Unhealthy obsession
One of my many failings is getting obsessed when I think people are "cheating the system".
At the moment there's someone on Flickr who's posting loads of pictures to the tranny groups that she says are of herself, a male cross-dresser, and getting loads of comments about how fantastic and feminine she looks.
This is because it IS a woman. The pictures aren't of a tranny. I'm almost certain of it. The only slight wavering in my conviction is that so many other trannies on Flickr don't seem to realise it too. I know many friends DO share my view, but they're not as obsessed by it as I am.
Yeah, for those that remember, it's my Lana thing all over again. :-/
I'm poring over her pictures to find ways to prove she's a fake. There's very little good clues. It's subtle things like the complete lack of an Adam's apple, and a totally feminine body shape and face, which for a non-surgical non-hormone-assisted caucasian TV is more or less impossible.
It's not important I suppose, everyone fakes stuff. It's only Flickr.
Scratch that. It IS important or I wouldn't be getting worked up about it. I can't quite put my finger on why I think it's so important, it's something to do with giving other trannies realistic goals, and not lessening what I do with a lot of money, time, effort and emotional investment by just sticking up a picture of someone else and pretending it's all so "easy".
Ho hum.
At the moment there's someone on Flickr who's posting loads of pictures to the tranny groups that she says are of herself, a male cross-dresser, and getting loads of comments about how fantastic and feminine she looks.
This is because it IS a woman. The pictures aren't of a tranny. I'm almost certain of it. The only slight wavering in my conviction is that so many other trannies on Flickr don't seem to realise it too. I know many friends DO share my view, but they're not as obsessed by it as I am.
Yeah, for those that remember, it's my Lana thing all over again. :-/
I'm poring over her pictures to find ways to prove she's a fake. There's very little good clues. It's subtle things like the complete lack of an Adam's apple, and a totally feminine body shape and face, which for a non-surgical non-hormone-assisted caucasian TV is more or less impossible.
It's not important I suppose, everyone fakes stuff. It's only Flickr.
Scratch that. It IS important or I wouldn't be getting worked up about it. I can't quite put my finger on why I think it's so important, it's something to do with giving other trannies realistic goals, and not lessening what I do with a lot of money, time, effort and emotional investment by just sticking up a picture of someone else and pretending it's all so "easy".
Ho hum.
We actually know a someone who pretended she was a post-op TS. We met and socialised with her several times and she was dating a pre-op TS friend of ours.
This person was a natal woman. Fcuking mad, eh?
Also ( whilst i'm on a roll ), as valerie said earlier, it isn't fair, it's tricking people, hell, it's tricking whoever is posting these pictures, all stuff like this does is make peole feel worthless, when in fact they should be feeling proud of who they are.
and i'll shut up now :)
And you are right (and Val and Freiya) in that it does matter - it provides a level of perfection that we can never strive towards. It's deception.
Its a toughie, and is going to be hard to prove or disprove.
I'm 100% behind you on this... This does matter. It's already hard enough holding our heads up in a world all to quick to judge us without someone diminishing all the work we do by pretending they look like some model's pictures they found on the net.
@Freiya: Don't shut up! that's exactly what my thoughts are.
@Janna: Hard to prove, but it's getting to the stage where the proof is in the pictures themselves now.
@Emily: If she'd used model photos that would have been bad, she's actually using pictures of some "ordinary" woman, possibly a relation. It gives the pictures a more genuine air, but I'm pretty sure whoever it is in the photos doesn't know they're being used this way... Oh and good luck with the FFS. I'm sure you'll look fantastic. :-)
Another thing about this person's pictures is that there are none of the classic tranny shots, no pictures in the hotel room glammed up, no pictures of herself on the bed, no pictures of herself taken with one arm extended (heck I've even got photos like that.)
Bex and I have chatted about this and I'm completely convinced that the pictures are of a natel woman.
A friend of mine and me used to regularly root out fakers on TVC. Happy to give you my 2d worth.
Love
Nikki
In fact, it would be much quicker to list the male features:
(1) Nope, can't see any.
It appears that dissenting comments are edited out from her photostream.
I can't see the point in doing this for real. I just can't understand that mentality.
Who said "Make the lie big enough, and it will be believed"?
And few shots that include the shoes... just not right I tell you!
Me, I see an attractive TV/TS and I'm full of admiration. I see a TV/TS who's not classically beautiful, but you just know has made a credible effort, and appreciate that.
But when I see 'fake' pics I get a mixture of feelings. One, I feel sorry if they have such a lack of self-worth that they feel the need to substitute pics.
Two, and maybe this is a bit weird given number one, it amuses me that the con hasn't worked.
Another thing, why do people get upset about it being unfair? Life's not fair - life never will be fair. Get working on your own self-esteem so that when you see these pics, true or false, you don't get upset about them.
And as for the Lana episode that really did bug me. I just wish Becky had said to Lana, 'If you don't take those pics down I'll blow the whistle, giving her the opportunity to avoid the humiliation.'
To me, Lana had real self-worth problems which drove her to do what she did (which I'm not condonning or condemning) but Becky didn't give her the opportunity to remove the pictures. Yes, I know Becky made it clear she'd sussed Lana, but by giving her forewarning of her intention to "expose" her if she didn't remove them, I feel, it would have been a kinder course of action.
BTW, great holiday thanks Bex - got the red bits to prove it!
I disagree with your point about people gettting upset about things being unfair. It's got fuck-all to do with my improving own self esteem. And I take a different approach to life being unfair: I try to make it unfair for the person making it unfair for me.
For example: it's unfair to criticise me on my own blog about things that happened months ago. So I'll point that out to you, and delete any future messages on the subject. That's being quite unfair back.
@Isobel: I'm glad you've spotted her too.
Give us a URL and I'll get back to you with the Cat-Aware Personal Edition results.
@Steph: I KNEW it! ;-)
Without wanting to add too much to this discussion, I'd hate to see us using grounds like that for suspicion ;-) Especially considering the whole "stereotyping" discussions that have gone on recently.
I was going to write something about being able to see the point to doing it - something along the lines of bumping up your self worth through the adoration of others ... but actually, thinking about it more, that's complete bollocks - because how can you turn compliments directed at a fake you into self-praise?
Which leaves me with a rather more unpleasant thought, that the reasons behind it are to laugh at the 'gulibility' of strangers, and it's actually intended as quite malicious
I think actually that they do somehow manage that, through some kind of highly selective view of reality.
"Which leaves me with a rather more unpleasant thought, that the reasons behind it are to laugh at the 'gulibility' of strangers, and it's actually intended as quite malicious"
That's the more disturbing option, and what I think Victius was referring to.
I just feel a lot better talking about this semi "out in the open", as I feel like I'm doing something more than gnashing my teeth at this person's audacity. :-)
Oops, yes Jane, slap wrist. ;-)
This reminds me of last year's unveiling of J.T. LeRoy, the author who wrote The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, among other works. The writer who everyone believed was a 20-something, cross-dressing, recovering heroin addict, former prostitute and literary sensation was actually a woman in her 30s named Laura Albert.
Not only they not showing themselves and tricking us all to beleive the person in that pic is someone which in reality is not.
But also, taking into account all the effort that it takes, to put make-up, wig, clothes, to try to look as girly as possible at the end.
And then see a photo, of someone who looks so feminine, thinking "Wow , how lucky of he, or what great skills he has", about a fake pic, is sad, is EVIL.
However, Becky, I do think that if you were going to raise this issue you should have "named and shamed" the person. I can't have been the only one who went straight from here to trawl through the tranny groups on flickr to try and work out (without success) who you were referring to. It made me feel dirty.
There's a really old cartoon from the New Yorker, which I've pinched and put on one of my web pages. I have thousands of photos of me. And about a dozen where I'm pleased with the result.
And three dressed as a bloke...
There are very few of my 'real photos' (ie 'grim') available for others to see. So, to a much lesser extent, the only 'honest' trannies are those who have candid photos that other people have taken while out and about?
My personal view is that Siobhan's comment Which leaves me with a rather more unpleasant thought, that the reasons behind it are to laugh at the 'gullibility' of strangers, and it's actually intended as quite malicious is sadly, closest to the truth.
Rallying against fake trannies is certainly one way forwards but I think that your web site and discussions like this on your blog are far more positive and powerful, as it's an environment where those people who are still struggling to find themselves can realise that they are not alone and aren't in a competition to be themselves. Discuss the fact that some of those fantastic photos, might actually be exactly what they appear to be.
And they can laugh out loud as they do so!
As for levels of perfection that I can never strive for, well the thing that is so hard to live with is just walking down the street and looking at the real women. If I'm down that is a terrible thing to do.
Give me a reason to think differently and I will
That's a fair comment Penny, and an interesting question. But I don't think that's what's going on here.
Essentially, when I stick a photograph of me online, I'm asking people to suspend disbelief for a moment, take that picture of me, and judge it in an entirely different context (it's all about the context ;-) to what I'd normally present.
I'm saying "This is me. I'm a guy. But I'd like for you to judge me based on completely different criteria that if it was just a picture of me as a guy. I'd like you to judge me on how much I look like a woman"
I think the issue here - unless of course, there's a huge disproving of 'wrongness' - is contained in the word "me".
I don't think this is someone posting pictures and saying "This is me". I think it's someone posting pictures of someone else, and asking us to judge those images based on the same criteria that we all post pictures within.
Whether they're pictures of guys portraying themselves as women, or women portraying themselves as guys, or women portraying themselves as guys portraying themselves as women - I don't really think that matters.
The central core to them all is that they all deserve the tag "me". However we choose to present ourselves, it's always ourselves we choose to present.
The problems come when it's not ourselves in the photographs, That's when the "me" becomes the "other". And - I think - that's the lie that is central to all of this.
Right, and that's the point. No matter how pretty the image, lies are ugly.
And as for fake pics? I bloody hate them. I like many have worked hard on my look and do worry if I can come across as feminine. So when someone posts fake pics it's as if they are just taking the piss.
Beats me! I'm just some poor tranny who stumbles through life the best she can.
Oh, and you might find yourself stumbling through life a little less if you abandon the moral relativism.
I'm still not convinced.
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