My least favorite colloquialism – often regarded as a cutesy term of endearment – is the term tranny. Please don’t look at this as inverted-transphobia, a thing that is all too common in our community. I have no problems with she-male, birl, hermaphrodite (even though inaccurate), or transvestite. I am perfectly comfortable with three-legged pirate, skirted tripod, or among war vets, the battle of the bulge.
But tranny, to me, is an insider term, most often used when someone has been read by one of her own or folks in the GLBT. The equivalent for outsiders would be a wary dismissal of “that’s a dude.” The term tranny itself is only mildly annoying, having known many acquaintances who are grease monkeys who actually logged in seconds at the quarter mile on the drag strip. No, it is how a tranny is easily read that sends paroxysms of extreme cringe over my senses. I guess I have my own deep-seated fear of failure, and being dismissed as a tranny is, in many ways, the grandest form of failure; it is as humiliating -if not more- than being called the N-word. (You know: “Neophyte” or even worse: “Newbie”)
So what puts her heads above an average transgirl you ask? For me, it’s the no-holds-barred, balls-to-the-wall approach to the mystique of feminine allure. Genetic women spend years in pilates, aerobics, yoga, gym, dance class, drinking organic water, cleansing, Neutrogena scrubbing, black-head-removing, second mortgaging the house for another year’s supply of Clinique. They wring hands, they cry, they call friends and rack up minutes on the cellie, they eat veggies without dressing and use hormone-free, soy based condoms only to stand before a mirror with a groan, “uh uh, no goddam way in hell am I going to pull this pair of jeans off.”
In contrast, the tranny bypasses all this grief with a magical crack of a beer tab, and skyrockets on the express lane to the upper echelon, above the 99.9 percentile hottie index (think Christina Aquilera or Britney at 16 squared). Even those girls, at that age, would blush at the thought of pulling off the outfits the tranny easily shrugs into without a second’s self-doubt. Even under ideal circumstances – meaning, a genetic woman at anything above the age of 20 – there’s next to no genetic woman who would dress like a prostitute or a schoolgirl for leisure. Sure, I know of a few genetic women who still insist on dressing the square root of their age. They’re not called trannies, instead, they are referred to as “not right in the head.”
Trannies often fail to consider that in our society, women have less mileage than men. Taking into consideration financial and career peaks – and these days with viagra- a man passes his prime in his late 60s. A woman, by contrast, is literally done for after 30. (I’m only the messenger, check Hollywood movie pairings if you don’t believe me). Now, a man in his 60s transforming into a woman in her 60s is shortchanging himself, but he can still recover by dressing like a respectable woman. But a 60 yr old man becoming a 60 yr old woman dressed like a 15 yr old girl can only end one way: Freak, squared. There’s a huge chasm between a 60 yr old woman trying to live her life with some dignity, and one who thinks she’s a bitchin’ barely legal hottie.
You know: the 7 inch micro-mini leather skirt, the 5 inch heels, and a tube-top that makes rubber bands look like kimono obi’s. They have all the hot makeup, the big hair, the tight clothes that maybe 10-20 teen girls in the nation could pull off – on a good day.
Only three minor inexplicable discrepancies.
1) You are four times their age.
2) You have the shoulders of an Offensive tackle and you are waddling like one in those heels.
3) It’s 20 degrees below zero, snowing, and still the 7 inch skirt is de rigueur.
I guess for me, it’s that certain delusional arrogance, that you have all the goods and that you are, indeed, all that and more. There’s no consideration taken in for the optical peace of innocent bystanders or even a commitment to one’s aesthetics.
It’s often said that girls dress for each other, but men dress only for themselves.
Is it any wonder why it’s so easy to spot a tranny?
