Here's something I've mentioned on occasion in commentary, and I know I'm not at all alone on this. Many of us grew up wanting attain that part of ourselves that was the physical outward expression of who we were inside; the woman. Her face; maybe her body...her clothes and other things as well. And maybe that girl was someone you knew. But maybe she was someone you saw... Some of us had a dilemma. The girl in the magazine or the TV show or the movie that had that dual appeal. She was not only our idol but our ideal. In short, we didn't know whether we wanted to be just like her, or marry or date or live with someone just like her. Our juvenile crush might also have been our life's aspiration? There will be some here who wanted to just be her, but their hearts desire was to love a good man of character. and that's okay, too.
What I'm interested in is how many of us felt this way? For folks my age, it might have been Patty Duke or Mary Tyler Moore; maybe Raquel Welch or Catherine Deneueve'? Now it might be Nicole Kidman or Penelope Cruz or Angelina Jolie or Keira Knightly or even Lindsay Lohan. Me? I currently would fall into that Helen Mirren/Judi Dench catagory.
And of course for those men here who started out in a woman's body? Tom Selleck or John Travolta or Tom Cruise?
Who did you see on that screen or in those pages? Which girl broke your heart two times? First when you knew you'd never get to Hollywood or London or Rome r Sydney or Tokyo to meet and marry her. But maybe even worse, when you looked in the mirror and realized the best you might hope for would be to look just like that girl in the third row in school who had braces and and a weak chin just like you or me? Maybe that girl sat next to you on the bus instead of up on a screen in a dark theater. Maybe a teacher or someone else in school. Does it still hurt? Even if you finally got reasonable facsimiles of that face and body, do you still long for that girl that left you behind. Have your desires changed?
So come on. Tell me who you wanted to kiss and hold and love. And who did you want to be. The first is optional for the purpose of the question, since like I said, many of us were not drawn to women, even as we are women. But I really want to know who you saw that just said; she's me. Andrea
Comments
Me?
A girl at school. Same hair, same skin, same eyes as me...just not like I was.
Their Faces; Our Selves
Depended on which show I was watching.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
But I really want to know who you saw that just said; she's me.
Why am I not surprised.
Dio vi benedica tutti
Con grande amore e di affetto
Andrea Lena
Love, Andrea Lena
most tomboys on screen...
most tomboys on screen... yeah unusual, but I guess I could identify closer to them, they dressed like boys, but were still girls. I dressed like boys, so maybe I could also be a girl? and my interests weren't either masculine or feminin, more a mix I think. So I guess tomboy girls were easier to identify with, I prefer to dress in t-shirts and jeans than in dresses and skirts (though partly because they make me feel vulnerable and insecure, jeans make me feel safe)
I really like new up and coming character's like Sam from I-carly or Alex from wizards of waverly place. They might be a tad boyish, but still are girls, who occasionally enjoy giving in to their feminin nature, a bit like me I guess ^_^'
Depends on the era
Hey Andrea,
I think I have truly missed out on being a girl/young woman. My deal therefore is usually a childstar, not for sexual reasons but for the experience of awakening womanhood, if that makes any sense. Annette Funicello and Hayley Mills were my ideals as I was growing up then later Jodie Foster. Surprizingly, Drew Barimore isn't on the list, though Chistina Ricci is.
There you have it, and I have no interest in experiencing ANY sort of carnal relationships with males.
with love,
Hope
with love,
HER
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.
I just wanted to be them
the intelligence mixed with action woman in Diana Riggs' Emma Peel; the elegance of Audrey Hepburn; the sexiness of Bardot; Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy and so on. Mind you, waking up as Catherine Deneuve, would be rather nice.
However, as I wrote a while back, I saw a report of a young woman who walked in front of a train, she was 16 and beautiful and I'd have thought had everything to live for - she obviously disagreed. So even beautiful women have problems, because everyday life isn't about being beautiful or elegant or wearing nice clothes, it's about getting on with life in whatever body you got born into this time round, and remembering that although beauty helps sometimes, it's still men who ru(i)n this planet.
Angharad
Angharad
that young woman in the subway
you know the one, who is oblivious to anything else as she puts on her makeup. I watch out of the corner of my eye, not wanting to be accused of being a creep, as she puts on her eyeliner and mascara and checks her reflection in her compact. Wondering where she works, and how it must feel to walk in those heels all day. How much time she spent getting her hair just right, and how she chose her clothes, and what she wears on the weekends. What it would be like to be her.
I guess I am a creep. Just not the obvious kind.
Who Was That Girl?
I think first and foremost I wanted all the standard equipment. Ann Margret was definitely a thought; however, even though I never would have been unhappy about being beautiful and having a bathing beauty's or foldout's body, I think I would have been just a lot happier if my intellect and mothering skills had been at the upper end. That is why I identify with the drawing of the young girl I sign off with. She is very happy with her lot, and has an expression that says there is quite a bit going on in her mind. She is beautiful on the inside. That's what matters.
Portia
Portia
Sophia
All others are posers.
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
That's me...
For the first part, as a straight girl though holding a young Tom Selleck sounds quite fun (*blush*) but obviously that's not what you're asking.
As a kid I was a regular bookworm, a trait my parents were happy to encourage if it meant it moderated my tv time and boosted my reading skills. I don't know if its the same for everyone but when I read a book the heroine is me. What does Lewis Carroll's Alice, C S Lewis's Susan Pevensie or Edward Stratemeyer's Nancy Drew all have in common? The answer is they all look the same - like me or rather a slightly upgraded female version of how I looked as a teenager. Her ears are still a little larger than I'd like and covered by that dirty blonde hair of my childhood but she's the me I see when I close my eyes and the me I also compare against in the mirror. I never therefore really had a female idol who I wanted to be in quite the same way you describe. Pity really as Keira Knightly is quite beautiful! Maybe it was a lack of imagination in some way or a diet of too many Disney movies telling me to just be myself or maybe I just subconsciously lowered expectations in the hope of minimising the hurt as the changes of a male puberty eventually arrived. *shrug*
"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." - Carl Sagan
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
Not me.
I was too f----d up to aspire to anything or be anyone. Zero self esteen, totally off the sexuality wall and no understanding of self respect or probity. A total basket case at fourteen.
As to having an emotional relationship? Well, duuuhh. The only relationship I understood was money, and the only way to earn it was - well we needn't go there any more.
Oh! And another reason I never aspired to kissing some screen idol. I never saw any films!!!
Childhood? What childhood?
Bev.
Growing old disgracefully.
My First Big Crush
Was Petula Clark when she was doing her TV show in the early fifties. I thought she was so bubbly and pretty and I longed to be able to be dressed like her and hold her hand.
The one who blew me away a little later on was Jean Shrimpton, so elegant, cool and self-assured. the way she wore her clothes...sigh....and she was TALL. I felt I could just melt into her skin.
And then....there was my namesake.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, all of these dreams could come true,
Joanne
Ahh
Twas but yesterday or sumfin...
Back at school when I was 6 - 9 there were a few girls that I sort of liked from afar. Not idolised exactly but used as a barometer of sorts to puzzle out my own feelings of not quite connectedness. They weren't the prettiest or the most popular but to me they epitomised the contrast and ease of girldom. One a blond poppet cute as a button, bubbly and fun. The other a little taller, darker, long brunette hair and a natural elegance.
Curiously I met them both many years later, anonymously I might add, and both had lived up to their early promise, at least superficially. Women now but still the girl. Memories huh.
Kristina
A little different
My list, and it is a list, is a bit odd. All more or less predate me for the height of their career, and I didn't want to be, or date, or marry them. I did want to live with them, but I wanted them as my mommy, and to want to grow up like them (not that I wanted to grow up). The list:
Racquel Welch
Sofia Loren
Brigitte Bardot
Jane Russell
Gina Lollobrigida
Elizabeth Taylor
I'm sure I left a few off.
The me that's me
Wishful thinking is wishful thinking.
I suppose, the physicality of things are important, and, as I became more and more frantic for the change, the obsession to be the perfect female became larger and larger. But after transition and everything that went after, the ups and downs, the living with it, the adjusting and learning - the physical things were just an aspect of the whole idea of being me.
Trying to BE the me that I wanted to be, I came to realize, wasn't just one thing or another, but a whole state of being. The way you dealt with others, the way you handle things, the way you ARE in your totality - that's the thing.
What a gyp, huh?
But I guess all of the things that I went through brought me closer to a kind of happiness that I think was good enough, or close enough to being good enough. Perhaps the question I've been asking was the wrong question - Who would I like to be? Maybe, the question should be, how can I be happy?
And I think I'm starting to discover the answer to that question, despite me never really asking the question.
Your blog was a thought-provoking one, Aunt Andrea. Thank you.
To see Bobbie's stories in BCTS, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/14775/roberta-j-cabot
To see Bobbie's "Working Girl" blogs, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/19261/working-girl-blogs
To see ALL of Bobbie's blogposts, click this link: http://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog/bobbie-c
* photo credits: Tiffani Thiessen, Melissa Joan Hart and Helen Hunt