Topless
On the first day of my camping vacation, after setting up in the afternoon, I ended up with a sweaty sports bra under my tank top and decided I really did not need to be wearing it, and, since I was pretty out of sight in my campsite and there was pretty well no one around on a Monday in mid-September, I decided to do the top swapping outside instead of awkwardly in the tent. In a certain, very significant sense, this was the first time in my life I was “topless” outdoors. Wasn’t at all the same in the past as a dude with a beard and no breasts!
I’ve talked about my vacation with some (cis) women I know and I’ve told this little story because it’s funny, and everyone giggles because it’s funny little thing. A few also commented to the effect that now I have to be careful about that, can no longer take my shirt off randomly, and generally welcome to yet another thing women have to deal with. And, sure, I get it. But my feelings about it are more complicated.
When I was a kid I was very uncomfortable with having my shirt off in public. Thinking back now, of course I was really a little girl and it’s not surprising I’d have picked up that that wasn’t something I was supposed to do. But I didn’t understand that and neither did anyone else, and since I was supposed to be a boy and boys are not supposed to be uncomfortable being shirtless, how I actually felt about it was of no concern, so it was something I was going to have to do now and then. Now that I’m thinking about this I remember one experience and have some vague memories of some others. I don’t want to sound like this was too terribly distressing, really my childhood trauma wasn’t any particular awful events, just the endless experiences of an unknowing, unsupported trans kid. On the other hand, I was a kid being made to partly undress in ways I was very uncomfortable with, that does sound like a known category of unpleasant experiences.
As I got older, people could no longer make me take my shirt off, and I did get more comfortable with it, at least under certain circumstances. I think that was mostly a matter of becoming more comfortable with nudity in general. Once I figured out I was trans I understood my feelings a lot better. And I started wearing a tank top while swimming because that felt better, really.
So now, having very real breasts, it doesn’t feel like a loss. It feels like at long last everyone else agrees that I ought to be modest about it, having at times in the past not even allowed it! Now, it went from mandatory to forbidden never stopping to ask how I actually feel, society sucks, but my experience wasn’t really the same as the cis women’s.