Body Image and Getting Naked

Let’s talk about body image.

I’ve privately admitted to being a transsexual for nearly a year now. In that time, I’ve done my best to feminize my features, mannerisms, and body. That involves:

• Growing my hair out (it is now past my shoulders)
• Altering posture to have an arched back more often, as well as crossed legs, among other changes
• Changing my walk to smaller, more delicate steps
• Finding ways to deemphasize my jaw line, Adam’s apple, shoulders
• Losing weight (to get flat stomach, especially, but other areas as well)

At this point, when I look in the mirror, I’m beginning to see what I was meant to be. I’ll be the first to admit that it might be because that’s what I want to see, and that might be skewing my perceptions. However, I don’t much care if that is the case—the more female I see myself, the more confident I’ll get in myself as a girl, and the more female energy I’ll have around others.

When I’m wearing girl clothes, I think that I see a girl in the mirror probably 75% of the time, depending on how the angle of my glance treats my (lack of) chest or hips. When I’m wearing boy clothes, it is probably closer to 30%.

It is all about my energy at that moment—if I’m feeling confident and good about myself, I’m much more likely to see myself as a girl. I’m just putting out that feminine aura, for want of a better term.

By contrast, if I’m feeling demoralized or bad about my body, I’ll probably see a guy looking back at me, regardless of what clothes I’m wearing. That brings me to a major point of this post:

Nudity.

No matter how feminine I look with my clothes on, and no matter how confident I am, the instant the clothes start coming off, that all goes down the drain. No amount of practice is going to change the fact that I don’t have a chest and that I do have boy parts.

It sucks hardcore to spend a lot of time feminizing your appearance, and then having that destroyed in the space of undressing. Any time I get in the shower or into pajamas, my self-confidence takes a plunge. It doesn’t help that I have mirrors in the bathroom and in my room.

Eventually, I’ll be able to get the hormones and surgeries to start correcting my anatomy. Until then, well, my emotional reaction to looking at myself without clothes is going to range from frowning to almost crying, depending on my mood.

I’m doing my best.