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December 30, 2016 12:37 pm

I feel a lot of connection and empathy for the transgender community because I have also always thought that I am in the wrong body. Like a lot of transsexuals, I feel like my body doesn’t match who I truly am inside. In the fact that, I feel like I’m one of those ‘old souls’. Let me be more specific, I feel like I am an old man in the body of a 30 year old woman. Now, I haven’t always felt this way. A while back, I used to feel like I had the mind and personality of an old woman. I think it was because I used to carry a lot of shopping bags, owned a bus pass and had a couple of random chin hairs.

Alas, now with the passing of time, a purchase of a rather durable backpack, an oyster card and a 6 week course of electrolysis, I feel less and less like an old woman and more and more like an old man, in my 30 year old medically female body. More specifically a grumpy, old man. To be even more specific, let’s just say, if Larry David wasn’t still very much alive, I would think that I was his reincarnation.

I am such an old man. I’m more of an old man than………my old man. I feel like such a freak but I do take solace in the fact that I’m pretty sure Maggie Thatcher suffered from the same neurosis and she was amazing because she could run the country and still have time to iron. A Woman who ‘had it all’.
Now, like an old man I hate endless, moronic, vacuous small talk-I’d genuinely rather have uncomfortable silences with people, I hate being made to sign birthday cards in offices to ‘Simon from HR’ when I have no actual fuck who ‘Simon from HR’ is, I hate being asked to put money into an envelope for a present for ‘Simon from HR’, I hate organised fun, I hate Christmas, I hate kids, (well I hate kids under the age of 18), I hate being told where to go and what to do and what time to do it, I begrudge my nagging wife even though I don’t have one, I identify with Larry David as I said, but also Charles Bukowski, Prince Philip and Arthur Smith because they say what they think. I also quite fancy owning a Shed; a place of sanctuary and peace, where I can be alone with my thoughts and watch old man documentaries about The Civil War. I am even a little bit racist. But the best thing is I get away with being racist, BECAUSE I AM AN OLD MAN.

Side note:
The race that I am racist against is the Human Race. I find it’s the Human Race that have been largely responsible for all the bad things that have happened throughout history. (With the exception of The Great Fire Of London in 1666 which was started by an Oven and cannot be blamed on the human race).

And we’re back on point:
Now I am aware that I am not the only non-transsexual person who feels like they are in the wrong body. A lot of footballers when they get caught cheating, the very reason they got caught cheating in the first place is because they were inside the wrong body. Also, a lot of women I know feel like they are in the wrong body. They have lovely large breasts and heavy hips and wonderful wide waists and lovely wobbly flesh and daintily dimpled skin and sexy sumptuous stretch marks and wonder why they don’t look like a Topshop Mannequin/ a malnourished French rent boy, which I believe was the official muse of fashion designers this year. Don’t these designers realise that stretch marks et al should be celebrated? I got my stretch marks from stretching at my fictional gym class, Stretchercise. So how can they be a bad thing?

Women’s Mannequins are literally disappearing. The other day I had to book an appointment at Specsavers after walking along Oxford Street and squinting so much in order to be able to spot the mannequins in the Selfridges Christmas Window Display. I felt like I was playing an interactive version of ‘Where’s Wally?’ which in hindsight was far more enjoyable than Pokemon Go.

You thought Size Zero was bad. Well, Size Zero is so last year. Its Size Minus Zero now. (But not Size Minus Minus Zero because that’s a double negative and so actually equals a positive, thank you GCSE Maths!) I went into Zara Kids the other day and the Mannequins were particularly small, I mean they were for kids but whatever. Personally, I just want to be a healthy size 8 – 10…………years. Yep, society has got me too. Body Con? It’s a con alright!

Our society is all about how women look and not about how women feel. If we and by ‘we’ I mean the Patriarchy (learnt that off The Guilty Feminist Pod, cheers gals), if the Patriarchy paid more attention to how women feel as opposed to how women look, then maybe there’d be less women with body dysmorphia, eating disorders, self-esteem and mental health issues. And there’d be less women who regularly drink a bottle of wine and cry, alone, on a Friday night watching First Dates.* Perhaps if we paid more attention to what women are thinking rather than how women are looking than maybe we’d be a society that places far more merit on intelligence and progressive thought from intellectually stimulating academic women like Egyptologist** Professor Joann Fletcher over a filtered to fuck Instagram selfie of duck face Kylie Jenner with snap-chat bunny ears.

Looks fade, brains grow, let’s evolve not disappear. What’s on the inside is just our wrapping paper. The real gift is inside.

(Unless you’re one of those stupid kids who prefers the box to the actual present.)

Happy New Year Y’all!!

*I don’t do this. Just an observation.
**I’m biased I am Egyptian.

 

PS- I realised all this from Anal Bleaching. So many of us focus on looking good on the outside. It’s actually more important to be beautiful on the inside.