Thought of the week

[christinemax.livejournal.com]

Reposted from TransKentucky yahoo group:

I wonder about how Transgender individuals deal with body image issues, especially, Trans Women.  Cissexual women have been plagued for years with negatively reinforced images that have wrecked havoc on their body images. But for us in the Transgender community it seems like we get a double dose of it, not only do we have the demons of our former gender identities but we have to contend with the alignment our new gender identities with the same image problems that I mentioned before.
   
   

Depending on how long you have been transitioning, your idea of a beautiful woman (or handsome man) changes with the successes of being gendered properly in public.  And what I mean by this, is that our hypergerderized images of the gender that we are trying to become changes as we have more experiences living in the shoes of that gender.  Another facet that will increase is your confidence in yourself.  As you have more experiences in the real world, many of your insecurities begin to melt away.  For me I noticed, that I suddenly didn’t look as male in the mirror even though I hadn’t had thousands of dollars of surgery or radically changed my makeup routine.

    For some time I’ve been bothered by the notion of Facial Feminization Surgery. (here is the part where I will be controversial).  So Many Transgender People scribbled it in as a part of their transition, along with thing such as hormones, and buying a female wardrobe.  But does everyone need that much surgery.  And to be fair some of us need Facial Feminization Surgery, because no matter how our hair is styled or what wig we wear, we will be gendered as male. I’m ok with those people having something called FFS.  But there are others who are just insecure with their facial features, and many others who just want to hide who they were or are. Those people are not having FFS, those people are having elective surgery.  They are no different than a cissexual who wanted a boob job, tummy tuck, of Rhinoplasty. For me it’s a pet peeve to confuse Transgender issues with self esteem issues or other personal issues and that is what both of the latter cases mentioned were.

    I’m not criticizing anyone who wants surgery, but I want to stress that I used the word want instead of the word need.  I wonder how many of us need to have facial surgery in order to be gendered correctly.  A friend of mine had a consultation with the famous Dr. Ousterhout, at a Transgender conference. He basically told her she needed 40,000 dollars of work. My friend is very attractive girl and in my opinion doesn’t need any work, certainly not 40,000 dollars in plastic surgery.  Dr.  O is a friend of the Transgender community so I won’t criticize him, but I worry how he pushes a certain perfection of feminine beauty.  All women are not perfect, there are women with more masculine faces than man of us Transexual and I’m sure the case is the same for the Trans men.  He works from averages and then tries to make people who were born attain a look of the average woman or maybe even the perfect woman. 

    I guess Trans or Ciss, we aren’t that different, Women have been struggling for years to have healthy body images.  All of this in spite of the fact that the media, magazines, fashion companies, and movie companies , have pretty much created a conspiracy to flood the air ways and print with negative notions of what a woman should look like.  I wonder how trans people fit into this matrix of super models and Paris Hiltons? How do Trans Men deal with Brad Pitts and Mc Dreamy and Mc Steamys ?  Do we over react about how we gender our own selves (and in effect see more of our old selves than there is left), when in reality it is low self esteem which has nothing to do with whether or not we are transgender.

I wonder…