Member-only story
As we make it through the various stages of our gender journeys, often we are overly concerned with our appearance.
Very early on I learned my looks, or lack of them, were referred to how I presented as a feminine person. If I was a success, I “passed” and if I failed the term I most often heard from within the cross dressing community was I was “clocked” as a man in a dress. So I began to become more and more obsessed with “passing” as a woman in public. The problem was, I thought I was achieving success when I was admiring myself in the mirror and then failed miserably when I tried my best to pass in public. The process all led to my well documented years of thinking (or confusing) sexy with trashiness when I cross dressed. What maybe looked good on a teenaged girl, most certainly didn’t look good on me. Undeterred, still I persisted. Finally I made it through my so called teen aged girl years and into womanhood and started to work on blending in with the other women around me.
All of a sudden, I found I could discover just a small amount of passing privilege. In my case, it meant not being stared at to the point of even being laughed at. I could concentrate on the brief gender euphoria I was feeling by just being in the world as my feminine self. One of the tricks I used to judge the world’s reaction to me was to wear sunglasses. When I did so, I could see how others were looking…
