My body was “perfect”. I still had gender dysphoria.
TW: Eating Disorders, Body Image, Gender Dysphoria
TW: Eating Disorders, Body Image, Gender Dysphoria
For most of my adult life, I’ve had a “perfect” body, but not one that corresponds to my gender. Being told all my life that my body is “perfect and feminine” has fucked me up. It exacerbated my eating disorder. It made me feel self-conscious and suspicious of all positive attention I got. As a compliment, it felt uncanny and wrong, partly on the ethical grounds that I don’t think any body type should be upheld as superior, but also because it didn’t jibe with the acute discomfort and self-loathing I felt inside and out. Being a supposedly ideal specimen of womanhood also kept me from exploring the possibility that I wasn’t a woman at all, for a very long time.
I never used to know how to write about this. Complaining about being told I have a “perfect” body always seemed so cruel to those who are policed and degraded for their appearance. It isn’t even a humble-brag, to take issue with being told I was conventionally hot; it’s a full-on brag, and one that can alienate and hurt people at worst or, at best, bore them. This was especially the case when I thought I might just be an attractive, mostly-cis woman with all the advantages that prettiness entails.
These days, knowing that I’m trans, talking about my body can still come across as precious and annoying. It can be incredibly tone-deaf and hurtful, still, too, to fret over having so much privilege. So before I really explore how my “perfect” body has worsened and complicated my gender dysphoria over the years, let me throw you several caveats:
I have thin privilege. No one has ever treated me as if my body was disgusting or unacceptable. I have received free things and social advantages by virtue of being attractive. I have never been told to lose weight by a doctor, by family members, or friends; I’ve only heard it from an abusive ex who thought anyone past a size 6 was too heavy. I can buy clothes at any store, I can sit in any chair, and I can identify numerous hot famous people who are built like me. These advantages mean I cannot understand what it’s like to be a fat person, a disfigured person, a person with a visible physical disability, and I know that my body issues pale in comparison to the stigma, policing, and exclusion these people face. When it comes to talk of bodies, my voice should be kept at a low volume. But when it comes to talk of gender dysphoria, I do deserve a mic, some of the time at least.
(And now you might be bored with me for writing that whole pained, simpering acknowledgement, and if you are, that’s fine. Someone on Tumblr once called me the most hand-wringing milquetoast person alive. Sharing that fact with you is a humble-brag.)
— — — —
Puberty is certifiably the worst stage of life; that goes double for trans people and people with body image issues. Hormones are surging, new social groups are colliding, hips are widening and voices are crackling, just as our brains are developing the capacity to think, recursively, about the thoughts other people are thinking about us. Puberty transforms the mind into a tortuous echo chamber of self-reflection and social performance, at a time when the body is least equipped to be elegant and emotions are unlikely to be reigned in. I don’t have to tell you any of that. You know why every essay about gender and body image centers on that period.
Speaking of periods. I was always horrified at the prospect of them. My mom would try to bring it up and I’d sail out of the room. I hated the inevitability of it, and what it symbolized: not just the magic of *~*~*~*becoming a woman*~*~*~* , but also developing the capacity to get pregnant. I’d always thought, since I was a child, that a (cis) woman was born already pregnant, and that once she came of age, she’d become large with child against her will. I thought I’d ripen like a fruit, when my body was ready and the Time Had Come, whether I wanted it or not. Every kid has fucked up ideas about how procreation works, but mine spoke to a real fear of my body as this feminine, fertile force beyond my control, that I was saddled with and expected to celebrate.
And I sure was pressured to celebrate it. When, as a pre-teen, I told my mom I never wanted to get pregnant or have kids, she told me with a smile that I might change my mind. Other family members were far more forceful about it. They said I would change my mind, and that everyone does. When I dashed from the room at the first mention of menstruation, I was told it was coming, it was a fact, and I’d better get used to it. Whenever a new school year came and I went shopping for clothes, I’d be looked up and down and asked in quiet, gentle tones if I had any hair down there yet or if anything else had started.
All these changes were fated for me, no matter what I did, and that felt like a great cosmic betrayal. When I doubled over in the hallway with cramps, on the day my first period arrived, my dad looked down at me and said sadly that women really did get the short end of the stick. My underwear was caked with black and brown dried blood. I hid the evidence. I started filching pads from my mom’s bathroom drawer for months until she realized. I eventually got over my terror of periods, because it was so easily kept a secret and managed in the privacy of a quiet room. But it came with other changes, constant and noticeable ones, and those changes people were quicker to acknowledge.
— — — —
“Are you wearing a water bra?” Callie asked me. She was second cello, with wispy blonde-brown hair and heavy powder on her face. She always wore perfume that smelled really good, and she made fun of the first chair cello, Issac, for his bravado and irritating sense of humor. She had a quiet, unassuming confidence about her, too, which was really admirable. I liked her.
I said no. I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I knew she wasn’t trying to make fun of me. Much later, I realized she asked the question because I wasn’t wearing a bra at all. I didn’t wear a bra for all of tenth grade, long after my boobs had started coming in. Unbidden, they were moving around whenever I walked. Callie assumed it had something to do with the type of bra I was wearing, rather than consider I wasn’t wearing a bra at all. That would have been too inappropriate.
I’d had training bras since elementary school (that inevitability again!), so it wasn’t like I’d been neglected. I had bras to wear. And my chest was clearly growing. But it felt better to leave my chest free and loose under my shirt. They felt less round and prominent that way. A lack of underwire made me less aware of them. It only worked for a time. By the end of that year, my boobs had grown too much for me to ignore them anymore, and I started wearing bras again. Push-ups. Tight ones. Always a little too tight, like I was trying to push them back into my body.
— — — —
I bloomed late, but blossomed fully. People in high school were too afraid of me to tell me I was attractive. I was active in the school’s Gay Straight Alliance and passionate about my performance on the debate team. I wore suits to class every Friday before a debate tournament. I yelled about politics at every opportunity. I thought I was a no-nonsense, firebrand intellectual; I’m pretty sure I came across as perpetually angry and repressed.
I also had a really bad eating disorder. I was starving myself every day, bingeing on cereal and snack cakes to make up the calorie deficit every evening, and desperately trying to exercise it all away every night. I stalked a friend’s top-secret eating disorder blog to better motivate myself. She seemed so much more devoted than me. Whenever I found my resolve slipping, I looked at photos of Trent Reznor, Damon Albarn, young Johnny Depp, 2-D from Gorillaz (yes, one of my thinspiration figures was a cartoon), particularly lithe and androgynous anime characters, and Natalie Portman.
I wanted to be thin and androgynous. When I walked, my widening hips would strike things, like my body thought I was narrower than I actually was. I longed to have a protruding hip bones and a narrow frame. It never occurred to me to ask why I wanted the shape of a guy. What that meant. Just didn’t cross my mind. Lots of people around me wanted to be thin.
My period became irregular, then stopped. I started sleeping a lot in class. There are photos from that time in which my skin looks mottled and thin, and my arms are twiglike. That year, a friend told me she thought I was a robot because I didn’t eat, sleep, or like people. I thought it was an immense compliment. Robots were genderless and rational, after all. They didn’t have to worry about their bodies betraying them.
— — — —
In college I found out I was hot. Men stopped me on the street. People flirted with me. I had sex, most of it pretty unpleasant. Certain types of touch made my brain fizzle with static, but I tried to push through it. Sometimes the disconnect between my body and brain made me seize up and cry. I couldn’t figure out why. My boyfriend at the time told me I needed to see a doctor so that my libido and genitals could be fixed. Something seemed wrong with them, with me.
— — — —
Time moved on. I moved to Chicago for graduate school. Out in the adult world, it wasn’t just men who talked to me about my body. It was women too. They weren’t trying to be creepy. They were trying to be kind. It still rattled me.
“You have the perfect body.”
“You have curves in all the right places.”
“Your body is shaped like an S.”
“You’re a perfect hourglass.”
“I wish I looked like you. You’re so thin but you have those big boobs.”
“You have child-bearing hips.”
Friends said it, random women at clothing stores said it, relatives at family gatherings said it. Men said it too. But when women directed it at me, it felt especially bothersome. I didn’t want them to believe there was a specific type of body that was perfect, and that their bodies were therefore inadequate. I didn’t want the spotlight on me.
Once, a young woman was visiting Loyola as a prospective graduate student, met me, and then immediately called her mom to tell her she had met a woman with the most perfect body. She confessed that to me, drunk, at a party a year later, after she’d decided to enroll. Then a mutual friend, also a woman, fondled both my tits.
I should have liked being told I was pretty, that my body was many people’s ideal, but I always resented it. I was bitter and sniping to every person who tried to hit on me — If I was going to be with someone, I had to initiate, be the pursuer. If someone was drawn to me, their motives were suspect. Why would you want to talk to someone based on nothing but what their body looks like? Why the fuck would you do that?
— — — —
I’m not a woman. I know that now. It never felt right on me. I always loathed being lumped into all-girl environments and slapped with the “woman” label. It was never because of misogyny. And it never was because I was bad at being a woman. People’s comments made it clear I was hitting the mark. My body was excelling, perpetually, at womanhood, despite myself.
— — — —
I wanted social approval, like anyone else. I’d been taught that women could wield power by drawing men’s eyes and making other women jealous. If that was my gateway to confidence and status, I thought, so be it. I decided to play the game.
It didn’t help that I was attracted to men. My eyes and heart were always drawn to adorable, pretty guys, usually androgynous-looking ones, with the body features I longed to possess but could not have. If I cannot have it, I told myself, I can be attracted to it. I really thought that might cure my eating disorder and self-loathing. So I tried to make myself attractive to the people I found attractive.
I wore dresses and tights, and obsessively cinched my outfits in at the waist. My necklines were low. My bras were too tight, to limit the jiggling that reminded me I had boobs, so my breasts were always cascading out of whatever I was wearing. I grew my hair long after years of cutting it into a formless shape over my bathroom sink. I changed outfits frequently and spent many desperately sad hours in fitting rooms, trying to find items that made me look thin but buxom. I never looked thin enough. I could never quite get a clear view of how I came across to other people, could never decide I liked how I looked.
I was attractive. I was winning the game. It never felt like it though. My brain was still an echo chamber, reverberating with concerns about whether my belt was in the right place, or was it over-emphasizing my hips, and was my hair to stringy, and did my boobs look even and equal in size, and were my thighs touching, and was my stomach sticking out more than it used to, and didn’t these tights fit more comfortably a few weeks ago?
My eating disorder resurged. I walked five miles per day, without fail, even when I had the flu and was prepping for my dissertation defense. I walked the length of Granville Avenue from Winthrop to Kedzie and back because I knew it was exactly 2.6 miles. In snowstorms the walk took a long time. I would skip social gatherings to make sure I had time to make that walk, and so I could avoid being asked to eat or drink around people. On that route, I saw a man with two friendly, slow-moving pit bulls every day, on the way west and the way back. The woman selling elotes in front of the elementary school must have thought I was deeply neurotic. And I was.
I dropped weight. If the ground was too icy, I exercised to Tae Bo videos in my studio apartment. At night my boyfriend ran his hand up and down my sides, tracing where my hips bowed out from my trim waist. You have the perfect feminine body he said.
— — — —
I got anemia. I got a heart murmur. I got a fever every night that made me sweat and dampen half the bed. I shivered in 90 degree weather. This went on for months. I wore out the electric blanket trying to keep my failing body warm. My boyfriend and I had just moved in together, and he was frightened. My mom was frightened. I was too tired to care very much. Half my days were trapped under a fog of exhaustion. It only started to bother me when I became categorically unable to walk my standard five miles per day.
I got X-rays. I had an echocardiogram. I had tons of blood tests. I was tested for every chronic autoimmune condition you can think of. I visited a hematologist who worked almost exclusively with cancer patients. He told me I was the healthiest person he and his team would see all week. I guess I still looked good. Doctors have always had a nasty habit of assuming I was healthy because I looked good. That same doctor pulled my tits out of my bra and instructed his students to examine my nipples — which were, apparently, appropriately bumpy given my age. I was too tired to feel violated until like a year later.
— — — —
They never could figure out what the cause of the problem was. My iron was far too low, that was the problem, but why wasn’t I getting enough of it? Was my body leaking it out in some way or failing to absorb it? I knew. At some point I figured it out. I started eating. I gained weight. The fevers went away.
I had to buy new clothes. Seeing myself in the mirror was upsetting, as usual. The temptation to restrict or over-exercise still beckoned me. But one day, I wandered through Forever21’s men’s section, and saw an absolutely darling button-up with dapper raccoons on it.
— — — —
When I thought I was a woman with a perfect womanly body, I thought the only way to attain physical peace was to be sexy and feminine. I knew that there were people with bodies like mine who were seen as desirable — people like Marilyn Monroe and Kim Kardashian. I thought the only way to make my wide hips and big boobs acceptable was to put them on display, like those women did. I thought I was too thick and curvy to wear pants or men’s clothing.
Even when I got into body positivity, all I could find were celebrations of my body type as feminine and womanly. Real women have curves. Women are sumptuous, beautiful, sexy, vivacious. I tried to embody that. I tried to be a Joan from Mad Men. I thought that the route to self-acceptance was paved with self-objectification and feminine beauty. I didn’t see a fat-positive movement that included men or masculine-presenting folks. It seemed like the only way to embrace my curves was to see them as a sign of fertility and sex appeal.
I believed that for a long time. A pathetically long time. I went years without wearing anything but skirts and dresses, coveting menswear from afar. But once I put on that little raccoon shirt, it all melted away. I could see myself. When I looked in the mirror, I saw someone cute and boyish. I felt attracted to myself for the first time. I actually loved the little nonbinary masc person I saw in the mirror. And it made me want other people to recognize and love that cute little nonbinary masc person, too.
— — — — -
I tried everything to avoid being myself. I tried changing my body through starvation and brute force. I tried dating men who looked the way I wished I could look. I tried to stop thinking about it. I tried packaging myself as an ideal paragon of womanhood. I tried making peace with my body as a feminine, beautiful thing. I tried over-exercising. I tried other things too, things I don’t have time to outline here — smoking, vaping, self-harming, risk-taking behavior, self-destructive behavior, getting wrapped up in a toxic, dramatic relationship, working to the point of burn-out, isolating myself.
It didn’t work. Nothing ever did. The one thing that worked was realizing I wasn’t a woman, and didn’t have to be. And that one worked instantly.
Instead of trying to make my body androgynous, I realized I already was androgynous. Instead of working to be a perfect woman, I let myself stop pretending I was one at all. I gave myself permission to wear what I wanted, regardless of if it “flattered” my body type. I started shopping exclusively in the men’s department. I tried on clothes and I liked it. My skirts and dresses collected a musty smell on the top shelf of my closet.
I came out as non-binary. I had already been exploring the identity in my writing and online life for years, but I’d always been afraid to share it with people in my real life. I told my boyfriend first, then friends and family. I felt far more comfortable with myself, and less bogged down with social anxiety. I joined a support group for genderqueer people. I recognized myself in their experiences. I went to therapy.
My eating improved. I stopped over-exercising. I gained weight, I think, but I can’t really tell because I don’t cram myself into over-tight clothes or weigh myself anymore. I developed the ability to feel and listen to my own hunger. I started wearing bras that fit comfortably, and returned to going braless about half the time. I started openly using they / them pronouns. I stopped thinking I had a social obligation to be lapidary. I started thinking of myself as a cute, gentle, sensitive man. I loved that person. I had always loved people like that.
— — — —
I still have dysphoria. My body is not my ideal. There are certain body parts that, when touched a certain way, cause waves of static and uncanny unhappiness to pass through my body and brain. When my estrogen levels are high and my chest is swollen, I still feel shame and discomfort. There are still things I would change if changing were easy or cheap. There are still things I might change when I get the chance.
But I don’t punish myself nearly as much as I did. I understand where my feelings are coming from. I have given myself permission, finally, to be the pretty, sensitive softboy I always admired. I do not have to be thin or curveless to be that person. I don’t have cosplay as a woman and admire that kind of person from afar. I am that person. Innately and automatically. Just like that.
I don’t obsess over my appearance anymore. I let myself cut my hair short. I stopped trying to be attractive as a way of earning my right to live. I don’t keep myself from leaving the house for fear that I’m not good enough. I understand how my gender plays into my sexual orientation better than I ever did before. A longtime friend recently told me, unprovoked, that I seem more happy and open. I have plenty of neuroses still, but I think they’re right.
I do regret wasting years denying myself the desires I’d known for so long, punishing myself for dysphoria I couldn’t help having. But I understand why I couldn’t make sense of it. Everyone thought I was a curvy, pretty woman. Everyone thought I was supposed to feel good about being shoved into that role. Even me.
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