Up until now I've been carefully maintaining my old male style, despite its beginning to feel wrong...men's jeans or khaki pants, brown leather men's shoes, and a selection of subdued shirts, usually a T under a long-sleeve button shirt, and when it's cold, a mannish brown wool sweater and brown canvas coat as outer layers. Also, I've kept my hair pulled back behind my ears, and I have habitually been wearing a thickly-knitted dark green wool cap. I do wear earrings every day, but so far it has either been the silver studs with the little green-glass gems, or the tiny silver rosebuds...very little flash or dangle.
Today, dressing, I made just three minor different choices. I'm wearing a soft dark blue pullover top with a zipper neck which is more androgynous than my usual shirts; I've swapped the green cap for a dark blue one which is softer and thinner, and I've pulled it well back on my head so that my hair curls out from under it in back in a mildly feminine way; and I'm wearing my new favorite earrings, silver, with a small round mandala-shape at the ear itself, and then a little silver-embossed dark purple bead hanging down...they jiggle when I shake my head, and it makes me smile. :-)
With just these three changes supplementing my plucked eyebrows, my smoother post-laser face, and my continued efforts to relax into more feminine ways of holding my body and moving, I can get a solid femme flash in the mirror, at least looking straight on. In a side view the masculine structure of the bones of my face still tips the balance to the male side. But still...I'm edging closer to the line.
So, I've made up a new acronym. At least for today, while it still strikes me as whimsical, I'm a POIG: A Person Of Indeterminate Gender.
Things which have to go soon: the man-shoes and the briefcase. Next week I think I will shop for women's sneakers, and then try them with my women's cut jeans for a day, see if anyone notices. And my dear friend Sue gave me a big funky clunky brown leather handbag which I'll try as a replacement for the briefcase.
Being a POIG can be fun, I tell myself...and I do really need to try to just play for a while, if I can. I am grateful, these days, for any insight which helps me feel like I can slow down. The drive toward womanhood has felt so unrelentingly powerful since the First Event Conference a few weeks back...I'm aching constantly. It's not a comfortable time.
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