Photo courtesy of ISTOCK/YNGSA
Thoughts seem to come only in the mirror. Like a game of chess, a match of tennis, or a sword fight, it’s staccato.
It’s helpful. No, it’s not. Maybe. Clearly useless. Look, over there, a little behind the front, left—no, right—more exposed than the front. all right. So maybe it doesn’t help – but if I didn’t do it, it could be even worse than it is now.
About Rogaine. I’ve been rubbing the lather into my scalp. Nominally twice a day, but like a non-binary writer with ADHD and anxiety, I can’t quite remember. to address my problem which has been called. A box of 3 tubes (3 months supply) costs about $100 to $150, but apparently no prescription is needed in Quebec. I still don’t know if it helped.
Embarrassing, of course. Rogaine feels like a very sishet product to me. I believe it speaks to men’s desire to be attractive to women more than anything else. I feel relatively satisfied with men in It is possible to be a sexy gay man without having thick or flowing hair. At the same time, I wondered what kind of impact this had on me as a non-binary person.
After all, my first move as a nonbinary was to dye my hair pink. I made a decision before I came out. It was a statement choice, and my new “do” photo was the exclamation point in the statement. In addition to the cut, the color cost over $250, a welcome welcome to the world of femininity with professional hair care. Welcome to. Gone are my days of $20 barber cuts where men seem to be fighting to see who can say the most sexist thing.
My gender doesn’t match the gender I was assigned at birth, but my experiences with discomfort are all over the place. I don’t care. I sometimes dream of being able to have a vulva and a vagina as an option. I don’t mind being tall, but I wish I was skinnier so I could be recognized as a woman. Because I have internalized the idea that being thin and feminine sexiness are inseparable. I don’t crave surgery, but I wish I had no facial or body hair. If I had the money, I would probably consider laser hair removal. I have little interest in wearing them. I have stopped doing it. I do consider hormone therapy from time to time, but I am not asked for it like many transgender people.
On one level, I understood that hair was the easiest, best, and most fun place to express my gender. I saw the color fade to an even blonde in the first few weeks, then my natural brown buds held back underneath. I’m 33 now, and for a long time, throughout my teens and twenties, my hair was malleable. It was a place. On one level, I longed to use it for exploration, but I didn’t know how. bring yourself to. By coming out, I was finally able to meet and fulfill that desire. Using words that come up quite often in discussions of gender felt positive.
One of the things I love about tranceness is its ability to envelop the world, the way it works as a lens, trance light, the way you can consider everything in a trance context, and even hair removal. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read is what I see on Twitter about transgender people. It’s like, “Everyone assigned male at birth has a potential breast size and will never know what it is unless they start taking hormones.” The idea that our bodies contain blueprints for gender markers that we don’t claim to be ours is a fascinating and unfounded implication of human thought. It’s depth, it’s a beautiful shimmering pool, the bottom of which we haven’t touched yet.
American transgender author Thomas Page McBee dived into these waters with at least a jackknife. As he writes in his poignant and gorgeous memoir, man alive“In a more anxious moment, I washed my hands at John’s, a single-stall gas station, and didn’t want to pretend to be a man. I looked in the mirror and tried to imagine myself. Voice. A low or reedy voice, bald or not, skinny or muscular, hairy or pimples…it was a mystery to myself, but my body knew what it needed. The body was waiting for me
I know what it’s like, the idea of predicting baldness, the idea of waiting for it like you’d wait for a child, your body’s failure to you is somehow a sign of righteousness and success. I thought it was a sign. It was a hopeful concept, but not what I felt. Are there any older trans women who were happy to find that they couldn’t get an erection anymore? At least going gray and then white is gender neutral.
Yet, for what feels like the overwhelming majority of transgender and nonbinary people today, the issue of physical aging remains academic. The fact that trans women die at the age of 35 on average has since been debunked in a 2019 article. people who do not know, the study it was based on spotlighted the alarming vulnerability of trans women of color to (mostly male) acts of violence. There aren’t many data on the subject yet, given that millions of people are still fighting for recognition. We have taken a big step in this regard. This included questions about non-cis gender identities. Her Generation Z in Canada is about 6.5 times more likely to identify as transgender or non-binary than those born in 1945. or earlier (0.79% vs. 0.12% of the age cohort, respectively). And as transgender acceptance grows and young children come out, it’s no surprise that the median age of transgender people is actually dropping.
At 33, I’m not traditionally trans, but I often feel like I’m a decade or more out of action. So, for better or worse, the embodied experience I’m having means that so many transgender people have yet to meet and, in many cases, have yet to begin to consider. And while many transgender people will find themselves suffering from a different kind of aging as they reach middle age, their bodies will begin to degrade and they may feel betrayed. It begins to change in a way… the body. Of course it is a kind of freedom, but it is also a form of loneliness.
When was the last time you saw a sexy bald woman? V for VendettaNatalie Portman of the era. Mr. Clean style cue means a woman with the unavoidable “man” look with a ball of her head, or worse, a mix of hair around her back and sides and thinning on top. Mainstream notions of female sexiness are tied to thick hair flowing from the top of the head, making it conceptually difficult for many to imagine a beautiful woman without hair. The first sign may be that you are moving away from your youth, but starting to go bald is also a relentless move away from femininity, or at least from the possibility of expressing traditionally feminine beauty.
For someone who truly appreciated the potential of my male body, it was a blow. It felt like when it was already robbing me of that self-fulfillment. I will never be who I could have been.
Of course, beauty is not guaranteed to everyone. Especially when your idea of beauty is inherited by mainstream culture, as it was for many of us. We do not live up to that narrow ideal of beauty, and we are not promised it. That’s kind of the point. It’s less of a set of visual criteria than a measure of what some people have and what most people don’t. . People love to parrot the old saying that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what’s more interesting about it is that a group of viewers specific to a particular time and place all have a particular look. to appear to agree with Whether it’s between countries or decades, it’s immediately supported when it crosses borders.
So I think about another feature of the trans life: wigs. Do you have money for wigs? Are you confident in your wig?do you have a particular wig je ne sais quoi? Does wearing a wig make you feel like a sad businessman in a wig or a flashy drag queen? non-binary to me?
I’ve seen some meme phrases on Twitter recently. But that doesn’t mean some of us don’t feel the way we do. Did I recently describe myself as a “diet trans” to a friend who feels, as people say, that her transgenderness is not sufficiently “represented”? Do you feel guilty every time you let your nail polish expire? When an old friend of hers offered to take me to get her ears pierced, I took over half a year off before returning to her?it ate me. How do I feel when it’s too late, when the ozone layer hole in my hair is too big to fill, when I have to accept being bald?
Actually, I lied about the mirror earlier. In an unexpected rainy summer, fat droplets thin your hair, making it imperceptibly thin, exposing your weaknesses. As if made of something sweet and sticky that dissolves in water. Dusted with sugar. Of course, beauty is not guaranteed to everyone. I still mourn the body I wanted.but i hope
The next wave of nonbinary kids will get the most out of their hair while it’s still there. The day may come when you become an older, non-binary person who you see as a model.
