peacehawk wrote: »

For me, the first time I went to the Michigsn Womyn's Music Festival transformed my perceptions of beauty. There were women of all shapes, sizes, ages, abilities and styles states of dress. I vividly remember a few different moments of perceptual transformation for me.

The first one was while i was walking down the path alone, and an older woman was walking the same path in the opposite direction. She was thin, with long grey hair, wrinkles, and one saggy breast where her other breast used to be, she proudly wore her mastectomy scar like a badge of honor. She took my breath away with her beauty.

The second moment was during one of the workshops. I can't remember the purpose of the workshop, but I remember the opening excercise. At that time, I was very, painfully shy and I almost walked away when I found out what the excercise was. All of the women got into a circle, and one at a time, we stepped into the center, and sang our name. The other women sang it back to us, and we were supposed to dance to their song of our name. The most beautiful and joyful dance I saw was a woman who weighed probably over 300 pounds, and she was in an electric wheelchair. She spun and swayed and laughed and soaked ip the circle's energy.

The third moment was when a beautiful German woman saw me sitting alone, and asked if she could take my picture. She was hiking her way across the US and was hoping to sell her photos when she returned to Europe. She saw beauty in me where I could find none.

This August is the 40th and final MichFest. If you can go, do. I can't go this year, I wish I could one last time.

What a beautiful experience, @peacehawk . Fantastic workshop. The last moment was touching but all of these are great. What an eye-opening experience it must have been! I hope that you learn and know of your worth and see your beauty.

I am queer by some people's standards (I am male bodied, like men, but only if it is with me being physically female (post-SRS)) and definitely gender queer so I guess I can add something.

It took me a long time to come to terms with my body. Being a transsexual has got to be one of the most severe cases of body dysmorphism a person can go through. My very first attempt at losing weight actually ended with a suicide attempt. The more the fat went away, the more of a body I didn't want was shown to me. This was early in my journey and back then I was so full of doubt, fear and ignorance .

It took me a while, but I finally learned that if I was ever going deal with the world at large, I had to deal with myself first. And I am not talking about my outsides. I had to gain self acceptance and I knew it had to be without any outside change at all.

Again, there was no magic pill. A lot of time passed and in my journey I slowly started building up myself. I would smile at myself when I looked in the mirror. I lingered on every single time I felt good about myself, no matter how small. I was active in seeing people's negativity for what it was, their own insecurity about themselves. It took forever, but I eventually saw myself as I am. And I am a proud of who am. Do I still have moments where I feel ugly or doubt myself? Sure, but they are temporary.

I don't have to deal with unwanted attention (yet!), but I do have to deal with people's perceptions. As I said I try not let it effect me, but I do want people to see me for who am. If people react to me as man I don't feel slighted, but I do think what it was that they saw that pointed them to that conclusion. Mostly I guess it is my height and shape and I can change the shape to a degree, but that is a slow process.

So all that to say I deal with it by becoming as self confident as possible. By constantly reinforcing what I know about myself and being proud of it. And if I am not proud of something in myself then facing it and doing what I can to make me better. And it is easy to say all that, but it isn't as simple as wishing it. But nothing from inside of us beats constancy and time.