Letting Go of Pretense
How dressing like a girl finally helped me feel like one.
Last March I wrote about a dissonance I was experiencing between the way I felt about myself versus the woman I know myself to be. Evidently I touched a nerve, as that post shot rapidly to the top of my Substack statistics page. A lot of people seem to have that same dissonance between feeling and knowing. A lot of people seemed to want an answer to the question why don’t I feel like a girl?
When I wrote that, hypothesizing that I only lacked practice, I was settling in for the long-haul. I spent well over 50 years practicing boymode. That’ll wear some deep grooves in your brain, right? I couldn’t well expect that to change overnight just because I put a skirt on or something.
Color me surprised—and delighted—to discover, just four months into presenting femme, that I already feel different. Better. Happier, and that is an outright miracle. I won’t say that the feeling fully matches the knowing, not yet, but it’s a hell of a lot closer than it was back in March.
I think I understand why it has made such an indescribable difference in my life, which is what I want to share today.
What is gender presentation?
Yes, yes, we all know that it’s the way you style yourself: All the clothing and hair or makeup or whatever else matches the general standards by which men and women typically style themselves. But deeper than that, gender presentation is a message: a signal of which category others should view us as. (This is its own deep subject, which you can dive into at that link).
If you are presenting in a way that aligns with your gender identity, you can expect it to feel comfortable and natural. Euphoric, even. If you are not—if you are trans and still presenting as your birth-assigned gender—you can expect that to feel at least mildly dysphoric, if not extremely so.
Aside from how it feels, if you’re a trans woman still “boymoding” like I was doing for so long, you’re also sending a message to the world that you know is not true. I spent a long time boymoding because I was still in the closet. I spent a good 18 more months boymoding both at home and in public because it just felt safer that way.
AGAB presentation is pretense
I had my reasons for boymoding. Girlmoding was scary. I wasn’t ready. That doesn’t change what it was: I was keeping up a pretense. I was lying to the world about who I am. About what category to view me as. About how to treat me.
And I would bet every single person who resonated with my “why don’t I feel like a girl” article also understands that the pretense is heavy.
God is it heavy. It takes so much work, minute after minute, day after day, to keep up that pretense. The physical side of it simple–you probably have the clothes already and know how to use them. The behavioral and emotional side, though? That’s hard. It’s so much work, filtering everything through the complex, arbitrary set of rules that constitute Acceptable Boy Behavior, or Acceptable Girl Behavior, in accordance with your assigned gender.
It means taking every situation and running a half-dozen simulations in your mind for what you might say to find something that isn’t going to accidentally out you. It means constantly monitoring how you’re holding your body, whether you’re smiling vs. nodding at someone when you pass them on the street. Whether you’re shaking hands firmly enough or gently enough.
It’s constant vigilance. It’s paranoia about screwing up. It’s a never ending drain on your mental and emotional reserves. It is method-acting to a brutally obsessive degree. It wears on you. It saps your life of joy, and it is fucking exhausting.
Over these past four months, after realizing that I need practice in presenting as my true self, I have leaned hard into feminine presentation. I’ve updated my whole wardrobe. I have rudimentary makeup skills now. I have an affirming hairstyle. I have earrings. I carry a cute purse everywhere I go. In short, I have added every single element of femininity to my presentation that I can possibly manage. I do it every day. Whether I’m at home or going out, I am as femmed-up as I can manage.
And I love it. I love giving the world the correct message about me.
It feels so good. It feels so free. I won’t say that it has made me happier, but it has enabled me to be happier.
The message is for me, too
Earlier this month, I worked as volunteer staff at a large convention. We were expected to wear these green t-shirts with the convention logo on them so that attendees could identify us as staff. The first day of the convention, I wore some women’s jeans and the staff shirt.
And to my surprise, I felt mildly dysphoric all day about my appearance. It’s no mystery why: the staff t-shirt was unisex. Nothing about it signaled “female”. And while I may indeed have been wearing women’s jeans, in our culture jeans are also unisex. For logistical reasons, I wasn’t carrying my cute, girly purse, but instead a unisex backpack. My outfit that day contributed nothing to an “I’m a woman” message other people could receive. So I felt dysphoric all day because I didn’t have my authentic presentation.
But I’m glad for it, because it made me realize what the point is of authentic gender presentation. It hammered home why I’ve felt so good lately to be presenting authentically:
Because presenting authentically requires me to let go of the pretense. Let go of the lie. Which also means letting go of the horrible, crushing weight pretense carries.
In other words, presenting authentically isn’t just a message for others. The message is for me, too.
Wearing the clothes and all the rest on the outside has a way of reflecting back into me. It lets my inner womanhood fly free. It lets me say and do whatever comes naturally, without any gender-filter, because there’s no worry of saying or doing anything that contradicts the message. In fact, the things that come naturally to me reenforce the message that my outer presentation sends.
Live authentically, feel authentic
That’s the point of gender presentation. Give up the pretense. Show the world who you are, so you can feel like who you are.
Judith Butler famously said that gender is performative. I’m saying don't worry about performing. In fact, let go of performance!
Boymoding for me was performance. Was pretense. In girlmoding, I let go of all of that. I can do what feels natural, because it’s not a performance. It’s just me being me, same as any cis person out there being themselves.
I’ve only been doing it for four months and already it’s incredible. The joy and liberation in it are difficult to convey in words, if not impossible. But I promise you, it feels wonderful, because finally, finally, finally, I am starting to feel like a girl.
I'm saving this post and sending it to every woman who ever asks me why I never wear pants. It says it all better than I ever could. Thank you.
I completely agree. No one mistakes me for a cis woman, which in itself is somewhat freeing because I can give up trying to "pass." I wear what makes me feel good. That ultimately achieves my other presentation goal - making my self-knowledge clear and unmistakable - since my tastes tend strongly toward flowery prints, big dangly earrings, and skirts. Two years in, I can hardly imagine how horrible it would feel to put on men's clothes again, even for a short time.