one last selfie for the road

Solid chance this is my last selfie to go out on "social media" as such, and so I hope you'll forgive a bit of nostalgia. Posting selfies, especially early in transition, was hugely important for me. For most of my life up to that point I had regarded my looks with suspicion if not outright hostility, and the selfie became the medium through which I began to take ownership of my appearance and develop a sense of style. The first time I looked at a picture I'd taken of myself and realized "oh. I'm hot" was a huge milestone for me.

Posting selfies to social media was an inseparable part of this. As my style became something I actively put effort and care into, having people appreciate it became a reminder that that work was doing something. It wasn't the dreaded numbers, it was the people: people whose taste and style I also saw and appreciated, people who I was friends with and people I just saw around.

When COVID began, I went from taking and posting selfies almost on a weekly basis to nearly not taking them at all. I no longer felt I had any reason to dress up. Wearing lipstick felt foolish when it would just get ruined by a mask. I wasn't getting any new clothes, because I hate having to remember to send back online orders I don't like. My trademark blue hair was growing out, because even after the vaccine made it feasible to be masked indoors with strangers I couldn't bear the pain of trying to find a salon that still required them. I didn't realize until my roots had overtaken me how much the blue had become a part of my self-image, how much it hurt to look in the mirror and not see the self in my heart.

Little by little, I pulled myself out of that hole. Although the pandemic is very much still present and I am very much still taking precautions, I found ways to allow my sense of style to flourish in between those precautions. I'll put on lipstick just because I feel like it. Liz took careful measurements so I could do online shopping with minimal risk of send-backs. Every now and then I'll even strap on a P100 respirator and go to a physical store. I asked around and found a local salon that not only still requires masks, but is queer- and disabled-owned.

And I started taking selfies again. I took selfies to give myself a reason to care about my appearance again. I took selfies as a reward for putting in the work to make myself look and feel good. I took selfies to send to friends, I took selfies to flirt, I took selfies with pals, I took selfies at beaches and forests and birthdays and the precious few weddings that were safe enough for me to attend. I took selfies to remind the world that I existed, and to remind myself as well. And many of those selfies ended up here.

This is the last selfie that I'll post here. It's also the first selfie that I'll post to my website. I've had a few websites before, but I've never had a website where I'd post selfies just for the joy of sharing my style with the world. I hope that there, too, people will appreciate it. I hope the world will remember I exist.