Effeminate

I try to balance out my sex (which is the most likely suspect for why I impulsively speak with an annoyingly-high-pitched headvoice and why I'm so little and why my features are so rounded o__0) with things about my presentation I can control like my clothes, hair, and body language (to a degree). I suspect it works sometimes, but my voice seems to get read as female most of the time no matter what I look like, so no matter what strangers might be thinking I feel like I get read as female a lot. Which results in me being a touch paranoid about that and makes every "she" I hear in reference to myself hurt (versus every "he" making me want to grin.) Both of those readings are incorrect--it's not the genders themselves, it's that hearing "she" so often makes anything else feel like a small victory (of course, knowing that if someone does use "he" it's because the things about my appearance I have more control over have the biggest influence on their perception also helps.)

All that said, my taste in clothes--even on me--can be pretty fucking effeminate. I used to wear miniskirts and lipstick all the damn time, especially when I was 16 or 17. And I actually kind of miss that.

Part of why I don't dress that way so much anymore is because I've just become more fastidious about coordinating my outfits and the quality of my clothes--I got rid of my plaid miniskirt a long time ago because it was crappy Hot Topic quality, and I basically ruined my [heavily faded] black one after trying to re-dye it last summer. Which leaves me with a black-and-highlighter-orange cheerleader skirt (probably from my old high school before they switched from pleats to those pencil-skirty things.) I do not own anything else in highlighter orange, nor do I want to.

Meanwhile, I have more difficulty wearing longer skirts (knee length especially). Ditto for dresses even if they're minidresses, because they're always cut so I can't wear a binder with them and have it look decent. At first I like them, but by the end of the day they make me feel like a girl, which feels horribly wrong and makes me feel vulnerable and uncomfortable (ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with feeling like a girl if you actually identify as one or just like feeling like a girl, of course. I don't, so when I start to feel like one it creeps me the fuck out.) Maybe I won't feel this way when I wear a petticoat. I hope not. I liked the squaredance petticoat I used to wear as a skirt that I got rid of because the fabric around the waistband looked gross and the elastic was wearing out so I kept having to pull it up, at any rate.

I kind of want to start wearing eyeliner and lipstick again, too. I stopped doing that more because it was troublesome and I had enough difficulty making the bus on time in the morning (wheee commuting to the U for morning classes from the suburbs o_____o.) And most of what I have is either crappy quality or too old to use or both. So that's more of a practicality issue--I don't feel like I have the time, and I don't really have the money to buy more product right now, either. Can be worked around, though. I was fucking cute in lipstick most of the time, so it might even be worth it.

*re-reads above* And maybe--just maybe--if I put "fucking" in front of every feminine-connotated adjective I use to describe myself it'll ward off potential dysphoria from being read as female.