Harry and Harriet

Although I'm not allowed to say things like this about myself (as it could be deemed "negative", and for some reason saying negative things about oneself is simply not permitted), I'm fairly androgynous in appearance.

I feel comfortable saying it because it's true - and has pretty much always been true.  When I was a kid it was true because most kids look like they could be either-or, and it's really only the clothes and haircut that gives it away.  As someone who had short hair, "dressed for action" and hated wearing pink frilly things, I never really looked much like a girl.

Then, when I grew up, I grew "out".  I've got broad shoulders which contribute to an hour-glass figure if I'm not carrying too much extra weight and I wear fitted clothes... but give me a few extra kilos and loose-fitting garments and I look fairly square.  Match that with a square shaped jaw, long arms and a bit of height (I'm 178cm), and I don't exactly look feminine and delicate.

I have a formidable skeleton.  I know saying you are "big-boned" is more or less code for saying "I'm fat and delusional", but I am actually big-boned.  I've gained and lost weight over the years, but even when I got sick and stopped eating properly for three months, I was never slender.  "Feminine" is a word you can rarely apply to me, and "delicate" is really more applicable to my grasp of reality.

There's the kind of androgynous where you could be a girl or a very pretty boy, and there's the kind of androgynous where you could be a boy or a not-very-pretty girl.  Unfortunately I fall into the latter category.  That's just life - someone has to do it, and it may as well be me.

I'm a bit ambivalent about it all, really.  On the one hand, I really, really hate being mistaken for a man.  Especially when I think I'm actually dressed in clothes that are reasonably girlie.  It happens less often now that I've lost some weight and started wearing more fitted tops (along with a good T-Shirt bra, it makes me look like I might actually have boobs), but it still happens from time to time.

On the other hand, I know that all I have to do is put on a baseball cap and a jacket and I suddenly become invisible.  It's very strange, but also very useful.  When I talk about going to places like Sydney or Europe on my own, people who know me get all fretful about me travelling by myself because apparently it's dangerous for a woman to be on her own.  But I don't really have any trouble at all.

I wear a cap and a jacket and I stride with purpose and sit without trying to be lady-like, and no one even gives me a second glance.  There's a kind of invisibility that men just have, and I can slip it on whenever I feel like it.  Then I take off the hat and carry the jacket while asking a question in my "female British tourist #6" voice, and people treat me with the same kind of kindness and helpfulness that they usually reserve for young foreign women.

It's probably cheating to play on it like that, but it works for me.  I've done it for years without really noticing, but a few years ago I realised what I was doing.  Now, when I need to, if I think it suits my purposes, I'll actually play the characters (which I've started thinking of as Harry and Harriet) on purpose.  Harry is really a non-speaking role - I just use him to walk through parks and city centres, and I tend to "walk strong" while I'm playing him, smothering any latent femininity I might have in my bearing*.  Harriet is for getting help and directions, and I've noticed I actually change the way I stand and move when I play her - I act more feminine when I'm playing Harriet than I actually am in real life.

So, I've come to see my androgynous appearance as something quite useful.  I'll never be the girl someone sees across the crowded room and thinks "my, she's pretty", which is a bit disappointing, but I guess I can live with that.  As long as I can look like a girl when I need to, I can deal with the rest.


*except when I feel the need to skip through a park, which does happen from time to time.  Every now and then, quite without warning, Zing! go the strings of my heart.