Musings of a Singaporean Transgender

(This post is probably going to get me cancelled 😕)

Captions of "Estrogen is magic!", "Estrogen is pixie dust!" "Estrogen is crack!", followed by a side by side pre-transition photo of a man with facial hair and a post-transition photo of a long haired woman with makeup are so incredibly common on Reddit r/transtimelines that it is almost the norm, yet it masks something incredibly important; Estrogen is not a magic pill. 

I hate how misleading such captions are. If you look at most of the pre/post-transition photos posted, there are usually the following key differences: 

To be fair, I can understand the euphoria one feels when transwomen compare their current post-transition selves with the man they once were. Being on a regimen of Estrogen (and anti-androgens to keep the T-levels down) does help many, many transwomen feel better about themselves, gradually bring about subtle feminising changes to the body, reduce gender dysphoria and feel optimistic about life. So it is natural to want to show the outcome of an amazing journey, especially if the pre/post-transition photos are so starkly different (and also for the dopamine rush that Reddit upvotes and Instagram likes bring). I did feel a sense of optimism when I saw how my body has changed over a short 6-month period, knowing that there are more changes to come. But I can assure you that after 1 year of HRT, the reflection I see in the mirror is still that of a unkempt long-ish haired man with a subtle beard shadow.

Estrogen's use in HRT is one of the means we take to achieve our end goal; to help us come closer to becoming the woman we feel so deeply to be, so that we can eventually let out the inner woman we have painfully suppressed for so many years. So transwomen, do continue to share with the world your amazing transformation journey on social media. But please, please try not to mislabel your photos and call Estrogen a magic pill, when the the changes aren't primarily due to Estrogen. Hopium is a terrible drug, and baby-trans are awfully susceptible to it.  

 

(Transgender Youtuber Contrapoints. She is as gorgeous as she is funny)

Contrapoints: "I'm aware that the conventional beauty standards are a racist, sexist, ablelist, fatphobic, transphobic social construct designed to preserve power relations and sell products. But does that awareness mean I desire any less to be conventionally beautiful? Well...no. I want it more than ever! The problem with the intellectual exercise of critiquing things doesn't usually affect my desires that very much. So what am I supposed to do? Sit here in silent contemplation until my desires finally align themselves with the interests of the international proletarian revolution? Oh Fuck the revolution! I want to be a pretty rich girl."

If you haven't already discovered her Youtube channel that already has 1.6 million subscribers (as of Sep 2022), then you totally should. She is eloquent and hilarious, discussing gender related topics covering various view points. Putting out an excerpt from her video doesn't do her delivery of the topics any justice, so do watch her video on beauty, which I have linked down below. Do note that her videos are generally quite lengthy (30min or more).

So today's post is about beauty. Everyone wants to be beautiful. It is a desire that spans across sexuality and gender. Straight, gay, lesbian, bi, male, female, trans, non-binary folk all want to be beautiful. Don't we all follow Icons and Influencers on social media, wishing that we could look like them and enjoy the high life that their good looks has supposedly conferred upon them? Pretty girls seem to effortlessly become models and enjoy sponsorships, gigs, fancy meals, jet-setting lifestyles, supposedly high pay to sustain said lifestyle, and throngs of fans throwing themselves and dollars at them; things that the plain Jane (or John) on the other side of the phone could only dream of having. Winning the genetic lottery grants what is known as "pretty privilege" that opens many locked doors. 

It isn't just about the potential monetary benefits. As much as we need to learn to love ourselves, being conventionally beautiful undeniably makes us feel good. Looking into the mirror and being able to think "Damnnnnnn girl you look good" sends that dopamine rush to the brain. And when others heap on compliments, a person's self-confidence is boosted even further; to dare to speak a little bit louder and hold the head up a higher. Being acknowledged as pretty  makes us feel great about ourselves. 

For us crossdressers, the need to be beautiful is the ever present goal...or at times, the only goal. The highest prize is the ability to successfully emulate the conventional feminine ideal in appearance. Almost every single post on Reddit, Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms used by crossdressers is screaming to show off this ability, demanding the Internet for validation with the question "Am I Pretty?" (Yes. Yes I am pretty. Tell me I am pretty. Goddamn it, like, upvote and share this post you anonymous, faceless other person over the internet. Even better, shower me with comments in a thousand different ways to tell me how pretty I am. Do it! Tell me I am pretty. Please? Oh and don't forget to follow). And the community itself feeds this need, along with a boatload of envy. Our chat groups regularly discuss how gorgeous some other young crossdresser or transwoman is, never mind that said beauty may be a product of plastic surgery or photoshop. We regularly lament our various flaws and fervently wish that we had this or that physical traits.

When asked: "Will you ever consider transitioning?", a reply I sometimes hear is "I'm too old to be pretty" or "Only if I can be pretty". Heck, that is the reply my brain tells myself too. For many of us (myself included), should the decision to transition be made, I don't think simple facial feminization surgery alone is adequate. If I am going to slide down the slippery slope of spending hard earned dollars on plastic surgery, suffering the physical, social and financial pain of transitioning, I'm sure as hell going to make sure I come out the other side looking drop dead gorgeous. After all, in for a penny, might as well be in for a pound. (Looking like Lalisa would be sweet. Or the goddess that is Gemma Chan.)

Will the quest and need to be beautiful for ever end? For us crossdressers, I don't think so. But it is important to recognise that in our pursuit of it, we should not let it consume us with envy. 

The term "Paradox of Privacy" usually refers to the disjoint between expressed privacy concerns and actual online behaviour. We bemoan about how big tech companies like Facebook and Google harvest our personal data and insidiously selling it to advertisers, yet we still willingly let them do so in exchange for convenience (google maps) and desire to show off our lives to the rest of our friends (sharing of photos/videos on Instagram and facebook).

I think crossdressers also suffer from their own paradox of privacy, albeit different from what I just described. We express privacy concerns and worry about the impact should our crossdressing inclinations be made known to our partners, relatives, friends and colleagues, yet we keep wanting to show our female selves to people, be it on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, private chat groups, etc. This paradox is only faced by crossdressers who have not yet come out fully to the rest of the world (which is a lot of us in Singapore).

The crossdressers' paradox of privacy stems from the deep desire to accepted by others, to be told that you are beautiful/pretty/successful as a woman. Although the desire to be praised in this age of social media applies to everyone, for crossdressers the desire runs a lot stronger because acceptance is less easily available. Family and friends may not be understanding, while mainstream society has a tendency to brand a crossdresser a deviant (Crossdressers generally are viewed as perverts who get off from wearing women's clothes. It is really difficult for a crossdresser to explain that he likes to wear women's clothes because it makes him feel sexy or turns him on. A good parallel would be people who are into BDSM). Because acceptance and praise is in limited amount from a crossdressers' immediate circle, he turns to social media for likes/comments/praise. The way we "show-off" is also very narrow; usually it is a photo of ourselves dressed in out latest purchase, asking on social media if we are pretty or outright stating that we are. I am guilty of that measuring my success as a crossdresser by this same narcissistic metric.

Isabelle has social media accounts which a restricted group of crossdresser friends has access to. At times I think to myself: Why am I being so scared? I've taken so much effort to level up my skills to look sufficiently convincing as a girl, shouldn't I just make my accounts public or post my photos on more public platforms like reddit? This way I could be admired more, feel a sense of success, drive more viewers to my blog. But then my risk-reward alarm bells go off and my guy self slaps sense into Isabelle, reminding that such "recognition" that I seek on social media is ultimately meaningless and will not solve the deep rooted self-esteem and gender dysphoria issues that I face. And in exchange I flippantly squander away my privacy.

This is a topic that is applicable to many people, not just to crossdressers, but I'll try to link it to crossdressing.

Instagram and facebook is pretty fun in general. We use it to connect and chat with people sharing the same interests as us, we posts photos of ourselves having fun and get praises, which gives us that little hit of the happy drug doapamine when the photo gets a ton of likes or comments that we're pretty/beautiful.

However, ever since I started using social media for my female self a bit more heavily, I quickly noticed 2 big issues which makes me think twice about maintaining the social media account.

I started my open Instagram account back in Nov 2018 as a bit of an experiment, to see how many followers I could rack up and share my photos. I decided to post daily to generate activity and encourage followers. 

After about a month in, I shut my account down. 

I found that I was starting to be addicted to social media in a very unhealthy way. I spent way too much time open and closing the Instagram app to check if I had new followers, likes and comments. I started obsessing over how each new post compared with the earlier posts in terms of likes and comments. After posting a new photo, I'd start thinking about which photo to use and what caption to write for tomorrow's post. 

The addiction and obsession got a bit scary for me as I never felt it before in my guy mode. How much of my waking hours did I waste looking at social media apps and obsessing over something so superficial and vapid as comments and likes? It was so easy to do a double tap to like a post, or write a simple (and possibly) meaningless "Beautiful girl". After a while, I noticed that some followers basically commented on every post, which was akin to casting a wide net on many women, probably hoping for a reply.

Instagram wasn't the only culprit. There are so many places to while away your precious time and life, such as Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. In small doses, social media is fun, but once it becomes obsessive and there are clear signs of addiction, I think it important to do a detox.

I believe that everyone has moments where we doubt ourselves and self-esteem is momentarily placed in question. Nobody is perfect. However, excessive use of social media tends to trigger unhealthy amounts of comparison with unrealistic standards, which can cause self-esteem issues.

Firstly, photos posted on social media are very curated. Only 1 out 10 photos taken make it to the Instagram feed (statistics not substantiated...but you get what I mean😜). This means no unglam photos, no accidental double chins, extra fats are hidden by a good photo angle, etc. I am guilty as charged! My social media accounts for both my guy and girl mode only show the best photos (of course my guy mode has way lower standards)

(Transgender Beauty Queen Yoshi Rinrada. Can you believe she was born male? Real girls will kill to look like this)

Secondly, we tend to follow certain accounts on social media. For crossdressers, these tend to be transgender beauty queens, beauty influencers, cosplay cuties and other prettier crossdressers in the community (as much as we hate to admit it, everyone wants to hang with the pretty and popular crowd). Seeing these beauties on a regular basis warps your sense on reality, making you think that such perfection in beauty is the norm. It simply isn't! Take a walk in the shopping mall and how many "Goddesses" do you see? Probably not as many as your Instagram feed. Yet sometimes I do the silly thing of comparing myself with someone like Yoshi Rinrada...it's almost akin to comparing myself with the Olympics Gold Medalist. The problem of comparison can be even more acute in crossdressers; after all, we are further from our ideal image, since we don't have real boobs, wide hips or other obviously female features.

Finally, images online are usually edited in some form or another, they simply aren't 100% real. Of course there are really beautiful people who don't need photo editing software, but most crossdressers have used apps to smooth out skin imperfections, sharpen the jaw, enlarge the eyes, and apply beauty filters. I do that too, just to make myself look slightly better, but it just means what you see is not the real Isabelle. With apps like "Faceapp", it is even harder to tell if an image is real or not. So comparing ourselves to images that have been edited and perfected to modern beauty standards...is kinda dumb.

After using social media a bit more heavily, I finally understand why an increasing number of 16 year old teenage girls face self-esteem issues. 

(Some days just kind of suck)

Even without venturing onto social media, I struggle with some self-esteem issues. My skin isn't the best, I'm not as confident as I should be, and I always feel like I should and could do better. But when I feel really frumpy or hopelessly imperfect, I try to recognise that I am in a rut and the only way out is to stop digging myself deeper into it.