I had a couple ideas for a blog post but couldn’t decide on one so I’m doing both! Getting it all out there for the last post of the semester.
I recently got a haircut and I was really excited about it. It’s a fun and funky hairstyle, one that looks fairly gender neutral (at least to me) and I was happy to finally be able to get a haircut after several months of letting it grow out. But I was somewhat dismayed when I showed my mom and she responded with “It looks so nice, it’s so feminine!” No thank you, that’s the opposite of what I want. I got this haircut so I could move away from the feminine perceptions that my previous hair
I wish I could fully separate aspects of my appearance from gender. I enjoy wearing makeup and wearing dresses but I am acutely aware of how I am perceived and gendered by others and how much I want to run from that. I mean who am I kidding, even when I dress more masculine I’ve never been called sir, I’ve never even been addressed neutrally, I’m very blatantly feminine and have never been mistaken as masculine. But at least I can pretend.
I have a lot of thoughts on the gendering of clothing and appearance, most of which are somewhat confused and probably not fully formed. On one hand I think about a world where no one is immediately gendered, where clothes are just clothes and your face and body don’t dictate how people gender you. But on the other hand, sometimes I want to be gendered. I want to dress a certain way and have those clothes read a certain way. But do I gain anything from being gendered at all? Like do I even need to be gendered by others? Why do my feelings about my own gender hinge on the perceptions of others?
In a similar vein, I’ve been thinking about my future and if I will be successful. I am entering a niche field that will require a lot of work to achieve and I am slowly realizing that I don’t think I have enough desire to put in that work. I would be happy with a regular 9-5 job where I can go home and have time to spend with my hobbies or my partner. I don’t think I have the fortitude to put in the 24/7 work required for starting a business. And I worry about letting people down, about being seen as a failure for not achieving my dreams and settling for a lower paying and less interesting job. But why should my success be dictated by what others think of me? I would consider myself very successful to have a steady job that I don’t despise and I have enough money for rent and food and maybe some fun activities. Just being sustained is successful in my eyes. Maybe I don’t have to have a very cool and unique job that takes up all my time and makes me tons of money, maybe I can just exist and enjoy my life.
To summarize, I probably need to care a little less about how others perceive me. Neither my gender nor my success hinges on what other people see as a successful career or proper gender presentation.
Unruly Bodies 
I agree, I do not understand why everything must have a label attached to it. Why can’t a haircut just be a haircut or a color just be a color? I like how society is slowly turning into gender neutral, because that’s how it should be in my opinion, equal and fair.
My advice to you is to embrace yourself and don’t hinge on the thoughts of others, because their thoughts don’t matter. Once you stop caring what everyone thinks of you, you will be free. It’s a long a difficult process to train yourself but once you achieve it life can be so much more enjoyable and better. We are all human after all, and I’m sure you didn’t get the haircut to impress others, you got it because it made you happy. Let your perceptions be your own & take others criticism as you see fit, but don’t let it eat you whole.
I resonate with this post a lot. I felt a lot of the same things you did early on in my transition, as it also happened to coincide with that quarter life crisis that is planning for life outside of college. The important thing is what you think about yourself. We are often too hard on ourselves. If that haircut is the way you express your masculinity, then it’s masculine, and no one can tell you otherwise! Also there are plenty of cis gender non-conforming people who dress in ways that may be traditionally thought of as opposite their gender, and trans people are allowed to do the same.