Making mistakes

Learning happens by making mistakes. By falling down and getting back up. If you don’t make mistakes, you haven’t learned anything.

So it is with learning to express your femininity, whether you are cis or trans. Every teenage girl is  searching for her identity, and for ways to express it. She takes risks. She buys a pair of pants that seem to have some allure at the time in the store, but then she comes home and realizes: what have I bought now? Another pair of pants that never will be worn again. She visits her friend, and they try on each other’s clothes, and those of the friend’s older sister and her mother, and they giggle and laugh. And then they put blush on their cheeks for the first time, way too much of course, but who cares. It’s fun anyway.

I am incredibly sorry that I missed that phase. So many missed opportunities to fail, and to learn.

Anyway, I’m taking my second chance. I go for it. Initially I buy some things online, because I don’t dare to do that in the store yet. And then I conclude that those beautiful models look good with everything, but what about me? Well, I don’t… beh. In a later phase I go shopping in a real store, but even then it sometimes ends up in a failure.

And so, now I possess:

• a grey skirt suit with a wrong cut that turns me into an old-fashioned dull secretary
• a multicolored sweater whose colors don’t fit me at all. How did I know back then I was a winter type?
• ballerinas that just fit badly, and turn out to be ugly on my feet
• eyeshadow and blush bought in a hurry without any understanding and now they’re only suitable for Halloween
• a wrap skirt that requires a larger hip / waist ratio. Luckily, my daughter is happy with it.
• a little dress that turns out to be only suitable for the beach and I don’t fit into a bikini
• an underwire bra that doesn’t fit in any way so I can’t think about anything else when wearing it

Is that terrible? Sure not. Without making those mistakes I wouldn’t have learned anything. And besides, there are a lot of things I’m still super happy with, and get compliments for.

Failure – if not too often – is good. You can’t be happy if you never fail.

Learning is nice.

Learning to express myself as a woman is one of the most precious things I’ve ever learned.