My gender is at the point where it either doesn't matter, or it's a 50-50 split between male and female. Or it's pangender. Or bigender. Polygender? I dunno, it's transgender at the very least. Anyway. My point. I can, and do, grow a pretty fully beard. A little thin on the cheeks, but other than that it's a pretty good beard. Over the last 8 months or so I grew my goatee out. It's about 3-4 inches long and at the point where I can braid it and it looks pretty nice. Eventually I'd like to have that in the foreground of a full beard, but the rest of my beard is only about 1-2 inches long, so it'll take a couple years to get to the point of looking like what I think a good beard looks like. And I love it. Like it. Enjoy it? I have..positive feelings towards it. Most of the time. Some back story. For a while (possibly continuing into the present) I've never been very adamant with myself about what my gender is. Boy, girl, both, parts, I dunno. Usually I'll end up with something that has it at least 50-50, if not more guy than girl. And I know that comes down to physical reasons. Obviously there's the beard thing, but there's also the fact that I have really thick legs and extremely broad shoulders for my height. Don't have an example for the legs, but as far as my shoulders, when I played football I was about 5'3" and used the same sized shoulder pads as other guys who were around a foot taller than me. Now, I know that size and shape don't define who we are and blah blah blah. I get that there isn't just one body type for boys and one body type for girls. To think that way makes no sense. However, there are certain personal psychologically reasons why there are times when I become incredibly susceptible to outside influence and basically use everything in the world as a way to shame myself. I've no control over it, and it blows. Back to the beard. I've had a lot of different hair(head and face) styles. I like expressing myself that way. But I always end up sabotaging whatever style I had going on because during one of those aforementioned shame moments, someone would say something about the way I looked, and I'd change it immediately so I look normal again. I've gotten better over time, where I know that the only reason I'm wanting to change is because of outside influence, but at other times it can be difficult, especially when someone outright says they don't like how it looks. I also have longer hair, which gets to why I even mentioned gender in the first place. Looking at only my hair, it's pretty feminine. Nice natural sheen, natural waves, natural curls, it's smooth. Taken by itself it's one of the only feminine qualities about me. But couple it with every other feature I have, and it just get's me a lot of comments from people. Right now, for example, I get a lot of 'hobo' comments on my appearance, even though I keep my hair healthy, my beard neat, and I dress nicely. Still, apparently "long hair+beard+man=hobo." Getting back to the body type thing, and really what this whole thing is about, if I had a smaller body I'd be all for shaving off my beard and being more feminine. But I don't. I have a midget linebacker body. Oh, and I'm not very masculine (as far as traits normally attributed to guys goes). Essentially, in my mind, my beard is one of the only things about me that compliments my masculine build, and without it, I feel I'd get more comments on my appearance than I already do. Feminine attitude + attempt at feminine appearance versus masculine build. I can either stay as I am now, keep the beard and stop trying for femininity, or lose all pretenses of trying to be a 'guy' and not give a shit about what people say. And as much as I want to choose that last one...it's always easier said than done.
