Getting it wrong '09

....Or, Pride Comes Before a Fall.

....Or, Skirting the Issue,

What's black and white and read all over?

Answer: Jenny in a bad choice of outfit (except my top was rust coloured and not white but you know what I'm getting at.)

Now that I've lost a bit of weight, I can squeeze into clothes that were previously deemed undonable.  So Monday, feeling rather good about myself, I opted to wear a particular skirt that had been previously out of reach. I think it used to be one of my ex wife's, else I bought it as an impulse some time ago, because for a couple of years it resided in a pile marked one day maybe. Well today was the one day. So with a self satisfied spring in my boot step, I left for work.
It didn't last. A colleague while genuinely trying to be helpful, commentated that the skirt didn't help portray the right female image. I decided not to inform him strongly, that I wasn't trying to portray a female image, because I am female. I just wasn't up for an argument. My point would have been that he wouldn't have been said this to any other woman. I know I should challenge misguided comments but sometimes I'm just too weary, and he is a friend as well as a colleague. I must be in a sensitive mode because this played on my mind all day. 
Well putting that aside, on my way home I stopped off at Tesco's for some emergency rations (cheese) and some . Striding out of the store I spied a phalanx of teenage girls. My old Spidey Senses tingled, that I was about to be read. I hadn't had to call on this peculiar sixth sense for some time now, as I generally walk the planet as a work-a-day woman with little thought to my past gender, and despite my physical disadvantages don't seem to turn heads. However the old nerves came back and... Lo, it came to pass, that I came to not pass. I strolled past the girls to a chorus of sniggers, with the muttered low notes of "It's a man", while I totally failed to look nonchalant and unaffected.

As I said, it's a good while since I really had a problem with the being read/passing thing. I point my finger of blame squarely at the skirt. Actually it's not the skirt's fault. Sometimes a piece of clothing and me just doesn't gel. I got carried away and forgot the fourth rule of post transition living. Just because something feels good it doesn't mean it looks good. The whole trick to not being outed when you are 6 foot 2 and 20+ stone, is not to draw the second glance, and on that damp, dank, cold January evening I just got it wrong, and as a post transition woman getting it wrong is not an option.

The thought for today is : Complacency is the mother of humiliation.