Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Real World "Trans Dar"

On a recent comment, Pat relates a Trans Dar spotting I would like to comment on:

Yesterday we stopped at Lowe's for some hardware and paint items and there was a Lowes' clerk that I first encountered and who checked us out at the register. She had long very straight light blond hair that did not match her complexion. Her makeup was a bit loud, her teal nail polish was chipped, and her sneakers were festooned with hot pink details and laces. Otherwise she was wearing the Lowes uniform bib and the name plate "Jennifer".

While in the store my wife and I behaved like she was any other sales associate. The first thing my wife said upon leaving was, "That was a man". I fully agreed although I accept the 5% chance that we were both wrong. It was interesting in that my wife would use the male pronouns in our discussion but the overall vibe that this person presented was masculine. Her poorly manicured hands were large. Her walk was manly, as was her voice. She had several rather poor tattoos. On both forearms were tattoos that made her forearms look like Popeye's with his anchor tattoos. 

Even though I am about 5" taller than this person my wife did concede that even at my height and weight that I make a better looking and more presentable woman than our Lowes clerk...even if she fell in that 5% male/female margin of error.

What was so nice was the total normalcy of this person working as a sales associate at Lowe's. Other than giving my wife and I about 3 minutes of something to talk about on the ride home this person's working at Lowe's was neither odd nor unusual. I commented that if it were me presenting as a woman I would have rather worked at the Dress Barn a few doors down from the Lowe's. My wife matter of factly simply commented that the sales associate may have had more interest in the wares sold at Lowe's than the fashions at Dress Barn.


If you allow my cynical nature to cut in for a second, a constant fight I had with all my female servers at restaurants I managed was to not allow chipped nail polish.  My women servers never had the problem.  As far as your Lowe's person's overall look, she reminds me off an employee I used to see every now and then (not Lowe's, not a cashier) who had wonderfully highlighted hair, but then wore clothes which looked like she picked up in the reject pile at one of the Goodwill's here in town.  (Before you want to claw me, let me point out, I am a regular at Goodwill's and I too live on a very fixed income.) But! At the least, this person with the great hair, too much makeup and baggy man's pants from the 1960's had a job.  It was winter and I never got a real good look at the hands and I didn't see an Adam's Apple (which doesn't matter you can't see mine either.)

Of course you all know I just may have a few other ideas about the persons we observed (and maybe you too). I will get to them in a future post!

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