Fashion, Style and the Trans Girl

Transgender, cross dresser and genetic women alike all are effected by fashion and style.  For the sake of simplicity, let's define fashion as the "concrete" basics of clothing, shoes, accessories etc.  Style is the innate ability to put fashion together.

To be sure, this whole process at once can be the most challenging and fun part of being a girl, or a way ticket to frustration. For better -or worse- fashion/style is dropped into our laps as we enter the world of the high maintenance gender and one of the initial reasons we came snooping.

Most of us can remember a certain girl or woman in our past we wanted to emulate.  We yearned to be the girl next door in a frilly Easter dress or a sleek Prom gown. It just couldn't be that difficult to put those feminine images together, right?  Wrong!

Sooner more than later we learned the "angst" of trying to not do an effective Bozo the clown impression in a dress.  Of course a huge problem was not having Mom or girlfriends contributing to a positive outcome. Self taught fashion/style takes a lot of work and finances. It is not easy maintaining dual gender wardrobes, most of the time under lock and key.

Luckily today our options have exploded.  Plus size clothing has grown ever so stylish over the years, discount purchase options have exploded and self help guides are everywhere on line and on television. Along the way cross dressers and transgender women have even become a desired potential market for cash hungry retailers.

No matter what anyone may think, nothing has really changed though for me in the challenge of making myself as fashion/style successful as possible. Plus it excites me the process will always be a fluid one which changes with the seasons and age.

Interestingly, I can't even figure out the right colors to paint my house trim but I can color coordinate from my fingernails to my clothes, jewelry and shoes. If you ask me why, the only answer I can come up with is how closely I watched and watch the rest of the feminine population for most of my life. Once I figured I wasn't dressing for men but instead women, I was on a better path to success. Why?

My best example is my own days of squeezing into too tight or too short clothes and blissfully attacking the world. My problem was I was trying to duplicate what I often admired as a guy looking at women.  None of it worked because of course I didn't have the body for what I was trying to do.  Finally, even I recognized women do dress for each other and if I was to be included I would have to also.

Safe to say I (along with the vast majority of the female population) will never be an Andrej Pejic. (right) But on the other hand, I love the lure of the hunt for fashion pieces which fit my style on a budget I can afford.

It's also safe to say this entire process has been and will be an incredible amount of fun and lends all the "pizzazz" I thought it would to my life as a transgender woman!