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=== setbacks and toxic positivity
everything worked out the with the mirror i mentioned previously. i found another one that was also cheap, it only magnifies on one side, and the first one i got is very useful when i shave.
i have a bigger setback now, and im doing my best with it. i also want to talk about toxic positivity.
its okay to be an optimist. in the long run, i still have some faith in humanity and i acknowledge the things that make it look like we are a doomed species, but i think we have a chance. you dont have to give up on the human race yet.
theres a particular kind of optimist i really cant stand, and you dont have to either. these are the "positivity" types who insist "there are no real problems" and one of their big goals in life is to dismiss all your concerns and say youre just overreacting. i think this is largely a female phenomenon (or at least men tend on average to do it differently) but corporations do it too. its a very self-serving form of "positivity."
there are people who are doing this just to cope with something, and im not entirely unsympathetic to those, but its sort of like the ecumenical, agnostic version of people whose answer to everything is "oh, you just need jesus" or "oh, just pray about it-- thats what i do." yeah, thats great, when that doesnt work and youre falling apart, wouldnt it be nice if someone actually cared instead of just telling you none of your problems are really real?
its not that im the authority on "toxic positivity", i dont know if im even doing it justice here, its more to the point to say that i love the phrase itself ("toxic positivity!") because it sums up a nasty thing that some people do, and i hate it.
the only reason i bring it up though is that a lot of what ive written here tries really hard to focus on the positive-- and thats deliberate, but i try to maintain complete sincerity while doing so. and im not trying to pretend (or portray) that everything is easy.
just when i find myself (a process that lasts a lifetime of course) and im trying to spend as much time as possible being girly-- note this is for me as a person, its not relevant to when i go out because i dont present as female when i do-- i get a mirror that lets me look at the back of my head for the first time in five years.
...oh.
so i wouldnt say i hate my hair, though it is fairly fine (as in narrow, but if i say "thin" that means something else, but we are getting there) it looks okay enough in the front and on the sides.
its a bit thin in the back now. i can tell you with what ive learned that i do not actually have a bald spot, but its so thin in one area it nearly might as well be one. its pretty bad looking, though some sweet people i know are very kind about it.
i tried some vitamins, but i still feel like the most realistic plan is shaving it and getting a wig. drastic? sure, but ive seen enough people in wigs ranging from cheap (like a halloween costume) to gorgeous (suitable for a runway show) and i believe in wigs, at least in terms of appearance. i havent worn one since i went as garth from waynes world more than 15 years ago. that was a cheap one. i wish i had that one now.
the most reasonable thing to do, indeed the advice i would give to you, is to wait until you have the wig. i dont have the wig yet. i should really leave it be for now. but ive shaved my head before... ive even dated women that looked beautiful bald.
i dont think i would look very pretty as a bald woman-- but i guess it depends who you ask.
nonetheless, i decided there was one immediate thing i hated more than the prospect of baldness, and that was waiting to see how i fared as a woman without (99% of) my natural hair. i wanted to be brave and crazy. this really isnt an easy thing for me, the timing is awful, but as far as things go with my hair right now-- im okay.
it was rough at first, and i thought it probably would be. part of what really makes me pretty is long hair. its not that i dont love short hair on women-- i LOVE short hair on women. ive seen short hair (and love it) on the biggest crushes i have lately. but this is my hair, and i never loved it short. okay, there was one time.
i had a plan of course, and youll learn the plan and how it went right now-- the first step was to shave my head. then to get a hat. so i trimmed it down about as short as it would go-- i didnt want to go clean-shaven (though ive tried it before) because i was going for the millie bobby brown look. ive never actually watched that show, i guess her hair has grown out now, but because of bad lip reading on youtube i know her as a nearly (but not quite) bald girl.
i also know from experience that extremely short hair provides so much traction that you could stick a book on top of your head, and it wont slide off even if you bow. or close enough.
i found a hat, im happy with it and it should get me through the winter. because i didnt go for a clean shave, its plain to see that i dont have an actual bald spot. its just too thin in the back. i dont want to mess with extensions or anything like that-- that doesnt feel like me.
to be honest, having hair that was thinning so much in the back (on the top especially, it felt almost like a bald spot) didnt feel like me either. it felt like my hair was older than the rest of me. if it had simply gone grey and not become sparse, i probably would have worked with it-- or maybe even tried it out as a natural colour.
as a plus, now my hair feels younger again. less attractive in my opinion, less girly for sure, but younger.
this will make any wig easier to appreciate, and it makes my hat very easy to love. i spent time thinking about this-- my first priority was if i would be okay, if the setback would be too emotionally difficult. ive been trying to be kind with myself, im not trying to turn around and bully myself instead.
so the first thing i did was put real effort into trying to guess if i would be okay. and when i had enough of a plan, and enough reason to think it would probably be okay-- at worst, not easy-- i really wanted to know (not just guess) if really would be okay.
so i went for it. and to be fair, it was pretty much about what i thought it would be-- the good and the bad. i feel younger, i feel a bit less girly, i put the hat on and i feel somewhat better. this was the plan.
hopefully the first wig i get will be nice enough, but im not counting on it and im not too worried. thats why all the other stuff matters.
as for the hat, i dont wear it all the time and when im not wearing it, its pretty tricky to feel im looking girly enough for my preference. i was hoping i would find a way to make this work-- and i did manage one thing that helps.
my favourite trick right now is the elastic headband i made when i trimmed it from the bottom of my second bra (technically a sports-bra-like top) because i wanted to try that elastic headband look (even when i still had hair) because i think its very cute-- the one where you push it closer to the top, which i think makes it very feminine.
so, guess what? when your hair is extremely short-- i mean so short that you are practically bald, and this may even work on a smooth bald head too-- that elastic headband gives me MOST of my girly feeling back as far as my apperance goes.
its a trick to be sure, but its a trick that works surprisingly well at a time when i really need one. i take my hat off, its less than great, i put the headband on, and it more or less completes the look im going for when i do the other things i do. the look just isnt complete without the headband anymore. but its good for girl mode, aka "real me" mode.
and i did it-- i got rid of the hair that was making me unhappy, and managed to do something that made me feel pretty okay with it. emotionally it was a risk, almost a kind of stupid (and unnecessary) thing to do when i did it, but i had just enough self-assurance to figure it would probably be okay.
and women who do actually look good bald made it a lot less frightening. its not that i cant look good with hair this short-- its just i knew it would be more of a challenge. and at a time when i really wasnt looking for "more of a challenge", i mean, i figured i had enough challenge. but seeing the back of my head and what had happened to my hair really pushed me to do SOMETHING. even if it was risky.
youll have to take my word for it i guess, but this isnt gloating. im happy that i averted a disaster for my self-image at a time when my self-image is carefully making its way as it is, but i was very aware of the possibility.
i made the points here that i did because i wanted to make them, and if youve ever encountered toxic positivity but never heard of it before i hope this helps you (so you can go learn more about it from whatever source suits your fancy) but the simple takeaway i wanted you to have was: it is freaking amazing how much a simple piece of elastic can help your self-image.
it really does make the whole thing look better. i dont wear it 100% of the time, but i try to wear it nearly every time i look in the mirror. speaking personally, its not that i have to look like a girl all the time. but i want to be myself, and if i dont look like a girl? then i look like someone other than me. which is fine in a way, or its as fine as a costume-- but i dont want to wear a costume all the time. i want to look in the mirror and see myself.
this journey really got started with lipstick. i mean, it started with a top, an absolutely hideous top that i dont have anymore, but the top made me want to try lipstick again (i had never been serious about lipstick ever before in my life, not even once-- wearing it a couple times as more of a joke, "haha") and when i started putting on lipstick i realised... NOT that i was a woman, but that my lips were decidedly female.
i dont mean that they look feminine (although as amab body parts go, my lips were nice enough for any gender really) but that once i had lipstick on them, taking it off made them look like-- someones lips other than my own.
they really look like my own lips, once i put lipstick on them.
so its kind of funny in hindsight that i was like, "oh, well, i dont really understand this, but even if im 'not trans', my lips seem to vote 'woman' either way."
and you can have that too, i mean, its one of the things that made me think i might possibly be non-binary. because female lips, i guess!
it took months of wearing lipstick and trying other stuff before other parts would vote the same way. most of the time they abstained, until i started with the bra... then a consensus started to develop.
for a while (since my previous post) it wasnt certain if my hair would withdraw its vote or not, but with the elastic it seems on board with the rest of me again. the hat helps too, though i think it helps slightly less than simply wearing a headband. obviously a lot of this is subjective, im only trying this against my own feelings rather than some pass-o-meter (a technology that exists, though i doubt it would be useful to me at the moment, if ever.)
its my feelings that im trying to please here, and im trying to be compassionate while staying honest with myself. but what i want is to look in the mirror and see basically what im looking for there. because thats what i was doing before. and despite the admitted setback-- a very real thing-- its (thankfully) what im still doing.
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<3 zara