An interesting sidetrack in Gardenia's thread on jealousy is the discussion on the "images" we have of the sexes, i.e., of what men and women "should" look like. This subject is endlessly fascinating to me and I think it's important enough to merit its own thread.
As a male who doesn't want to look like what a man "should" look like, I've often pondered this matter of "ideal" appearance. One of the first things that popped into my head when I first started examining this issue, oh! so many years ago, is this: who gets to decide what a woman (or a man) is "supposed" to look like? Is there some standard, some canon of femininity (or masculinity) that all people refer to? I used to think so.
When I was a kid, all the models in the Sears catalog looked pretty much the same to me. I used to leaf through my mother's Cosmopolitans and Vogues. So this was what women are supposed to look like, then (I thought at the time). Right on the heels of that thought was this: it's a good thing I've got access to these magazines because, honestly, I know zero women that look like the ones in the magazines (except my own mother, of course!
). If it weren't for Vogue, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, et al., where I would be? I wouldn't know what a woman is supposed to look like.I guess I'm a little wiser today. What I find difficult is that there are still so many people caught up in the harmful belief that women are "supposed" to look like the women in the fashion, advertising, and entertainment industries (three industries, by the way, that exist to sell the same thing: illusions--illusions of beauty, illusions of need, illusions of happiness... because the selling of these illusions generates tremendous amounts of cash). Although women are the usual targets/victims, men are as caught up in this belief (of women being supposed to look like magazine models) as are women themselves. Men, too, come to think that women "should" look a certain way and, though the trend is more recent, men are also starting to have to look a certain way (if the proliferation of men's "health"--really, beauty--magazines is any sign).
The plain truth is, the fashion, advertising, and entertainment industries do not try to depict what is real but, rather, what is ideal. It's too bad because the flesh and blood people we rub elbows with on a daily basis are not ideal, they're real. And how much more satisfying is that! I cannot ever meet a woman who lives only in my head (i.e., in the pages of a magazine, for instance). The women I do encounter in my life rarely meet the standards set by the illusion peddlers nor do they even aspire to meet those standards, knowing full well as they do that those standards are actually unattainable for the regular Jane in the street (in the same way that not every guy is Johnny Depp or what have you).
The big question, for me, is this: if what I've been saying is true (and, for me, it is) then why in the world am I trying, in my crossdressing, to emulate the women I see in the magazines instead of the women I see in my ordinary life??? It's quite a puzzler for me, I swear. I've come up with a few possibilities. One is that I'm simply unsophisticated in my tastes. Call this my being a victim of the "Tart/Hooker/Supermodel/Adolescent Girl Syndrome." This can be remedied with a little patient help from those of my "real yet ordinary life" women friends in whose judgment and good fashion sense I trust. Another possibility is that, in my need to express a certain, for a male, taboo, femininity (for whatever psychological or emotional reasons), I find I must exaggerate and accentuate whatever attribute or characteristic I have that is anything but male. I do this through costume, through modification of my body (to a certain extent, anyway), through a shift in behaviour, etc., etc. Call this my being a victim of the "All Or Nothing Sexual Stereotype Trap." This can be remedied by some "mental reprogramming" on my part that would allow me to live comfortably in a certain gray zone where I could season my behaviour and appearance with a dash of androgyny here and a sprinkling of gender ambiguity there without feeling that I'm violating any desire of mine to remain true to myself. It'll be work, though. Another possibility (and the one I like best) is that I see myself as a gender gadfly. Meaning, someone who "performs" gender in an outrageous fashion so as to make people question their assumptions about gender itself (the best examples of this are, first, drag queens and, second, fashion models--think about it: the two have much more in common than you'd suppose). Put simply: I'm a person who's born with a set of genitals that will generally prevent people from believing (or even allowing) that I in fact feel and think the way I do so that I must do what I can to convince people that a person born with a particular set of genitals isn't condemned to behave in a particular way and only in that way. Why is it important for me to convince people of this? Because too many people are needlessly--and I insist on this: needlessly--destroyed (or prevented from growing) because of this arbitrary notion that "genitals 'x' = behaviour 'x' and genitals 'y' = behaviour 'y' and never the twain shall meet." That's pure, unadulterated bullshit; real--not 'ideal' but real--human beings get lost in that equation. I'm one of those human beings and I don't want to be "lost" anymore. I want to shout from the rooftops. I want to shout: "I am!"
"I am and I have every right to be as you do!"
My gender "performance" (outrageous because it crosses gender lines; outrageous because it sometimes falls into gross stereotypical exaggerations) is my way of shouting at the world that, beyond mindless conventionality, beyond petty satisfaction with surface appearances, beyond outmoded binary thinking, there live flesh and blood persons who are shriveled and wilting because of the tyranny of convention, appearance, and binary thinking.
Now that the, uh, rant, is over, I have to say that neither sex is well served by thinking that the other "should" look one way or another. Ordinary looking people go to make up most of the world's population. And ordinary people have pimples, creases, dry skin or oily, bald patches, one breast bigger than the other, one testicle lower than the other, curly toes, thin fingers, big butts, chipped teeth, crow's feet, hairy nostrils, knobby knees, jug ears, pug noses, beer bellies, and bony wrists (and if you think that's bad, you should see the other guy!
). Seriously, the only thing people are "supposed" to look like is themselves, whether they're men or women... or even something in between.Just be.
Love,
CJ
Proud Military Family - Navy, Army, Coast Guard, National Guard 
) , when people on airplanes were in suits and ties and dresses and heels. Few of us dress up this much for much of anything anymore. Dunno if this is good or bad, it is just yet another legacy from the Flower Children among us! 
Now 
