Is part of the female condition to be hardwired to attract the male gaze or is it just society?

And if the former, what will it take to overcome this flaw in our wiring?

There was a lovely article in last weekend’s FT (The Financial Times Weekend Edition) by a style writer who muses on her penchant for age-inappropriate clothing.  Apart from her being 31-years old, a liminal age where you should be able to get away with anything, she finds herself criticised by her female friends for the fashion choices she makes—not because of their dubious quality, but for the age categories they represent. Too young. Too old.

She would not be the first.

Women of all ages have noted the burden of getting dressed.  It is a peculiar part of the female condition to think in terms of outfits.  To try on several before settling on how you feel.  I knew what this felt like even before I began living out, even before I began dressing in a “female” way.  Indeed, one of the best pieces of fiction I ever wrote was about two women living parallel lives and ending up with each other’s clothe and spending the bulk of the time reflecting on how wearing each other’s clothes had changed their feelings and views. One might call the difference as conscious dressing, although it is not so much a mental process as one of feelings. I never felt that getting dressed as a man in men’s clothes, but I did imagine it, and now I am feeling it “live”. And part of me wonders if this is one of the signs of proof, a proof of life of my inner female.

Living as a man, I self-limited my clothing choices to a fairly narrow range.  Once I found a pair of trousers whose cut I liked, I bought a lot of them, and pretty much wore just that.  The men’s suit has the same effect.  Made easier in that I wore only white shirts.  At least in the later part of my career.  When I first started out I dressed more like a peacock.  Never mind the conservative circles I inhabited, I sported a bob (the haircut), often wore barettes with various designs on them, and wore very colourful shirts.  I was also as skinny as Twiggy.  London was a swinging place in those days, and certainly more tolerant than it is now, both generally and specifically in relation to trans people.

Funnily enough, my favourite look as a trans woman is a crispy white dress shirt and a black or dark grey pencil skirt or high-waisted trousers, invariably worn with a corset. I can even imagine a post-surgery me wearing men’s dress shirts with wonderfully flamboyant cuff links. It’s funny to think that this is reserved for “after”…again it has to do with the feeling of clothing–the energy I wish to convey.

But even back in my working days, nobody ever asked me about my hair.  Nobody ever asked me about my brightly coloured shirts and suits, and wild shoes.  I remember this quote attributed to ad agency legend Leo Burnett on spotting the future CEO as a young creative at the copy machine, seeing his long hair, unshaven face, and generally unkempt look, “you’d better be good,” as he looked the future star up and down.

I took that as a motivational speech, and perhaps nobody said anything to me because I was good.  But we are all minions at the beginning, and it is hard to be free when you are a minion.  But somehow it worked, and I lived a wonderfully fey and fun life.  I dabbled on the fringes of the kink scene in those days, somehow too afraid to step in.  How different my life would have been!

No regrets.

It became even more so I grew to positions of authority.  Maybe nobody would have dared comment on my attire.  Maybe.  But maybe it is just something we don’t think about in relation to men.  

What a man wears is his business.  But is what a women wears everybody’s business?  I wonder.

One thing that has happened since I came out is that people regularly comment on how I look.  Okay, I was a good-looking dude too, but those kinds of compliments were rare.  I get tons of affirmation now, from men and women.  People go out of their way to say nice things. Mostly about my clothes.  And I really appreciate it.  I do.

After all, I go out of my way to look nice.  I buy nice clothes, I take care of my grooming and appearance, and I put myself out there.  I don’t wear makeup, at least not yet, other than nail polish.  This may come, but right now it doesn’t feel to me that it is enhancing but rather disguising, and I have nothing to hide.  I don’t feel the same about a natal woman who wears makeup.  It seems to fit.  On me, it still looks garish.  I will have to get lessons.  But I also believe that part of the reason I am encountering so little resistance is that by not wearing make-up I am somehow less apologetic.  I do not apologize about being trans.

So far so good.  The compliments are great.  But people have also suggested I change from time to time.  Sure, I will get it wrong at times, and I generally appreciate the feedback, but I have good taste, so am not likely to get it too far wrong…and anyways, it is also possible that my ‘wrong’ will be an emerging style.

Well, I started thinking about this more recently as my children have weighed in on what I am wearing.  Not just once, but now all the time.  Yes, there are compliments, “wow, you look nice Dad,” and yes, I am still Dad, and will always be so.  I actually got asked the other day by a nephew if I preferred aunt or uncle and I wasn’t sure.  I have always been an uncle.  Do I just automatically become an aunt because I am trans, and all that entails? I might stick with uncle.

I’ve given away or thrown out most of my men’s clothes.  I have kept a few that are either super stylish, super expensive, or something I think I might wear in the future.  The specific future I refer to is post-op, when I have a vj.  My boobs are still growing, the fat distribution on my body is changing, so I am becoming curvier.  My waist is just naturally more snatch than it used to be, and some of the skirts I bought when I first came out won’t fit over my ever-growing ass.  More to spank, LOL.

I look forward to wearing boxer shorts when I don’t have male bits anymore.  Ditto for a men’s suit.  And I think I have to find my own style and will have full freedom once I have changed my anatomy.

The biggest news of all?  I have applied to have my birth certificate changed.  With no hitches, in just a few weeks my birth will be re-recorded as female.  And with that, I can begin the cascade of legal and documentary changes.  There is no way in hell that I wanted to walk out of the hospital and still be legally male.  No way.

Separately, and somewhat momentously, FaceApp, that darling app that we can change the gender of our face, age, hair, etc no longers ‘sees’ me as male when I upload a picture.  Instead, it defaults to finding me female…this is so incredibly affirming.  Thank goodness I have been taking progress pictures of my face and body and can see the changes taking place.  Especially when I can’t remember what I looked like yesterday.

Back to my kids.  Recently, one of them picked my outfits for meetings at school.  Another told me, “you can wear whatever you like as long as its above the knee.”  They were nervous when I showed up, but that fear turned to delight when their classmates told them how cool I was, “you have the coolest father in the whole school.”  Ain’t that something.

Never mind that one of the boys in their class has already said he wanted to see me naked.  Reminds me of the words of one of my best friends growing up telling me how badly he wanted to “f” my mother because she was so hot.  Yes, that is what boys talk about it seems.

Well, my kids and my friends tell me if I am dressing too young, too old, dowdy, too edgy.  Now that I am presenting female, according to the world, its okay for everyone to have an opinion on how I look, what I wear!  Its kind of incredible really, and something I notice mainly because before I came out, nobody would have dared.  And its not like I am asking.  I am not.  I still have the leftover man attitude that it shouldn’t be relevant.

And yet, somehow it is.  I feel it in my intention.  When I get dressed I think much more about it.  I don’t just throw some random thing on.  And I think a lot about how I want to feel in whatever it is I am wearing.  This applies to days when I have no intention of going out, but is really strong when I am going out, even if it is just for a cup of coffee.  

And that makes me wonder, is our social willingness to comment, edit, what a woman wears something that she invites because she is already feeling it?  And the comment is not so much about the item of clothing per se, but rather the attitude, emotion, or feeling that it conveys?  I mean my gosh.  Is it possible that we are being told how to feel?  Not just how to dress?  If you accept my argument, they are one and the same.

How else could a man say she was asking for it?  Of course this is the projection of male thinking onto the female body.   But what’s the difference?  What it means is that the female is a blank canvas onto which a social construct is placed.  We are but bit players in a play that is designed for and by a patriarchal system, by men.  What matters is that the comment about an item of clothing, ‘that’s too young’, ‘that’s too old’, ‘you can’t wear tights with a miniskirt’, ‘that skirt is too short’, and so on is actually someone taking license to write our story, thereby denying our agency.

And I think this is real because it is something which has changed for me as I have transitioned.  My thinking about clothing, and how it feels to wear what I wear has become more sensitive, more acute, since I transitioned.  But so too has society’s willingness to edit me.  My question is whether this is purely social or is there some element of biology in it? Why on earth would anyone think they have license?

Well, I will tell you what I think.  We should all wear what we want to wear no matter what.  If I want to wear something skimpy then I will, and I don’t care if someone thinks that because I am not 20 anymore that a short skirt is too sexy.  My kids freaked when I wore a lovely blouse that had a tendency to show glimpses of my bra.  It looked sexy.  I know it did.  They were not comfortable with that. Sexy Daddy. Well, what if the feeling I wish to convey is one of being sexy? I certainly felt sexy. My boobs, though petite, are glorious, perfect little mounds, gravity defying in their newness, like those first buds of Spring. Look, but don’t touch.

And were someone to ask me exactly what it is I am looking for, the answer would be, “look, but don’t touch.” Part of the female power I choose to embrace is a growing fluency with the connection of how I adorn my body as an expression of the energy I wish to convey.

To say I don’t love this would be the understatement of my life.