this morning i got my clippers out and shaved. well, 'shaved', i guess. i don't use a razor, because i found that it irritated my skin and made me get more pimples - contrary to what the video i posted yesterday might tell you! i'm pretty excited by the appearance of sidies, and it's fun that lots of people have pointed them out. it's also fun that i have rough stubble on the left side of my jaw particularly, and i keep rubbing it, like i used to rub my head when i'd freshly clippered it. what else is fun? hairy legs. looking down and going "wow" because they are really, really hairy. someone making a comment about my hairy belly the other day when i stretched and my top rode up. someone else looking at my chest and saying, "oh, yeah, it is spreading" about the hair there.
i'm growing all this hair! and it struck me today how extraordinarily, unbelievably different it is to growing hair when i was a teenager. each dark hair seems to affirm my sense of identity, feels like something to celebrate. when i was a teenager, each new hair made me feel sick with shame, and was something that i had to hide, pluck, cut. how different it is to feel like my body is slowly but surely becoming something more wonderful, to feel excited about the transformation, to feel comfortable with it. last time round it felt like something of a betrayal, made me feel awkward, self-conscious, ashamed, frustrated. this time it feels good, and it makes me happy.
this realisation makes me wonder how other people (maybe trans, maybe not) felt as teenagers? it's so odd and foreign to me, to be happy about these changes. until now i've never been able to conceptualise how puberty/adolescence might not be a totally traumatic and horrible thing to go through. i mean, i've never been able to understand before that despite all the teenage angst it might actually be possible for some people to enjoy growing pubic hair/getting their period/growing breasts. like . . . well, yeah. an affirmation, not a betrayal.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
I actually don't remember what I felt as a preteen/teenager about getting pubes/underarm hair/etc. It's weird (or maybe not) how blank my memory is around the time I started going through puberty. I have a ton of memories of being a happy kid before, and lots of memories of being an angry teen after, but while I know I can't have sprung a full bush of pubes overnight, for example, there is no memory of that in-between stage at all.
But I do have one memory of before puberty (I was probably nine or ten). It was one summer when I was staying for a couple weeks with my aunt and uncle and cousin. My cousin (two years younger than me) and me were in the truck with my aunt, and he and I were comparing leg hair and I remember being so pleased that I had hairier legs than him.
there is no memory of that in-between stage at all
i remember plucking my armpit hairs out. that hurt.
yay for hairy legs!
Are you using a nice razor or a horrid Bic thing?
i was using a gillette (sp) razor. i think when the time comes for me to get a proper kit, i will get an old style razor - single blades are meant to be less irritating for some people.
I liked female puberty. It was harmless enough, and meant I was Growing Up and my body was doing the same thing as everyone else's. I got tired of shaving all the bits and pieces after a couple of years, though. And then it started to get annoying because Society Says Wimmin Must Shave Their Underarms Or They Will Go To Hell.
I really didn't mind becoming a teenage girl. It was only after all the body changes were done that I found I couldn't deal with becoming a grown up Straight Woman.
Boy puberty is excellent because there's so much hair it's like "hahar, they tried to impose hairlessness on me, now they'll be *sorry!*"
haha, i was pretty hairy FOR A WOMAN anyway - i never shaved my legs, and i stopped shaving my armpits after i left secondary college.
it's strange, because i *knew* other people were going through the same things and that it was 'normal', but i just hated it so very, very much. i didn't realise it a lot at the time, but when those stressors (e.g. period) aren't there, my life is just so much better.
its Jak, i dont know hot to use the openID thing tho.
when i was a teenager i hated hair. i shaved or waxed a pretty big portion of my body all the time. i still dont really like hair. even head hair, i hate long hair. in summer i use clippers on my legs. when i started getting chest hair i hated it because it was just a few hairs here and there, but now thats its kind of uniform hair the same color and thickness all over my chest it doesnt bother me, i kind of like the way it looks now but if it was a choice i'd choose to have a totally hairless body if it didnt require maintainence. (but having a hairy chest covers my scars pretty well) i hate shaving my face, it feels like a horrible boring chore but theres no way i could have a beard either. hopefully by the time i'm as hairy as my father i wont be bothered by it anymore.
My female puberty came very, very late, and wasn't particularly dramatic-looking when it did arrive. I grew some fat on my hips, and the tiniest amount possible on my breasts.
I absolutely longed for a "proper" "womanly" figure, and waited for it to materialise. I thought larger breasts and my period would make me somehow suddenly feel happy as a woman. Even though, in myself, I liked the boyish shape I was - it was the messages from the other kids and the media that made me so miserable. I remember being so very angry at my impressive leg forests, as well.
When my period finally came, I don't remember anything apart from PAIN.
I'm only 20, and seem to still be finishing up with female puberty :-/. Maybe I am just hormonally weird - we'll see how my body responds to T.
I hated puberty as well. I didn't mind growing pubic hair at all, but i hated the attitude everyone had towards it - that it was gross, that *i* was gross if i didn't "deal with it" in the approved manner. I didn't see the need, honestly.
Periods were another matter. Hate. Haaaate. And growing breasts and realising that i had to go and get fitted for specially designed "breast cages". It made me feel angry and humiliated, especially cause everyone was wierdly proud of my body for doing this to me? "Oh, she's turning into a woman, how wonderful"... i wanted to vomit in their faces.
Indeed. I was looking at some women on the bus the other day.. and it suddenly struck me that they were perfectly happy with their bits.. and how.. strange that was, as a concept to me.
As for puberty for me.. I remember very little from the first time around too..
Post a Comment