Trans Pride ⇌ Trans Shame
On Molly Landreth’s pictures of queer people:
…I see these people and in the photographs they are beautiful. They are not beautiful because they emulate cisgender ideals, nor are they beautiful because they are flaunting some sort of anti-establishment agenda, but because they themselves are beautiful. There is no need to fight the system, to act out to claim identity, or to conform to a certain sense of male-female binary. Their bodies, in-between and androgynous and out-of-sorts with the mainstream as they may be… their bodies are beautiful. Especially striking to me is that in these photographs, the eyes are not tired, not brow-beaten, nor distressed. Their eyes are proud.
The more I comb through these tumblr blogs, and the more pictures I see of trans- and gender-variant people, young and old, living their lives within the frame of photography, the more I see this beauty coming through. It is not garish or overstated, and while it sometimes comes garnished with flourish and panache it is still wonderful to see. Here in the photographs we see the true beauty of people who just are and in that sense of being give off this shining, gorgeous, calming presence that screams “I know who I am.” And in every picture, the same shining, proud eyes, framed in a body that is uniquely theirs.
(…)
Seeing these photos makes me wonder: when someone says that I’m pretty, is it becuase I make a good looking girl, or is my body - with the breasts and hips and big bones and broad shoulders and square face and brow ridge and penis and all - is that combination itself a thing of beauty? I also wonder, idly, if photographs of me show the same confidence, the same intense sense of a tangible identity, or if somewhere in between the occasional thoughts of Shame and passing privilege my eyes instead show deep struggle.
Is it possible for everyday people to step outside the male-female binary and see us as beautiful just for who we are? Perhaps. These photos display our potential, not just as interlopers in a binary world but simply as beautiful beings, independent of male or female. While we may attempt to pass in our chosen gender, and some of us may prefer not talking about our past, we are beautiful.
This thought, combined with the striking nature of these photos, makes me feel ashamed to have ever been ashamed of my body.Am I alone in this?
Read the whole post here.
