MeghanIsMe

And last but not least, a friend of Miriam's (and mine) helped me (well really, she did the whole process) dye my hair yesterday. It's only the second time I've done it: my hair has always been deeply important to me, and doing things to it like that has been scary.

The first time, I asked the stylist to match my natural color. This time, I decided I wanted try going a bit red. I think I really like it. But just as, or possibly more, important than the color was getting rid of that gray.

Image below is a woman with light skin from the lower chest up. She is looking at the camera and smiling. She has small stud earrings on her ear lobe and upper ear. She is wearing a pink knit turtleneck top and pink and gold cat eye glasses. Her hair is a reddish brown shade and is swept down over her near shoulder.

Hey, is it transition Tuesday time? I don't know if I've actually done one of these, but I happened to see an old picture of mine and think it would be interesting to match it up with one from a week ago.

First, me in the Fall of 2015, looking, I think, very much like the leftist, vocally car-free, grad student in human geography that I was. I was about 60 pounds lighter than I am now and biked a few thousand miles a year. I loved that pair of jeans so much! Jeans were the first clothes that I actually started caring about when I started buying women's jeans with fancy washes or embroidery at thrift stores. I was identifying as agender at the time, because I'd decided, rationally, that gender was oppressive and I wanted nothing to do with it.

Second, me a week ago Monday. I'd just done my nails and my eyebrows, and was feeling excited about going out for the night. If I had known, really known, in 2015 that I could be a woman... *sighs* I dunno. I know the prevailing wisdom is that you can't tell someone they're trans, but I can fantasize about someone at least telling me that it's OKAY to be trans. That *I* can be trans too, not just those other pretty trans girls I kind of longed to be like, but somehow felt like I wasn't allowed to be. The 2015 me would have been *thrilled*.

For that matter, I really believe that the 2000 me, if she knew that I would be living authentically as a woman, would have been so very, very happy.

Look at how I'm doing the same head tilt... that makes me happy, for some reason 🥰

Two images:

On the left is a woman with light skin, visible from the knees up, who doesn't realize she is a woman. She is on the thinner side, and has a mustache and goatee, and long brown hair that falls down each side of her chest, about 3/4 of the way to her waist. She is wearing a black T-shirt with a blue and black monochrome design featuring tree branches, birds, and a pair of headphones. Her jeans are a light blue with a wash leaving white marks that make them look like a certain kind of cloudy sky. Behind her is a bookshelf full of textbooks, books on urban studies, camera gear, CDs, and a bandanna emblazoned with EZLN, the logo of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

On the right is a woman with light skin visible from the chest up. She is looking at the camera and smiling. She is wearing a peach top with a wide horseshoe neckline and a small base-down triangular cutout at the center. Her long dark hair falls over one shoulder and she has one hand resting in front of her upper chest and neck, with fingers spread to show pink fingernails. She is wearing light pink cat eye glasses.

( Pictures behind the cut )

I don't have any pictures with the new piercing because I don't seem to be happy with my face right now. But hey, I got new glasses earlier this month and I really like them!

I got these earrings at the Value Village here and they've become one of the pairs I wear the most. Even though they have gold and copper tones, they seem to go with a lot of things.

I have not been managing my eyebrows and want to start again, when I have a little more energy.

I still love the fact that estrogen has brought out freckles on my face and arms, even though sometimes (at some angles, or in some lighting, or whenever) I feel like it makes my skin look unpleasantly mottled and blotchy. I'm probably just being overly self-critical?

It's-a-me, Mario! Er, I mean Meghan!

I think the high ponytail helps, and maybe the little rhinestone studs I just got do too?