I’ve always had a really rough relationship with underwear and other forms of lingerie.
When I came out as queer and trans in late 2013 I almost immediately found myself swept up into all of these expectations for my transition to center clear, and hyper-feminization. It was as if as soon as I announced I wasn’t a boy, that I was feeling like I might be trans, that there were these expectations that my journey to “womanhood” had begun.
I mean, that’s what the narrative had been around then. Every story, major activist, movie, book, etc. just continuously showed that transgender people were “trapped in the wrong body” and transitioned medically and surgically to “the other gender”. So, that’s what I figure I must have wanted if I wasn’t the gender I had been led to believe I was throughout my life, up until that point.
So, I jumped into it! I would spend HOURS trimming and shaving the copious amounts of body hair all over my chest, stomach, arms, and legs, trying to erase literally any semblance of furriness from my form. I started wearing more and more explicitly feminine clothes, dabbling in make-up, buying any and all sexy lingerie that made my tits look a little bigger and my girl cock look a little smaller.
But deep down I hated it. I hated the grooming, the ingrown hairs, the rashes from me overdoing it in the pursuit of being “smooth”. I hated wearing make-up, the push-up bras, the tight pants and panties, the pain and discomfort of tucking my cock back so that there was absolutely no possibility of it being visible. Most of all I hated all the often toxic, gate-keeping expectations of transitioning “male to female” and that no matter what I did I’d never be seen as anything but a man to most people no matter what I did.
You know what I didn’t hate though? Sports bras! The more I found myself struggling with my transition, getting more and more frustrated with how people were perceiving me and pressuring me to change, the more often I didn’t shave and just hung out in sports bras. It was fucking amazing! I felt calm, I felt comfortable, I felt myself. Leaning into it more and more I started to embrace my little, hairy tits, and stopped trying to feminize myself, instead focusing on buying clothes that just made me feel queer, comfortable, and affirmed.
Not long later I delved into Tumblr with my first sex blog in Fall of 2015 and it was there I FINALLY started to find the terminology that made sense to me. Non-binary, genderqueer, gender non-conforming, gender fuckery, they all felt right to some degree. For a while genderqueer felt right, for even longer non-binary has. Lately I’ve been using labels even less, as generally I feel most comfortable as just Nillin, the not-cisgender queer [don’t’ forget, my pronouns are: they/them/their].
Anyway, TLDR: gender is hard and society is awful about it, gatekeeping sucks, we need more diverse gender nonconforming representation, and, sports bras make me feel cute, sexy, and hella affirmed.
Thank you for letting me share these rambling reflections with you. As a thanks, here are two of my fave recent pics of me wearing some cozy bras!
Click the graphic below to see more posts from other bloggers sharing the lingerie and underwear they feel sexiest in too!
I always appreciate your body image and gender related posts, thank you for sharing this one!
I was internally squeeing at the pics from simultaneous thoughts of how GREAT you look in your sports bra’ed glory and being happy for you being comfy 🙂 (me & my lorge boobs are sports bra fans too so there was a little of that in there too XD)
Down with gatekeeping! Thanks for adding to more diverse gender non-conforming representation, and yay for finding what’s comfy for you!
I too love comfy underthings and I refuse to be limited by stiff, tight, scratchy, overly structured lingerie – that’s not who I am, and clothes shouldn’t wear us, we should wear them! thanks for sharing – I love hearing about other people’s complicated relationships with lingerie!
“Clothes shouldn’t wear us, we should wear them!” I LOVE this haha. Very good point, yet still manages to be something I forget in pursuit of trying to look good for, or impress, others rather than being comfortable and myself. High fives for comfy underthings!
Great post and terrific images
Thanks, Jupiter!
I love your journey <3