sandra-leigh
09-02-2009, 10:58 PM
I think I've mentioned that I often go out "gender-bending", wearing clothes that are feminine but not "too feminine", showing my bust (form created unfortunately), but not "too big". That doesn't mean I don't wear some of my large forms (e.g., size 8 asymmetrics -- about a DD), but the fabric of the top is chosen so that when I'm standing still, there is some swell but not to the obvious "He has boobs!" point -- no tight shirts when I'm gender-bending, for example, not even if I'm only wearing my size 4 asymmetric (small side of C cup, but B cup bras are always too small for them.)
Last time I was at my GP, he wanted to talk (I was just wanting a short visit to mention a couple of items and get out of there.) He was asking me why I don't dress fully female (colourful clothes, obvious dresses, whatever) even without a wig, if I am TG. Now I've been emphasizing to him that I don't feel TS, but he's been telling me things like "you should just go ahead and start dressing full time at work; they won't mind at all, you'll be so much happier and more productive that they'll be happy to see the change." A little bit naive sometimes, he is. Well, a lot naive. :sad: My therapist said that doctors tend to see things in terms of black and white, and having determined that I have an inner brain conflict in this area, he wants to cure me / relieve me of that conflict by having me dress. Me, I have to worry about my next work assignment when my current boss retires (soon-ish); about whether people at work will still talk normally to me, about whether they'd be willing to start new projects with me... and of course, about how my wife would feel about my dressing at work (I don't think the possibility will go over well :straightface: . She's tolerating now, but Not Talking About It currently :( )
Anyhow, my reply to my GP about the not dressing too obviously was that there was some internal (variable) dividing line for me, that some things I see as "too feminine" to wear as trangendered. I look about that as a matter of more than 45 years of social habits of "being male", and as intuition about social acceptability -- and, non-trivially, as being related to self-confidence, which in turn is related to practice: if you haven't been out in public wearing something obviously femme for awhile, you tend to start out more conservative and "plausible deniability" and "just a little left of unisex"... and work your way to the less conservative and more obvious.
His reply on that issue was that I probably had some Multiple Personality Disorder, that I had a brain configuration that was comfortable "fully dressed" and a different one that was comfortable partly dressed but not fully so, and that what I was doing was switching between them. He told me to do some wiki research on MPD and said that it was easily treatable to form an integrated person. But my intuition is that MPD is unlikely to be the situation in my case.... just because you're willing to put on a nice but simple skirt "as a guy" but not a fancy one unless you are fully done up doesn't say "MPD" to me: to me it says "You have a lot of life experience that you have to process before this is something you'll feel comfortable with" -- and I've only been knowingly cross-dressing just less than five years.
So... in accordance with my theory, I decided that I would challenge myself more, wear things that were more obvious, and "acclimatize" myself to them, to being the kind of person who can and will wear more obviously female clothes even without wig and makeup. Thus, on Monday, I slipped out of the house with normal(-ish) clothes (well, female clothes but ones I wear at work), paused for a moment in our garage and changed into a very simple {but quality} chocolate brown dress... walked up through the neighbourhood that way a couple of blocks to a major bus route, and took the bus (while wearing the dress) to downtown very close to wear I work, went into the department store there, bought a number of knee-highs, was in the regular "lady's hosiery" cashier line-up, disputed the price, had women line up behind me... and no-one cared (other than to the extent of the routine inconvenience of anyone waiting while a price dispute ahead of you is ironed out.)
Today, Wednesday, I deliberately picked out one of my most obviously female skirts and a short-sleeved top that was tight enough that my bust was more obvious than usual, put my pants on over my skirt, and then (mother-in-law's caregiver safely upstairs) just before leaving the house, took off the pants and stuffed them in my bag, so I left the house in an obviously female skirt and top with a apparent "typical sized" woman's bust (you know, the kind of size an average woman would have if she is neither trying to hide nor emphasize the fact that she has breasts -- where the top visibly goes out and over and comes back in underneath, but the result isn't intended to be "Clearly I have a bikini figure underneath this top, but I'm covering it over to pretend to be modest about it!".
I jogged from home to the bus stop (not far at all), bus came about 45 seconds later, I got on... no obvious consternation from anyone (though I think some people did notice.) I transfered to another bus to downtown (had to hurry in a long skirt for that, but made it.)
Downtown, I went in to the soup & sandwich place that I often go to, have been going to for years -- I've been in before a bit gender-bending, but this was the first time I've ever been there blatant about cross-dressing. No-one there (customer's included) appeared to care, and it was very close to their peak period too, so it wasn't just one or two people. And now I'm "out" to one of the few remaining places that I have avoided being obvious at "because they know me".
I was running low on time, so from there I went across the street to the previously mentioned department store, changed into my "work clothes" in a bathroom there, and headed to work.
I did end up wearing my smaller forms all day (which I've done before, but in tops that hide them a bit more), including when I went to pick up my cheque... I pushed out my shoulders a bit as I walked and I didn't get too concerned that someone might see a bit of roundness. Could be moobs for all anyone at work knows... I saw a shirtless guy on the street last week whose moobs were bigger than my smaller forms, and No, he wasn't "fat"... just looked like maybe he worked out.
I would not say I wasn't anxious at all about wearing an obviously female skirt "in guy mode", but I wasn't as anxious as I expected. I've been out (including on the bus) in colourful skirts before; this time I just didn't have the wig on, and I know the wig is more symbolic to me than "necessary". Though it is true that without the wig I didn't feel as "female" as I would have if I had been wearing a wig. In a way, the wig symbolizes "giving myself permission" to be more female. But at this point we're starting to get into the psychological differences between what one is willing to wear in what circumstances, vs how one feels wearing those things.
Which is related to an important point some of my private correspondents have been raising: it isn't the clothes themselves that make you female, it is your inner state.
I guess at present, I still need the "crutch" of the clothes and the wig to access or unblock parts of my femininity -- but I was at least right that it isn't that I "cannot" wear obviously female clothes as a TG, that that particular boundary of what I usually do wear is more about social habits and concern about public reaction and not having built up the confidence. My "These are the right clothes for ME" projected aura is on the weak side now-a-days, especially as I have done very little obvious Dressing in 2009 (my wife isn't so comfortable with me fully Dressing and doesn't participate -- and I've been refraining from going to events because I don't like to leave my wife at home feeling like she's stuck caring for her mother while I'm out having fun.)
Last time I was at my GP, he wanted to talk (I was just wanting a short visit to mention a couple of items and get out of there.) He was asking me why I don't dress fully female (colourful clothes, obvious dresses, whatever) even without a wig, if I am TG. Now I've been emphasizing to him that I don't feel TS, but he's been telling me things like "you should just go ahead and start dressing full time at work; they won't mind at all, you'll be so much happier and more productive that they'll be happy to see the change." A little bit naive sometimes, he is. Well, a lot naive. :sad: My therapist said that doctors tend to see things in terms of black and white, and having determined that I have an inner brain conflict in this area, he wants to cure me / relieve me of that conflict by having me dress. Me, I have to worry about my next work assignment when my current boss retires (soon-ish); about whether people at work will still talk normally to me, about whether they'd be willing to start new projects with me... and of course, about how my wife would feel about my dressing at work (I don't think the possibility will go over well :straightface: . She's tolerating now, but Not Talking About It currently :( )
Anyhow, my reply to my GP about the not dressing too obviously was that there was some internal (variable) dividing line for me, that some things I see as "too feminine" to wear as trangendered. I look about that as a matter of more than 45 years of social habits of "being male", and as intuition about social acceptability -- and, non-trivially, as being related to self-confidence, which in turn is related to practice: if you haven't been out in public wearing something obviously femme for awhile, you tend to start out more conservative and "plausible deniability" and "just a little left of unisex"... and work your way to the less conservative and more obvious.
His reply on that issue was that I probably had some Multiple Personality Disorder, that I had a brain configuration that was comfortable "fully dressed" and a different one that was comfortable partly dressed but not fully so, and that what I was doing was switching between them. He told me to do some wiki research on MPD and said that it was easily treatable to form an integrated person. But my intuition is that MPD is unlikely to be the situation in my case.... just because you're willing to put on a nice but simple skirt "as a guy" but not a fancy one unless you are fully done up doesn't say "MPD" to me: to me it says "You have a lot of life experience that you have to process before this is something you'll feel comfortable with" -- and I've only been knowingly cross-dressing just less than five years.
So... in accordance with my theory, I decided that I would challenge myself more, wear things that were more obvious, and "acclimatize" myself to them, to being the kind of person who can and will wear more obviously female clothes even without wig and makeup. Thus, on Monday, I slipped out of the house with normal(-ish) clothes (well, female clothes but ones I wear at work), paused for a moment in our garage and changed into a very simple {but quality} chocolate brown dress... walked up through the neighbourhood that way a couple of blocks to a major bus route, and took the bus (while wearing the dress) to downtown very close to wear I work, went into the department store there, bought a number of knee-highs, was in the regular "lady's hosiery" cashier line-up, disputed the price, had women line up behind me... and no-one cared (other than to the extent of the routine inconvenience of anyone waiting while a price dispute ahead of you is ironed out.)
Today, Wednesday, I deliberately picked out one of my most obviously female skirts and a short-sleeved top that was tight enough that my bust was more obvious than usual, put my pants on over my skirt, and then (mother-in-law's caregiver safely upstairs) just before leaving the house, took off the pants and stuffed them in my bag, so I left the house in an obviously female skirt and top with a apparent "typical sized" woman's bust (you know, the kind of size an average woman would have if she is neither trying to hide nor emphasize the fact that she has breasts -- where the top visibly goes out and over and comes back in underneath, but the result isn't intended to be "Clearly I have a bikini figure underneath this top, but I'm covering it over to pretend to be modest about it!".
I jogged from home to the bus stop (not far at all), bus came about 45 seconds later, I got on... no obvious consternation from anyone (though I think some people did notice.) I transfered to another bus to downtown (had to hurry in a long skirt for that, but made it.)
Downtown, I went in to the soup & sandwich place that I often go to, have been going to for years -- I've been in before a bit gender-bending, but this was the first time I've ever been there blatant about cross-dressing. No-one there (customer's included) appeared to care, and it was very close to their peak period too, so it wasn't just one or two people. And now I'm "out" to one of the few remaining places that I have avoided being obvious at "because they know me".
I was running low on time, so from there I went across the street to the previously mentioned department store, changed into my "work clothes" in a bathroom there, and headed to work.
I did end up wearing my smaller forms all day (which I've done before, but in tops that hide them a bit more), including when I went to pick up my cheque... I pushed out my shoulders a bit as I walked and I didn't get too concerned that someone might see a bit of roundness. Could be moobs for all anyone at work knows... I saw a shirtless guy on the street last week whose moobs were bigger than my smaller forms, and No, he wasn't "fat"... just looked like maybe he worked out.
I would not say I wasn't anxious at all about wearing an obviously female skirt "in guy mode", but I wasn't as anxious as I expected. I've been out (including on the bus) in colourful skirts before; this time I just didn't have the wig on, and I know the wig is more symbolic to me than "necessary". Though it is true that without the wig I didn't feel as "female" as I would have if I had been wearing a wig. In a way, the wig symbolizes "giving myself permission" to be more female. But at this point we're starting to get into the psychological differences between what one is willing to wear in what circumstances, vs how one feels wearing those things.
Which is related to an important point some of my private correspondents have been raising: it isn't the clothes themselves that make you female, it is your inner state.
I guess at present, I still need the "crutch" of the clothes and the wig to access or unblock parts of my femininity -- but I was at least right that it isn't that I "cannot" wear obviously female clothes as a TG, that that particular boundary of what I usually do wear is more about social habits and concern about public reaction and not having built up the confidence. My "These are the right clothes for ME" projected aura is on the weak side now-a-days, especially as I have done very little obvious Dressing in 2009 (my wife isn't so comfortable with me fully Dressing and doesn't participate -- and I've been refraining from going to events because I don't like to leave my wife at home feeling like she's stuck caring for her mother while I'm out having fun.)