This is a strange story.
I've always been an alternative beauty kind of person. My stepdaughter got me interested in Suicide Girls about 2005 or so, I think. She is pretty alternative in many ways. I should point out that at that time I was living as a man, being cis-male. I joined Suicide Girls, and I loved the community, and really enjoyed being a part of it. Back then it was a rather different place. Not better, just different.
After some years I decided I didn't like the account name I used, as I like to be completely open in everything I do, and that urge has increased with time. So I opened another account, @nikberry, which is still active, and has a lot of blog posts on feminism, trans issues, and my transition to a woman.
My transition. That's a subject worthy of it's own post. But in brief, I had always been unhappy as a man. What I had failed to realise was that the problem was being a man. I'd never been comfortable around men, only women. I was always ashamed to be a man, and I felt guilty about the actions of men, even though I wasn't the one doing it. As I was a radical feminist (at least at first. I became somewhere between a cultural feminist and an i-feminist later) , I assumed that the feeling I'd long had that I shouldn't be a man was simply a cop out - stop being a man, and the shame and guilt goes away.
It was only last year, in October, that I made one friend on Suicide Girls who was to change my life forever. That truly amazing and wonderful woman is @redberry, without whom I could never have done what I did. Without whom I would never even have thought of it. Her unfailing support, love, and encouragement was what made me finally realise that I was a woman. That I had been looking at everything backwards. I owe her a debt that I can never repay. I can't even contemplate life without her.
So thank you Suicide Girls from the bottom of my heart.
But the story of @redberry and me is another long and wonderful story I should tell elsewhere.
So I became the woman I should always have been. I found a number of new friends here who were also to have a profound affect on my life. @ghostleeb, @luciloser, @Zen being perhaps the most significant. I can't name here all those who helped me so much, but thank you, all of you.
As a woman, and someone who loved this community, and gained so much from it - almost all my friends being Suicide Girls or Hopefuls (and one Staff Photographer), I became even more embedded in the community. I started having the weird idea of being a model here. I knew I'd love it, and I knew it would help me overcome all the issues of lack of self worth, shyness, and a host of other things. But I knew it was a silly idea. I'm a 61 year old trans woman. Not tattooed, not pierced, not attractive (still working on the self worth thing 😩), 61, and trans. But Suicide Girls is inclusive. It is alternative beauty. I mentioned this to several friends. @redberry was 100% behind the idea, as was @Zen.
So one day, in a fit of something-or-other, I applied. And was accepted.
And that's the story.
@missy @rambo @bloghomework
