Sunday, November 2, 2008

Transgender Beauty

"You look better than many..."

It's a phrase that seriously rankles a lot of people. But one a lot of people use.

On some crossdressing forums its considered quite the no-no as many wives and girlfriends feel quite offended that some consider that a TG person might look more female than a cissexual female or more attractive as a female than one (so far on the forums I've explored it doesn't seem to be as big an offense for boyfriends and husbands of FtMs but that may not be the case and please correct me if I'm in error on that). Some have argued that the actuallity is that some TG folk look more feminine than many Cis females, some CDs find it outrageous that any CD considers themselves more female than any female no matter how naturally masculine and the conversations tend to fall apart as people struggle to defend their own identities from the threat that peoples judgement of anothers appearance seems to constitute to them.

I could go into an analysis of what it means for many cis womens self identity if a crossdresser does look better or more female and the way that seems to speak of a lack of value of masculine physical traits in cissexual women, but thats not the point I want to make today.

See one thing I note in most cases where members of the general public respond with the phrase "You look better than..." in it's varients that most seem to fail to consider..

A lot of the time the TG person did not 'pass' and still got that compliment!

So what does this mean?
It means that these people see that the person is trans and yet still say they are good looking or attractive.

That means there must be qualities of Transgender Beauty that are utterly independant of strict masculine or feminine traits or which exist because of the mixture of these.

Now that many people can find androgyny attractive or fashionable is nothing new, their have ben trends in fashion for centuries where aspects of male or female fashion swap over and there have been plenty of people who've had success with a presentation that sits solidly between standard presentation of male and female.

But neither of those is what I mean. Because in the cases I'm referring to, the transgender person is clearly presenting strongly in a way that is, culturally, female or male, who is nevertheless perceived to be anatomically not matching that presentation and who yet is perceived to be attractive in that state.

And that is significant I think.

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