I think it's valuable and not discussed enough within the trans femme community how important it is to find your own sense of beauty thru dismantling the problematic beauty standards we've internalized throughout our lives and come to compare ourselves to as we transition. /1

What I mean by this is that many of us grew up exposed to the same toxic beauty culture cis women did however we also grew up attracted to (or at least expected to be) a idea of feminine beauty that is wrought with problematic assumptions and driven by capitalism culture. /2

This developed in many of us a reverence for that beauty that is damaging to us. We internalize it as the way women should look and as we transition and realize the reality is that most of us are unlikely to obtain it. Only a rare few do gifted with good genetics and the like. /3

However it is something many within our community strive for and so we disproportionately see stunningly, model-like trans women and continue to think: that's how we have to look. We let it eat at us that we aren't one of the rare few perfect beauties who can match that dream. /4

That is fraught with so many issues I can't even begin to dissect it. Putting that on a pedestal for ourselves is just plainly toxic. We live in a world where if you look around you'll see that 99% of the women in your lives look nothing like these rare few ideal beauties. /5

Yet this is who we come to fawn over and compare ourselves to, to a beauty standard that is outrageous even by cis femme standards. We all need to stop longing for and trying to strive for the unobtainable because it is unhealthy for us in so many ways. /6

It worsens our dysphoria, it drives our community to be fatphobic, ageist, and so for because perfectly beauties aren't old or fat or the like. It is a reinforcement of problems that even many cis women struggle with but is dramatically more amplified when trans. /7

Especially when our whole community collectively worships at the altar of falsely obtainable beauty. It is an exaggeration, a fiction, a dream we punish ourselves for not being able to realize in ourselves and so I can't blame any of us for feeling the way we do about it. /8

However there is liberation in eschewing it. In freeing yourself from that false standard and taking a hard look at other women and seeing the beauty each of us possesses. How often do we see beauty in each other and acknowledge it but refuse to see it in ourselves? Too often. /9

We need to as a community continue to push for internalizing that and reinforcing that and striving to help each other crawl out of the self-loathing spiral of beauty comparison to a false idol of femininity.

Take my hand, let me help you.

You are beautiful. Yes, you. /~ fin

Addendum: if you think this is a subtweet aimed at you. Guess what it probably is. I love you, you're already pretty, stop dismissing the beauty you already have.