Cold Chick

Truth be told, I never was a hot chick.

I just never had the body or the training for it.

Today, though, when I look in the mirror, It’s pretty clear the best I can achieve is being a cold chick.    Heels are out of the picture, my weight has settled and my skin has seen better days.

I once heard a woman complain that crossdressers were usually too dressed up as women.  She was seeing teenage girls in old male bodies and found the effect a bit over the top.

“Sure,” I agreed, “but who really wants to dress down as a woman?”

Women usually only have two modes, getting dressed up or just getting dressed.

Mostly  we just put on what we need to wear to move through the world and do what needs to be done, starting with comfort and functionality and adding just a bit of style.  We just get dressed.

The older you get, the fewer opportunities you have to dress up; fewer dates, fewer people to impress.  Dressing up just doesn’t work as well without a fresh, young body.

Some of the dresses were great at the Emmys, but I understood Kathy Bates; a long black tunic & trousers topped with a boldly painted monochromatic loose silk jacket.  Sure, she received an award and dressed up, but she avoided being mutton dressed as lamb.

I know that for many transpeople, the opportunity to regularly dress up very exciting and is a real motivation in their expression.   While they still have a trans heart, there is still a big part that is about the clothes.

At my age and size, though, not so much.

And it’s not like I can look back and remember when I was a hot young chick, desired and in demand, with my share of suitors.

I don’t have the experience of being a hot chick.   I can’t imagine truth that ever changing, which is not, shall we say, motivational.  The incentive to be pulled together is much less when you believe that there is a clear and finite limit to how hot you ever, ever can be.

The point of even trying to be hot escapes me.

Not trying, though, tends to make you invisible, irrelevant and powerless.

Heat is reflexive.   You feel hot when people respond to you as if you are hot.   That’s why so many women (and men) work so hard to look hot, so they can get the reception that hot people get in the world, can feel the heat reflecting back onto them.

My experience in the world is that I am a cold chick, beyond heat.

That understanding makes it difficult to heat up my life.