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It's been a busy day. My daughter came to stay last night, and is with us until tomorrow afternoon. My father-in-law spent the afternoon and early evening with us, and joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. And, of course, we had to have some excitement first, so the sewer line backed up this morning and we had to place an early call to Roto-Rooter. Ugh!

But it's now after 11:00, and my wife and daughter are asleep, my son is in his room busily zapping aliens (or whomever he's zapping - I just assumed it was aliens), and although I really should be getting to bed because we are seeing my parents tomorrow afternoon, have to drop my daughter off at her residence after that, and have a wedding to go to tomorrow night (pant, pant, pant), I find myself sitting here thinking odd thoughts about Erin; that is, if I were Erin, the GG.

I suddenly was struck by the idea of films as role models - and oldy but goodie. Thinking back over some of my favorite films, what characters would I most want to be like as Erin? I don't mean which roles would I want to play, I just mean whose personality characteristics would I like to have? Also, whom would I most like to look like?

I love Katherine Hepburn's character in State of The Union - strong and principled, while still remaining within the traditional female role. I wouldn't want to look like her, just be like her. I also like Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's role in Class Action (and I think she's beautiful, but a girl named Erin with her looks? Wouldn't work), and I have tended to like the characters that Blythe Danner has played over the years (she was so pretty when she was younger, and she has matured so gracefully). On the younger side, I loved Alexis Bledel's character in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (1; haven't seen 2, yet) and I think she is so lovely. Another young actress who turned my head was Mia Kirschner in Mad City (not her character, which turned quite ruthless near the end, but just her beauty).

Anyone else ever think these kinds of thoughts?

I also think Erin would have been very much like Hazel from the old series Upstairs, Downstairs. Except she never would have been so passive with her husband if he were as much of a pain as James was.

I'd wanna be Sharon Stone, from 'Total Recall', a sexy, playful, undercover assassin planted to watch over Ahhnold, minus the part where she's doing Michael Ironside.

I just want to be me and only me.

I just want to be, sound silly?

Well, Virginia is Virginia is Virginia, but since this is a thread and a question was asked.

"Maggie the Cat" aka Elizabeth Taylor in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Virginia

Virginia, that was one that was on my mind as well.

In many ways the female role model for the woman within is my wife and a couple of close female friends that I admire. My taste in clothing also seems to parrallel theirs in many ways, and there have been a number of times when I have been shopping and decided to give what I initially got for myself to my wife-and sometimes vice-versa


Absaroka

Hey girls,

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. Just who is the woman within? Who would I want to be like? Well, the women I admire most are strong women. And by that, I don't mean "pushy" strong, but intelligent and secure in themselves. Physical attractiveness is nice, but I prefer sex appeal to physical beauty. If they possess both, all the better, but physical attractiveness is something I would consider a bonus not a must. I admire women who stand up for themselves, but never lose sight of the fact that they are women. What I mean by that, is not being afraid to be vulnerable either.

Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome comes to mind. Melanie Griffith in Working Girl. And a woman I really admire, Mika Brzezinski, who co-anchors Morning Joe. I would probably most like to be like her. She never yells or gets excited when men talk over her or try to intimidate her. She always remains very much a woman. I admire that.

But she is intelligent and knows what she is talking about and also knows that when it comes to opinions, hers is as good as anyone's. And if all that were not enough, she possesses a lot of sex appeal. I am not sure a lot of people would say she is beautiful, but I find her quite attractive. Not because she is some bombshell, but because of who she is and how she carries herself.

But having said all of that, I have no desire to emulate anyone. I don't want to be anyone else. I have waited my whole life for the chance to be me. The last thing I want to do is to present myself as someone I am not. I already did that for 42 years. The problem of course is finding out just who I am.

I have been living my life as a woman for over four years now and still find myself asking, "who am I?". Who is Elizabeth and how does she carry herself? Am I the person I always wanted to be or am I someone else? It can be confusing. Where is the line between my genuine self, the self I always wanted to be, and the self I was for 42 years? What is learned behavior and what is the person I truly I am?

I am not sure if I will ever know the answers to those questions. I believe I am just being me, but who knows? Time will tell.

Love always,
Elizabeth

Elizabeth, I think that, to some extent, we all look to emulate some part of someone else that appeals to us. When my children were young, I always thought of the character of Atticus Finch as the perfect role model for a father (still think so, too).

It's odd, it never occurred to me to emulate anyone nor have I ever had anyone in mind as a role model. That's been true all my life. I never understood my father's generation and their adulation of heroes. To me the hero(ine) image is just a box to be broken out of as quickly as possible. Plaster idols ...

I was always interested in finding my own way and figuring out what and how I could be, without reference to some role model. I can't think of a single woman (or man for that matter) who fills that role in my life. There are some women I admire hugely ... heck, there are even some men I admire hugely ... but I don't aspire to be like them.

Guess I just aspire to be like myself. Even if not the best, even if not particularly special at all, just plain me is all I want to be. (And figure out, as I go on, who and what I am.)

Love, Robyn Katie

Robyn, I think of "hero worship" as meaning admiring someone for one thing they do, and then thinking that the one thing you admire means that you should admire (and emulate) everything they do. In that sense, I agree that hero worship is not something I would ever seek to do.

But I think that there are times when someone - especially a fictional character, where a particular strength can be presented as perfected - can do one thing particularly well (or show a particular strength of character) that is worth emulating. And it was in that context that I meant it.

When I started this thread, though, I was thinking about the fact that many of us dress to give expression to the more feminine aspects of our personalities. Some among us see ourselves as trapped in the wrong gender. I don't happen to see myself that way most of the time, but there are times that I wonder what it would have been like to have been born a GG. And if I had been, what would she be like?

A few years ago, in an effort to answer that question, I wrote my autobiography as if I had been born female. I didn't think about drawing any conclusions from it as I was writing, I just wrote. I stopped when I got to about age 35, and when I read it over and reflected, I realized that the character I portrayed was a more feminized version of my present self, with similar childhood experiences, but with one very notable common theme - the problems I remembered having as a child were greatly reduced or eliminated, on the assumption that I would have had an easier time of it as a girl than as a boy.

As a child, I did poorly in school, had difficulty with social relations with classmates, was awful at sports games, all of which led to difficulties with parents and peers alike. When I was 13, we moved and I had to adjust to a new school with a very rigid social caste system, learned that my father was an alcoholic, and found my former difficulties greatly multiplied. Even now, I look back on the three years from age 13 to 15 as the worst of my life. Twice during that time, I stopped my father from committing suicide.

When I read back over those years in my feminized autobiography, I was more dilligent and better behaved in school, was not conflicted with peers, didn't have to worry about sports and managed to form supportive friendships with girls in the new town, which in turn helped me through those terrible three years. Now, I thought those assumptions were valid ones, and maybe they were. But at the same time, it occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, I was falling victim to the old "grass is greener on the other side" thing.

The day after Thanksgiving, my Goddaughter got married. She is the daughter of my oldest friend, and I hadn't seen him or his family for many years, but we made sure we got to the wedding. When I was a child, his family knew (or at least suspected) my father's problem long before I did because my friend's father was a recovering alcoholic himself. I had forgotton just how much a part of his family I was as a child, but seeing them Friday reminded me - especially his two sisters, who each reminded me of a little aspect from our childhood together (and, no, I never tried to wear any of their things ). They all greeted me with more warmth that I could have possibly imagined, and we resurrected old memories as if they were holy relics, tiny fragments of long ago.

Where am I going with this? Good question. I am at an age when I am seized by fear that I will leave this earth and not have done anything of value while I was here. Clarence tells George Bailey that each life touches so many other lives, but does the touch leave anything meaningful? Erin is part of me but she is not all of me - she is mostly what I could have been, if only a Y-chromosome hadn't gotten in the way. But it did. And the truth is that most of whatever I have NOT accomplished was not because I wasn't born Erin, but because of other mistakes I made.

I've thought for a long, long time that Erin and I are two people. It's an idea my father encouraged the first time he caught me dressed (I was 14 at the time), when he tried his best to stay calm and reason with me. He claimed that "transvestites" were prone to split personalities, and that if it was something I had just had an urge to try, that was okay, but if I continued it I placed my self at great risk of psychological damage. It would be years before I would realize just how much he himself struggled with issues relating to gender roles, and what a man should show and should not show (emotions, that is).

But I realize now that Erin is simply a manifestation of a part of me; a part that tended to fail in the pressures of a world of growing males (especially because I have - how else to say it? - a big mouth), a part that seemed to personify what the world of young males considered weak. My wife told me many times when we were dating - when I revealed virtually everything about Erin to her except the fact that I was still dressing - that she loved the fact that I was such a sensitive person. And I'm only realizing now that the sensitivity is not just Erin, it's all of me. And in fact I wonder if I relegated sensitivity to Erin because, despite all of my protestations to myself and others, I really never had accepted that I - the male me - was that very sensitive person.

Sorry I've gone on so long with this. I don't know if this is helpful to anyone else, but it certainly has been helpful to me.

Love to y'all.

Thanks for sharing with us Erin. Needless to say some of our sisters will never have to delve that deeply into their existence, while others of us have really had to just in order to garner some stability in our lives. Some of us have not been all that excited about what they found out about themselves while others welcomed this "gift" with open arms.

Now, science seems to be leaning toward the theory that in deed, "we were born this way." Evidently some with "more" than others, but it is biological and not necessarily socio-economic. So, if you accept the primise that it is just how we are, it can make it a bit easier, to "run with it." While others are not real happy with the fact that they have this "feminine aspect" of themselves to deal with. We have unfortunately witnessed the ultimate sadness of some who could not deal with it and that is sad for all of us.

Here all we can do is share our stories, in some cases actally meet in person our sisters, but that tends to be the exception rather than the rule. But we share, console, laugh, cry, wonder and love and hopefully in finding ourselves, we can extend a hand to someone else who may be struggling with this "gift."

I don't know that there is any right or wrong in how we individually deal with it other than fighting to the extent that is can damage you psychologically.

I still think it is a "gift" to be studied, maybe never completely understood, but accepted and even loved and protected and if at all possible, shared.

Love you all,

Virginia

Well Erin at the very least you saved your father's life twice. And I am sure there are many more things you've done of worth.

I related very strongly to the pain of adolescence with alcoholic parents. Both of mine were. No more really needs to be said I think for those of us who have experienced it.

A feminized biography of myself. Boy what a nightmare! Life was hard enough as a boy, as a girl I don't think I would have made it. I can think of a million things that would have been far worse if I had been a girl. Still it's an interesting thought. I did once write a story where I more or less divided myself into three people, with the two more passionate (and violent) sides of myself being expressed as women. But it was fiction.

Absaroka

Thank you, Absaroka. But to be honest, I didn't buy him very much time. The second time I stopped him - and I needed help to do it - my mother called the police and since he was on the record as an attempted suicide, he was required to be admitted to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. A week later, he was transferred to a state mental hospital, where all sorts of things started going wrong and his physical condition began to deteriorate.

My mother didn't drive back then, and she relied on friends and family to get her out to see him. I only went once, about two weeks before he died. He was really out of it, and conversation was difficult. I guess because he had always made such a big thing about how men didn't do certain things, I felt very constrained in what I could say to him. I should have told him I loved him. I should have told him I believed in my heart he would make it, even if I didn't really believe it, just to give him the sense that I hadn't given up on him. But I didn't, because I didn't know how, or didn't know how he would react, or just plain couldn't find the words.

I should have told him, and I didn't, and two weeks later he was gone, and now I'll never know if it would have made any difference.