth

As time passed, I grew restless…. I mean, I wasn’t getting any younger… but I was getting more confident and less concerned about what others might think of me. That’s one of the many benefits of growing older. I thought a lot about what was holding me back. And do you know what that was?

It was the weird, arbitrary expectations of what a girl “should” look like.

I mean, what is a girl “supposed” to look like?

Is it a certain height? If so, how tall is too tall?

Is it a certain facial structure? If so, what shape is that?

Is it a certain outfit? If so, what is a girl “supposed” to wear?

These are not questions that do not have an answer. And if you think that there are answers, well, you might be an asshole.

What I mean is that if you think some girls are too tall to be a girl, you’re probably an asshole. Yes, t-girls are usually taller than cisgender girls, but as tall as I am, there are many cisgender girls that are taller than me.

I realized I honestly couldn’t think of what a girl “should” or “shouldn’t” look like. My wife is five feet tall. She’s as feminine as they come. The girls listed on Stana’s Famous Females of Height are stunning and absolutely feminine.

Upon this realization I started to build the courage to go out. I no longer had the need to pass preventing me from doing this. It was like… no longer being afraid of the monster beneath your bed… because the monster never existed in the first place.

This was freeing but frightening at the same time.

After a little time I awkwardly stepped out of my car, meekly walked down the sidewalk, and after a little time I started to strut, hold my head up, and I’ve never looked back.

Every single time I go out and catch myself in a mirror I am thankful I stopped thinking about passing. But in a way I still think about passing, but not in the same way I used to. Instead, I think about why we try to. I think it comes down to a few reasons, the same reasons that held me back.

One reason is that we want to be unrecognizable en femme. We don’t want anyone to see HIM when we are HER. I am grateful I work from home and all of my coworkers are scattered throughout the country. It is incredibly unlikely I will bump into a colleague when I am dressed up.

Another is for safety. This I absolutely understand. A small number of people hate us and may be inclined to harassing or even attacking us. We may want people to think of us as cisgender so we can minimize being clocked/read as a t-girl.

Finally, we may want to remove alllllll aspects of our male lives. We want our presentation to, well, overcome all the features our boy bodies and faces have. Our Adam’s Apple? Gone! Our masculine jawline? Gone! Our rectangularly shaped body? Gone! All of these aspects replaced my a heart shaped face and an hourglass figure. I will fully admit I do all I can to minimize or emphasize certain parts of my face. Makeup contouring and corsets help.

But all of these reasons are rooted in a desire to pass because we are trying to fit the antiquated standard of “what a girl needs to look like”.

Some people know exactly what a girl should look like. Again, these people tend to be assholes. They’ll tell you a girl should always be wearing a dress (size 2 or smaller) and heels (size six or smaller) and winged eyeliner sharp enough to kill.

At my most optimistic, I don’t think most people have a dress code in mind when it comes to what a girl should or shouldn’t look like. I mean, I knew what I wanted to wear but when I realized I didn’t have any… expectations for other girls I started to realize how arbitrary “passing” was. My wife is super cute in yoga pants and flip-flops and drop dead gorgeous on date night. Is she “more of a girl” in either look? No. She’s not.

So instead of trying to live up to undefined rules or guidelines or expectations of what a girl should look like, maybe we should focus on expanding the concept of gender itself.

And what I mean by that is that we should expand the concept of gender presentation to the point that gender is so ambiguous that boy/girl/feminine/masculine are terms that aren’t even used anymore.

We move gender from the binary to infinite.

Ten years ago when I filled out a government form and I had to select a gender the options were male or female. These days sometimes there is a non-binary or at least a “prefer not to say” option.

I’ve done a few questionnaires and surveys online about gender identity and sometimes the options are very inclusive and the list is loooooong for gender options. I love this. I would love to see so many options that gender is almost undefinable. When something can’t be defined it might just go away. In this case if gender can’t be defined then there are no standards for any gender.

It’s funny how often in a day my gender presentation can’t really be absolute. This upcoming Saturday I’ll be out en femme. But I will wake up that day in a nightgown with a few days of facial hair. I’m wearing femme clothes but stubble isn’t usually associated with a feminine face. So, what is my gender presentation at that moment? I’ll start to get ready for the day and I will shave my face, cinch up my corset and adhere my breast forms… and my body and outfit are feminine but I’m even taller than before thanks to my heels. My outfit might convey femininity but am I too tall to be feminine? Even though I am wearing cute girl clothes my face is very masculine until my makeup appointment. After layers of foundation and contouring I am as femme as I can be. Except for my voice. It is not the voice of a cute, feminine girl. After a few hours I’ll go home and soon my makeup will be washed off and my dress is hanging back in my closet. I will put on a t-shirt and jeans and go out to dinner with my wife. Am I masculine? Sure, but I likely have a few pesky flakes of mascara kissing my eyelashes. The day ends as it began, in a nightgown with my facial hair starting to grow back.

Throughout the day my clothes and appearance changed. Nothing absolutely in one binary or another. I will be outside of the binary the whole day. I usually am, even if I am not en femme…leggings in boymode, panties under my boy clothes… This is an example of how undefined presentation plus gender identity is. If I am not either, then are gender norms and rules even a thing? If they are not real, then how can one fit into one? How can one “pass” if gender doesn’t have strict, defined expectations? A girl can wear whatever she wants and she can look however she pleases.

To put it another way, would you ever walk up to a cisgender girl and say she is too tall to be a girl? Would you ever tell her that her face isn’t the right shape to be pretty? Or that a girl is supposed to wear certain outfits? Of course not. So why would you do that to the girl in your mirror?

Love, Hannah