beauty??

NO FLAW IN BEAUTY IS A FLAW IN BEAUTY ITSELF, I read someone say. (Ummm…..I know it sounds weird)
And I hate to admit this but I have been thinking of beauty a lot lately. Well ever since I cut my hair that is. And my recent trip to Calcutta, accentuated for me the fact that I am stared at. Firstly I am tall. 5’ 6” is no big deal really but in a country where the average woman measures 5’ 3”, I seem huge. I board a bus and all these women are looking at me. For years I told myself that it’s just me and people are not really looking but I am just being paranoid. But I used to feel stares hit the back of my neck, and …um… other parts of my body. Nowadays especially now that I am fatter I look up and look at these people who are looking. Did you notice what I just said? What has being fat got anything to do with what I am saying? Well …along with the fact that I don’t feel like a woman (well I don’t know what that feeling is so I don’t know whether I feel it or not) and instinctively (even if wrongly) feel that I look a freak in women’s clothes. So when people look I feel that they are able to see me the imposter trying to dress up as a woman. And I feel so gauche around women as a woman. So with all the fat (sometimes unevenly distributed over my 5’6”frame) I realise I am less attractive and thus in a way exempt from the line of lust of men, and you have no idea how wonderful that feels. Its not that I don’t like men, cos I do (I think), but this dread has nothing to do with sexuality but gender. So even now women and sometimes men stare, and even laugh at me (especially on trains) is it because they realise that I am trying to be a man and laugh at my body, wholly incongruous (especially the 5-10 pounds worth of breasts) with my attitude , body language and even movements. Or is it all a fragment of my imagination?