Personal Image

I haven't posted here in a while haven't I? Sometimes I think maybe a video platform would help everyone see what I was trying to convey how I felt about certain photoshoots. But for now since I have no skill in video editing and the fact I don't want people to see my crying face as I write this. Writing this post will have to do.

For years I  struggled with my image and originally thought it was because I didn't feel like I had a choice in what I could wear or not wear. I took a stand and decided to chop off my hair and dawn on anything I wanted. It ended up leaning towards tomboy fashion. The Asian tomboy fashion. I was so obsessed into being ambiguous down to the last chest binder I bought myself. When my family decided I should change back, I had so many fights with them about it until I probably strained the relationship. I had looked good, confident about myself and had a new outlook on things. After a while though, other things started to creep up and I suddenly felt that was not the core of my problems.

I gained weight so I couldn't pass off the Asian tomboy look with wider hips and the hairstylist I had insisted on her artistic spin, secretly telling me that I should go back to having long hair. Everything was working against me. I finally realized I was just tired of what was right in being a woman and I thought going the opposite direction would help. It did in some ways. But even then I wanted to fit the ideal of something else.

It took me two years to just realize and find out there will be people who will have no  expectations of me in how I look and feel as long as I was a decent human being. It took a long time to realize that. And a photo project that showed me I still ...was me. I had recently got a haircut so that my hair could stop growing in an awkward fashion. I was tired of all the arguments I would have over my image that I thought somehow if I could tolerate the other side again of having long hair it would ease my anxiety of what was right and wrong to be a woman. Also the social anxiety that I would always be looked at a lustful way. I wanted photos of this to show myself that I could still be me. So I recruited a friend of mine who does photography and more importantly I could be relaxed enough to wear a skirt in front of them and we ended with these. Some before and after the cut. The tomboyish look is before the cut and the more womanly outfits are after.

This is me the girl who can be stupidly girly when it comes to plushies and fangirling over kpop yet guys and tomboyish enough to just wonder why girls put an effort to put up makeup in the morning to go to a nursing job. My personal image can and will flip flop. I can go from looking like a guy and completely like a woman the next moment. But if you're willing to see, I'll always be me. And who I am is just myself plain as can be.

Credits to the photographer who was willing to work with me on this here is his link right here.