Putting on black nail polish used to be the highlight of my week in the early days of transition and way before I came out. I was never good at it, but I liked how it looked on me and it felt like a way to get control back in my life in one of the few ways that I could.
Now HRT has done some pretty nice things to me after three years and I don’t feel as connected to nail polish, and everything I didn’t like about it feels much more of a pain. Like that it’s expensive, that it can be a mess, and after a decade, I still always miss my nail bed and get paint on my skin.
I do still like taking care of my nails. I enjoy filing the shape just right and exfoliating them and moisturizing to keep them healthy. That’s all fine.
But then I get the intrusive thoughts that I’m not femme enough or not alt enough if I don’t wear black nail polish. Of course, I know that’s not true, but it is what my brain tells me. So that’s kind of where I’m at.
Yeah, definitely normal. I played with a lot of traditionally femme things at the start of my transition, cause I didn’t know what I liked and had been denied the exploration my cis peers had in adolescence. I don’t wear makeup much anymore for the same reasons. Things can be affirming at first and then you grow out of them and it doesn’t have to mean anything, other than you’re growing. Same thing with bras; they used to be real affirming to wear, and the sensory feeling of having something on my chest was a relief. But I’m 7 years in and a bra is something I take off immediately when I get home because it’s annoying.
Look around at the habits of women in their 30s and 40s and you’ll see a lot of us have let go of many of the femme high effort stuff fall away. Some of it is still fun on occasion but the daily effort is just not worth it