Past and Present Transgender Beauty

The past comes from Paris in the 60's from the Christer Stromholm collection:

[Photo: <http://abcn.ws/IhkOwB> Suzannah and Sylvia, 1962]

The second is from the present. An unbelievable picture of Jenna Talackova from the Miss Universe Pageant.

As a side light, if you ever have a chance to see one of the "Hooter's" national bikini pageants. That's where Jenna belongs!

Quote of the Day

If you die doing something impossible-it's not suicide?
Robbin

From the Knife to the Runway

Brazilian model "Lea T" is back on the runway after completing SRS (Sexual Reassignment Surgery).
From the looks of this picture, she is recovering nicely!

Transgender Wall of Fame

Always nice to look back!

Quote of the Day

"We spend so much time disguising ourselves to others, we end up losing track of who we really are" .
unknown

Waaaasup?

Hello! Finally time for a little update as I approach the 5 month point in my hormone journey.
First let me point out I started on New Year's Eve on a minimum dose for the first two months which was then doubled to 4 mg a day. It was my choice to go slow at first and I'm scheduled for an update appointment sometime in July.
The latest physical changes I can pass along are in the breast and hip area.
I can now put a full two fingers under the breasts (my own measuring system similar to the metric)
As satisfying as that is, the very beginning of hip development was wonderful too.
I have always had some sort of a slight waist line but then nothing in the hip or rear area. Slowly I'm starting to add some flesh into both of those areas that most genetic women hate to do.
With the warmer nice weather I have been able to at least to stabilize the weight gain I have experienced with my new less active life style and increased appetite. Some say it's hormonal induced. Some don't.
I finally listened to advice and began to use a cocoa butter moisturize for my face which has relieved the drying.
Overall I love the way my skin is softening and the soft glow I feel it has and hair growth on my body has definitely slowed.
The next step (with the advance of and the lowering of laser prices) would be laser facial hair removal which I would love. I just have other financial needs right now.
So there you go!
I'm sure it's familiar ground to you trans women (transgender or transsexual) but maybe informational (I hope) to you transitional girls who are considering taking a bigger step!

The Socialization of Transgender Numerology

I'm thinking about now I have spent way too much time on my latest pet theory.
Just when I want to put it all to rest and enjoy passing along simpler fun posts about the effect of the hormones I'm on-there is more from "Natalie Reed":

"While cis girls, throughout their socialization and lives in our
culture, internalize cultural messages about ideal womanhood as a
demand of what they need to be in order to be considered valuable,
desirable, good women, they have the comparable “advantage” of at
least already being girls / women (or at least already having that
assignment). Trans girls, though, are subjected to those same messages
but internalize them as what is required to manifest womanhood at all.
We’re swimming upstream against our gender assignment, and if THAT is
what “being a woman is all about”, THAT gets internalized as the
standard we need to live up not simply to be loved and valued, but in
order to simply be read and perceived as ourselves. In other words,
while cis girls internalize it as what they need to be in order to be
good girls, trans girls internalize it as what they need to be in
order to be.

This ends up creating a whole lot more existential urgency in a trans
woman to live up to the cultural standards of womanhood. For us, the
question driving our self-hatred and self-consciousness over stupid
things like our body not meeting arbitrary-cultural-standard-of-beauty
#2677 isn’t as relatively easily conquered as the desire to “fit in”
or be “good”. It’s instead driven by the pressing need to exist, to be
embodied, to be seen by others and understood as who we are rather
than who we aren’t.

So when we’re told that we’re failing to live up to one of those
morphological standards, the consequence isn’t a feeling of “Oh shit,
I guess I’m not a proper woman”. It hits us much, much more deeply. It
undercuts our fundamental sense of being."

Natalie Reed comes up with very good points and you can read more here.
Now, lets see...about those hormones....

Transgendered Numerology

Recently, I watched a show on the scientific approach to sexual attraction. Essentially, as our lives progress we subconsciously choose mates in our numerical category. Most of us are fives or sixes and that is what we end up with for a mate. Not a ten or a one-a five. In essence that is what the show said not I.
Of course I wondered how all of that effects a trans person?
I have been fortunate enough to have met a couple before and after trans women in my life and seen pictures of many more. The best example of gender numerology was one of the people I met years ago. He was a very plain male. I would say a three but as a female? An easy eight. As introverted he was, she was the opposite. Was this the norm? Probably not. A few bodies are just gender ready to assume the opposite gender while most aren't.
Back to the numbers.  The great majority of us who will never make it to a feminine six or seven, let alone an eight or nine. We are lucky in many ways to be a five or six in either gender.
So what? Some of the most interesting, fun and stimulating people I have ever met, have been fives at the most. I won't even mention the other end of the spectrum of people who are nice to look at and that is it.
The biggest true problem we transgender women, transsexuals and cross dressers have with numerology is how it skews our thought processes. From the cross dresser who desperately wants to be a nine (in the ridiculous on  line skimpy photo) to the transsexual woman who thinks just one more procedure will make her that head turning babe (she turns heads all right and not for the right reasons)-it seems the numbers are ruling their lives.
Here's what you are thinking. What about matching your true gender with your external self- Cool! But at the expense of looking like a clown? I know-I've been in the clown category. If I had some sort of guidance about the power of self versus appearance maybe my journey would have been easier?
I of course, have no answer to all of this and it's all just speculation.
I just wonder how the gender attraction numbers work with trans people.  Hopefully someday a person much smarter than me runs attraction tests with our culture. It would be an incredibly complex process to add all the layers. Trans men and trans women, cross dressers, transgender and all who are attracted to their own birth gender or the other or both!
My only hope would be the findings could be a help to all of us struggling in the middle of all of this. Especially the younger ones!

Bo Derek and The Female Priviledge

Remember actress Bo Derek in the movie "10"? If you don't, she starred in the 1979 movie which was instrumental in establishing a numerical rating for feminine beauty. Very simply, the beautiful "Bo" was at least one man's version of the perfect woman-a ten.
Hey, it's a movie. Right?
My point is two fold. Is there a female privilege which extents past the external which Bo Derek enjoyed and as transgender women how does it fit with us?
One of the raging debates in the radical transsexual and feminist community is the concept of male privilege. My goal here is not to get bogged down in all the semantics of the argument. I just know growing up, the concept of benefiting from being a white male was far outweighed by the expectations. Again, another story.
The question? How do the so called "gender privilege's" effect trans women or trans men in any stage of their transition.
Let's refer back to "Bo" and use the very shallow example of physical appearance.
Appearance is indeed shallow but indeed very important as studies prove. From sexual attraction to job advancement facts show appearance is important.
As transgender people the "A" word certainly effects us deeply. I recently contributed to a  thesis survey which asked questions on appearance and fashion. Basically how does my appearance effect me and on a larger scale how do unisex fashions and the such effect overall gender stereotypes?
The point all of this is taking me to is what sort of before and after number do you put on yourself as either gender and how do the numbers effect your confidence.
More ideas coming in the next post!