Lynne Jones – March 2025

It’s for anyone who ever felt they weren’t pretty enough when comparing themselves with conventional standards of beauty.  It’s inspired by my work with transwomen experiencing gender and body dysphoria and my personal experience. This was triggered by an interview with REDACTED.  Through the illumination process I acknowledged I’d been bullied, and I had repressed this because it was embarrassing. 

Beauty ideals reimagined

End of work signaled with a 5 o’clock bell
Chiming doom in her dysphoric hell
Like running from the Prince’s ball
Shes Cinderella, ‘bout to lose it all 

The feminine scaffold of the day
The gown, the glass slippers fade away
In its wake, in its place
A darkness obscures – her pretty face 

Anxious wait for her next pay day
In a beauty parlour half of every Saturday
Lasering her hair away
To obliterate hurtful things people say 

Sister, Sister you’re not alone
For me it’s also a contentious bone 
For all the plucking and waxing in the world 
Still don’t feel like – a beautiful girl 

It restricted how far I dared to go 
Worried if my moustache would show 
It made me want to turn my head 
Disappear, withdraw. Be dead. 

Mortified when he said “you’ve got a moustache” 
Electrolysis caused a painful rash 
Gender dysphoria a massive concern 
Self-harm or – accidental chemical burn 

Cos if you do not bleach it right – Fuck! It looks crazy and fluorescent under artificial lights 
Hair no longer grows from my armpits 
I’ll occasionally tweeze a stray hair from my tits 
And at the swingers resort it’s not a push 
To say I’m the only grown woman with a full-grown bush 

Everyone’s Shaved off their pussy hair  
They look like Canadian Sphynx down there. 
Once exotic and rare, it’s now the norm 
Now consider a – naked non-binary form 

Normalise the naked transgender body 
Not to be viewed as an oddity 
Non-binary bodies are beautiful and real 
Reimagine – conventional beauty ideals. 

I am cisgender.  It is the most common, accepted gender form in our society.  Richards & Barker (2013. P.60) talk about cisgendered attractive women as struggling to understand their own needs and desires, anxious about their appearance and demonstrating femininity to attract a person of the opposite sex often bound up with their relationships.  They may face issues relating to their gender roles and what is expected of them needing validation and approval of others.  Cisgender women can experience anxiety and depression, especially when children leave home.  Narrow ideals of feminine beauty can be problematic as women fail to achieve the ideal of “superwoman”, disempowered and placed as victims.  This is the frame of reference for writing this poem. 

Quote from interview: “I believe very strongly that everyone is OK just as they are.  There is someone out there who will really love your body type or the way that your body is, or the characteristics that you have, just as you are.” 

Feedback from Trans community: “The poem is really lovely; you can really sense the inspiration from taking your own experiences with interacting with and experiencing your body and talking to gender diverse people about their experiences too…Definitely keep writing and sharing your poetry and talking to more people about it for sure!”