The Tendency of Tendons
Just a bit of random musings here about how my tendons have changed since starting on hormones.
When you're transitioning, there's a lot of stuff to worry about. How you hold yourself, how you move, and how you talk can all give you away, even if you look perfect. (If only, lol) Some of these are trained: Boys talk like this, so you better talk like this. And some of it is sheer physical differences: Height, skull shape, et cetera. And with things like these, you're usually screwed: I'll always be too tall, and I'll always have shoulders that are too wide. Some things can be corrected through surgery: The frontal structure of the skull is fixable through surgery. And a few things just magically fix themselves over time while on hormones: Fat redistributes in feminine patterns, and more to the point, tendons shift around.
I remember watching how girls walked compared to guys. The big trouble point for me was that as a guy steps forward, he pushes away from the leg that stays on the ground, that side of the hips tilting down to increase lift and the length of the stride. As a girl steps, the leg left behind doesn't push up, but instead appears to relax, dropping the body lower and shortening the stride. I could do it if I really tried, but it felt unnatural and uncomfortable. Why oh why was this simple action so difficult?
I'd read before hand that one of the many effects of hormones was a change to the tendons. The main aspect sites tend to talk about is how it rotates the hips forward some (for easier birthing, lol), and while I knew it would also involve other tendons, I didn't realize the full extent of it. Well it turns out that it was the answer to the walking problem. It's difficult now for me to walk like I had before, extending the remaining leg, but letting it drop happens naturally, and I get it. It's almost like a dance, swinging the balance of the body out from one hip to the other to keep it out of the way of the forward leg, which wants to pull towards the center with each step. No more lumbering steps. No more wide, tank-like path of the feet. And it all happened without my realizing. And the same is true with a million other smaller details. Just about every joint has a different "natural position" from before, and different limits. And hey, that oh-so hot convex curvature above the base of the spine? That's from the hip rotation. Sweet deal.
~Chloe ♥
ps: LJ, why won't you be nice and let us change our usernames, grrrrrrrrrr.
When you're transitioning, there's a lot of stuff to worry about. How you hold yourself, how you move, and how you talk can all give you away, even if you look perfect. (If only, lol) Some of these are trained: Boys talk like this, so you better talk like this. And some of it is sheer physical differences: Height, skull shape, et cetera. And with things like these, you're usually screwed: I'll always be too tall, and I'll always have shoulders that are too wide. Some things can be corrected through surgery: The frontal structure of the skull is fixable through surgery. And a few things just magically fix themselves over time while on hormones: Fat redistributes in feminine patterns, and more to the point, tendons shift around.
I remember watching how girls walked compared to guys. The big trouble point for me was that as a guy steps forward, he pushes away from the leg that stays on the ground, that side of the hips tilting down to increase lift and the length of the stride. As a girl steps, the leg left behind doesn't push up, but instead appears to relax, dropping the body lower and shortening the stride. I could do it if I really tried, but it felt unnatural and uncomfortable. Why oh why was this simple action so difficult?
I'd read before hand that one of the many effects of hormones was a change to the tendons. The main aspect sites tend to talk about is how it rotates the hips forward some (for easier birthing, lol), and while I knew it would also involve other tendons, I didn't realize the full extent of it. Well it turns out that it was the answer to the walking problem. It's difficult now for me to walk like I had before, extending the remaining leg, but letting it drop happens naturally, and I get it. It's almost like a dance, swinging the balance of the body out from one hip to the other to keep it out of the way of the forward leg, which wants to pull towards the center with each step. No more lumbering steps. No more wide, tank-like path of the feet. And it all happened without my realizing. And the same is true with a million other smaller details. Just about every joint has a different "natural position" from before, and different limits. And hey, that oh-so hot convex curvature above the base of the spine? That's from the hip rotation. Sweet deal.
~Chloe ♥
ps: LJ, why won't you be nice and let us change our usernames, grrrrrrrrrr.