Beauty and The Beast
And I’m both of them
I know you’re not supposed to say this, but I know I’m beautiful.
I’m not saying this because I’m a narcissist. I’m saying this because I sacrificed the possibility of a normal life to look like this. And no, I didn’t undergo any plastic surgery to rebuild my face to the modern standards of beauty, but I did undergo a transformation to achieve this allure.
Born as a boy, I behaved as a girl from a young age. Back then I expressed my girlhood in childish games, wearing glitter dresses and identifying with female characters. When I got older, that girlhood turned into secret womanhood. When I got home from school, I put on my mother’s clothes, stole her heels, and played around with her lipstick and eyeliner.
I used to spend my time in front of the mirror instead of doing my homework. I was obsessed with my reflection. She was so beautiful and I’d do anything to become her. And I did. The glass girl I saw in that mirror, is now flesh and bones. She’s a grown-up. She’s me and my transgendered history is in the past now. I’m just a woman. A beautiful one according to some. That ‘some’ usually being men.
Once I started wearing my hair long, my eyelashes black and my figure in skintight clothing, I quickly noticed how to grab the attention of the male sex. Once I became this perfect illusion, men started circling me like flies around shit. The image that is created in their minds is one of a beautiful woman. Maybe of Venus herself. It’s everything I ever dreamt of as a little human.
So I’ve dressed myself in silky skin and golden hair. I’ve swallowed estrogens and progesterones to curve my body to the right angle. I’ve painted my eyelids in glitter and reached my gaze upon men to draw them in like prey. But I’m not a perfect woman. I’m not even a real woman, according to some. I’m more of a Venus flytrap, trapping men with my feminine appearance.
I’ve just learned how to play the hide-and-seek game between the sexes so damn well. Me the one hiding, them the ones seeking because many of these men don’t know about my past and most of the time, I don’t find any reason to tell them.
Last summer, I went to a concert with an old crush of mine. He texted me out of the blue and I drove fifty minutes to meet him and his friends at a rusty bar. When I arrived, the five men eyed me down from my oversized jeans jacket to my tanned legs underneath the short vintage dress I was wearing. When I kiss each of them on the cheek, I feel their hands on my back. One of them compliments me on my perfume.
We head towards the stage and while we’re dancing and laughing on the guitar notes of some unknown live band, my old crush bends towards me and whispers in my ear:
“How does it feel to know that every man in this place is looking at you?”
I push off from him, a little surprised by the suddenness of the question. I raise an eyebrow, give him a tight-lipped smile, and take another sip of the lukewarm beer in my hand while keeping his eye contact.
How does it feel? Addictive. That’s the first thing that popped into my mind.
Honestly, I love men’s hungry eyes upon my flesh. I love how I see myself through their eyes. For a long time, it has fed a big part of my femininity. I believed that if I could conquer men, I could conquer femininity.
Partially, that was true. There haven’t been many occasions where I’ve felt more womanlike than the moments I shared with the opposite sex. On the other hand, you could say I got a bit lost in it.
Recently, I’ve been admiring my beauty through my own eyes again. I took the time to look into the mirror and see myself in the same way as when I was a child looking at my female reflection. Back then, I felt so much respect for her and, sadly, I’ve lost some of that respect on the road towards womanhood.
I want it back.
I’m writing this story from the passenger seat of my friend's car. We’re driving homewards from a weekend in Germany and while we drive out of town, soft-looking snow crystals drift down from the heavens above. The landscape, the trees, the roads, they’re carpeted in a thin layer of white fluff. The first snow of the year. I think “Now, that’s real beauty”.
I catch my distorted reflection in the window. It makes me think of beauty and the men I’ve dated. It makes me think of the strange man on the crowded subway from a while ago. He mumbled something in my direction in Italian. “Occhi belli”, he said, complementing my eyes. I know this because a boy I once loved was Italian and he used to compliment me on my eyes as well.
The funny thing, after all the layers I’ve shed, all the transformation I underwent, my eyes are the rare thing that stayed the same. There’s still watery deep blue, and it’s that feature that my beauty is centered around.
