looking at me how other people look at me
Something that is different about going to parties outside of Berlin is that people take photos. In Berlin nightclubs it's considered somewhat inappropriate, and some clubs even go to the extent of placing stickers over the camera lenses on people's phones to discourage it. Of course plenty of people still take photos - furtively - but unless you're friends with the folks with the camera, you're unlikely to find a picture of yourself on social media the next day. Not so in Taiwan.
I could go on a tangent here about the pre social media days of clubbing where we would have to wait for the photos page to appear in next Tuesday's street press to see if our rave crew got snapped, or the woes of developing the film on your Kodak disposable only to find it was all over-exposed, but everyone on LiveJournal is old anyway so we been knew.
Instead i want to talk about how other people taking photos of you can change how you see yourself. Case in point.
I am clearly an ogre.
Now, i say that tongue-in-cheek, because the movie Shrek came out around the same time that i was in my first couple years of living as a woman, and even back then when i was rake-thin and wore crop-tops and looked every bit the 21-year-old raver chick, nothing could ever change my wide shoulders or my 192cm (6'3) height. I passed, more or less, but i still always felt like an ogre when i went clothes shopping.
I could never find a bra that fit well, and still cannot, because even though i have a couple handfuls of boobelage, due to the broadness of my chest i am an extreme outlier in the bell curve of womanly shapes. Because i am tall - even by male standards - it's tough to find pants the right length. "Big and tall" clothing is designed for people much larger than me. "Small bust" clothing is designed for people much smaller than me. I hate buying clothes and wear my miniscule selection of things that don't look hideous until they are utterly threadbare, because every time i walk into a shop i am reminded again that i am an ugly, misshapen blob that society will never care to dress comfortably or attractively.
If it weren't so depressing i'd have to laugh at the raging transphobia of right-wingers who imagine that trans activists are a sinister cabal whose complete capture of educational and government institutions is systematically dismantling western society. Dude, we can't even find a fucking bra that fits. If we really had all this power, you think we'd start there. What a joke.
Anyway, i am a giant ogre, and regardless of how well-meaning friends might deny it to try make me feel better, society tells me this every day simply by virtue of nothing at all being designed to fit me. And when you are living in East Asia, even more. I am a hairy foreign barbarian. I can't even find a flip-flop in my size!
Last year i quit daily drinking because my pants were getting a bit tight and there is next to no hope of me finding new pants in Taiwan. Bonus, it's better for my mental health and work performance as well as my waistline. I also quit eating lunch. After seeing the above photo from the rave a couple weeks ago, i quit buying sweet tea, which was my small after dinner treat that replaced booze. One bottle of sweet tea is only 150 calories or so, but 7 of those is an extra 1000 calories a week, and i don't do a real whole lot of exercise. 30 minutes per day biking to and from work and maybe a 3-4 hour bike ride on the weekend is barely going to pay it down. I can't afford the debt.
But what will losing a bit more weight do? Well it won't change the shape of my frame, but it might make my stomach flat again. Yeah, yeah, i'm over 40, a flat stomach is 20 years in the past and shall never return. Well, maybe. Doesn't hurt to try.
The thing is, when i look in the mirror i mostly feel okay with myself. I think i am looking fine, because i can pick exactly that angle where my waist looks small and my boob shows a bit of a curve. But when someone else takes a photo of me, they don't catch the perfect angle, they catch the angle that everyone else sees, and obviously everyone else sees an ogre.
A happy, smiling, dancing ogre, to be sure. Hopefully a friendly ogre. But an ogre just the same.
And i wonder how i will feel going to parties in the summer. Will i ever take off my shirt and dance in a bra, showing off that pot belly to the world? Will i ever switch to shorts, revealing my hairy legs? Thanks to my northwest European heritage i am a burly viking down there, but thanks to my political leanings i have resolved to stop shaving because fuck traditional beauty standards. Why shouldn't i have hairy legs? Well, i will not always have the luxury of dancing near another, even hairier, foreign barbarian. Is this really the image i want to present to the world?
I mean. Sort of? Yes? Maybe? How i look does represent who i am. I love fashion as an artform, but i also love simple living so i don't have a wardrobe full of outfits. I wear exactly the same clothes to work that i wear out because fuck consumerism. I don't shave or wear make-up any more because fuck the patriarchy. I long left behind the idea that i should try to be "stealth", or that i should try pass as a woman. If people look look at me and choose to see a woman, that's kind. If they look at me and choose to see a man, they're missing a huge part of the story but oh well. If they just see a freak, then all they're doing is gazing into the mirror of their own bigotry. Why should i care? I am what i am. What you see is what you get. I like techno music, i like dancing, i have poor but corrected vision, i drink beer from time to time, i think bum bags are practical and not dorky, i don't mind getting shitty tattoos or muddy feet. I'm just me.
But, you know, i do sometimes wish "me" stood out a little less.
I could go on a tangent here about the pre social media days of clubbing where we would have to wait for the photos page to appear in next Tuesday's street press to see if our rave crew got snapped, or the woes of developing the film on your Kodak disposable only to find it was all over-exposed, but everyone on LiveJournal is old anyway so we been knew.
Instead i want to talk about how other people taking photos of you can change how you see yourself. Case in point.
I am clearly an ogre.
Now, i say that tongue-in-cheek, because the movie Shrek came out around the same time that i was in my first couple years of living as a woman, and even back then when i was rake-thin and wore crop-tops and looked every bit the 21-year-old raver chick, nothing could ever change my wide shoulders or my 192cm (6'3) height. I passed, more or less, but i still always felt like an ogre when i went clothes shopping.
I could never find a bra that fit well, and still cannot, because even though i have a couple handfuls of boobelage, due to the broadness of my chest i am an extreme outlier in the bell curve of womanly shapes. Because i am tall - even by male standards - it's tough to find pants the right length. "Big and tall" clothing is designed for people much larger than me. "Small bust" clothing is designed for people much smaller than me. I hate buying clothes and wear my miniscule selection of things that don't look hideous until they are utterly threadbare, because every time i walk into a shop i am reminded again that i am an ugly, misshapen blob that society will never care to dress comfortably or attractively.
If it weren't so depressing i'd have to laugh at the raging transphobia of right-wingers who imagine that trans activists are a sinister cabal whose complete capture of educational and government institutions is systematically dismantling western society. Dude, we can't even find a fucking bra that fits. If we really had all this power, you think we'd start there. What a joke.
Anyway, i am a giant ogre, and regardless of how well-meaning friends might deny it to try make me feel better, society tells me this every day simply by virtue of nothing at all being designed to fit me. And when you are living in East Asia, even more. I am a hairy foreign barbarian. I can't even find a flip-flop in my size!
Last year i quit daily drinking because my pants were getting a bit tight and there is next to no hope of me finding new pants in Taiwan. Bonus, it's better for my mental health and work performance as well as my waistline. I also quit eating lunch. After seeing the above photo from the rave a couple weeks ago, i quit buying sweet tea, which was my small after dinner treat that replaced booze. One bottle of sweet tea is only 150 calories or so, but 7 of those is an extra 1000 calories a week, and i don't do a real whole lot of exercise. 30 minutes per day biking to and from work and maybe a 3-4 hour bike ride on the weekend is barely going to pay it down. I can't afford the debt.
But what will losing a bit more weight do? Well it won't change the shape of my frame, but it might make my stomach flat again. Yeah, yeah, i'm over 40, a flat stomach is 20 years in the past and shall never return. Well, maybe. Doesn't hurt to try.
The thing is, when i look in the mirror i mostly feel okay with myself. I think i am looking fine, because i can pick exactly that angle where my waist looks small and my boob shows a bit of a curve. But when someone else takes a photo of me, they don't catch the perfect angle, they catch the angle that everyone else sees, and obviously everyone else sees an ogre.
A happy, smiling, dancing ogre, to be sure. Hopefully a friendly ogre. But an ogre just the same.
And i wonder how i will feel going to parties in the summer. Will i ever take off my shirt and dance in a bra, showing off that pot belly to the world? Will i ever switch to shorts, revealing my hairy legs? Thanks to my northwest European heritage i am a burly viking down there, but thanks to my political leanings i have resolved to stop shaving because fuck traditional beauty standards. Why shouldn't i have hairy legs? Well, i will not always have the luxury of dancing near another, even hairier, foreign barbarian. Is this really the image i want to present to the world?
I mean. Sort of? Yes? Maybe? How i look does represent who i am. I love fashion as an artform, but i also love simple living so i don't have a wardrobe full of outfits. I wear exactly the same clothes to work that i wear out because fuck consumerism. I don't shave or wear make-up any more because fuck the patriarchy. I long left behind the idea that i should try to be "stealth", or that i should try pass as a woman. If people look look at me and choose to see a woman, that's kind. If they look at me and choose to see a man, they're missing a huge part of the story but oh well. If they just see a freak, then all they're doing is gazing into the mirror of their own bigotry. Why should i care? I am what i am. What you see is what you get. I like techno music, i like dancing, i have poor but corrected vision, i drink beer from time to time, i think bum bags are practical and not dorky, i don't mind getting shitty tattoos or muddy feet. I'm just me.
But, you know, i do sometimes wish "me" stood out a little less.