Transcending Beauty

In 2020, Anita Ayres and Elizabeth Trojian produced a 46 minute episode of OutSpoken, dealing with the question of what beauty could be from a transgender perspective.
Filmed in 2019 in Southern Ontario, the show, which can be viewed on OutTV, featured interviews with Gigi Gorgeous, Amelia Maltepe, and Claire Barnier, in addition to a plastic surgeon, a trans-health specialist and other area trans women. 
One of the questions that came up was why trans women in particular felt the need to be beautiful
Many trans women said that being beautiful makes life easier for them to pass as a woman. Some were able to accomplish the look they wanted with makeup and hormones. Others decided that they needed something else: breast augmentation, hip augmentation, or perhaps even facial feminization. By being able to 'pass' they faced fewer problems societally and faced fewer difficulties in finding and keeping employment.

However, several of the women who were interviewed raised questions of 'whose idea of beauty are we aiming for' and 'is that really economically, physically, and psychologically  viable for all transgender women?" 

Just as other women, our bodies are all different. Some are short, some are tall. Some are thin, some are curvy. Some have short noses, others more angular. Some are hairy and some are not. There is no one 'standard of beauty.'  Perhaps, as one woman stated, trans women will lead the way in creating new standards of beauty that allow for all of the great variety of our bodies to be seen as beautiful. It's certainly something that I dream of. 

What about you? What does beauty mean to you?

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