Tessa Greenhart unbuttoned her cotton blouse, her face flushed with excitement. The dressing room was literally bustling with movement. Neon-lipped models stepped gracefully through clouds of make-up and perfume, assistants rushed costumes from rack to shoulder, while the floor manager waded through the chaos barking orders like a drill-sergeant. Tessa smiled to herself, breathing in the rich scent of Red Door and adrenaline.

Narrowly avoiding a gaggle of dressmakers making for the door, Tessa walked across the room blouse in hand, looking around for the clothing rack. The rest of the cast had already been zipped into their outfits - mainly miniskirts, camisoles and designer jeans - ready for the first take. Filming was about to begin; she had to get into costume as well; although this would involve dressing down rather than dressing up.

They were making a television commercial for Carmine Nights Lipstick, a relatively upmarket cosmetic with a racy girlfest image. CNL had pulled out all the stops with this advertisement, aiming at a young professional female demographic. Glancing through the doorway, Tessa could see the technical crew running last minute checks over the video equipment. The set was a fluorescent retro-seventies mock-up, soft edges and liquid day-glow colors contrived to suggest a large group house in the burbs. Seemingly imbued with a life of its own, it buzzed with a glaring neon radiance.

She hung the blouse over a nearby chair, almost delirious with anticipation. Very soon, she'd be called out to present herself to the camera in her underwear; a girl of barely eighteen with flowing platinum blond hair and liquid blue eyes so deep you could drown in them. Undoing her tiny black mini, she slid the skirt over her slender, tanned thighs, then let it drop to the floor, forming a lycra pool at her feet.

Her high-cut lace panties were so sheer that they seemed to have been airbrushed onto her body; the tender hues of her flawless, ivory flesh were plainly visible through the gossamer fabric. She suppressed an urge to place a hand over her cleavage. This was her first time before the camera, the dressing room was full of strangers, and she felt agonizingly self-conscious.

Still, she had no reason to complain. A new life was opening for her. She was going to be a model. Maybe not a star like Elle or Claudia or Naomi (let's face it; CNL was hardly the Pret a Porter), but the thought of being on TV was thrilling nonetheless.

Besides, even if she never froze the traffic at Times Square, she would live out a fantasy she'd had since she'd been a little girl. She was utterly breathless, thinking on it now. Small local advertising companies notwithstanding, the commercial would be broadcast via ECN; the EastCoast Communications Network.

The thought was intoxicating.

When she stepped in front of the video cameras, she'd be parading her lingerie throughout the entire north eastern region. Which meant that literally millions of people were going to see her in absolutely nothing but her bra and panties.

Striding through the human tide in her flimsy pink undies, Tessa glanced in the mirror, checking her Alpine blond hair and adjusting an errant lock spiraling over her left cheek. She nodded, smiling faintly to herself: the illusion was perfect.

So perfect, in fact, that it had never been an illusion.

How long had she been a girl?
All her life.
How long had she lived as a girl?
Ten years; since her eighth birthday, in fact.

She'd always had a rather feminine appearance, a softness and a fluid grace which simply couldn't be hidden or disguised, regardless of what society or genetics had to say on the matter.

Of course, image was nothing, as the soda commercials had told an entire generation of teenagers back in the nineties. Image alone hadn't made her a woman, nor had the unexpected reshaping of her anatomy close on a decade ago. In the final analysis, such factors were largely irrelevant.

Tessa Greenhart had entered the world biologically male, an insignificant Y-chromosome carelessly tacked onto the end of her DNA, but events since that moment had confirmed that biology did not equal destiny; at least not for her. Tessa's body had been a template, a blank page on which sex and gender could be written. The essential truth had been inscribed on her flesh in chemical signifiers...

albeit a priori):

The script played on the universal belief that pretty young girls inevitably fall out of their clothes as soon as they're left alone together. Tessa had loved the idea as soon as her agent had described it to her: five beautiful girls sharing a house in the suburbs, preparing for an evening out on the town. Running from shower to bedroom, borrowing hairdryers and stockings, swapping dresses hand to hand and making up in the mirror; the myriad little things women do before the Big Night Out.

Towards the end, the girls are shown in their bedrooms, glossing their lips with with Carmine Nights, while the stereo blares out the GirlPower jingle written especially for the advert. It was the only mention of the product; the rest of the commercial was made up of pretty girls decked out in stilettos and lycra slip-dresses as they hurried about brushing their hair and ransacking each others wardrobes.

Tessa had been snared instantly: the treatment was fun, the soundtrack boppy. It was exactly the kind of shoot she'd wanted to do since she started modeling and (best of all) the script required that she appear in her bra and pants. This had been the major drawcard, as far as Tessa had been concerned. She had to run through the house flaunting her knickers while the gyro-cam followed her from the bathroom to the stairway, and thence to her bedroom, where she'd be shown doing girly-things: blow drying her hair, dancing in the mirror and making up her lovely face - exactly what she did at home when she was planning a long evening's nightclubbing.

It was completely gratuitous, of course: there was absolutely no reason why she had to film the advertisement in her bare essentials; it was a lipstick commercial, not a lingerie parade. She could just as easily be shown glazing her lips fully clothed. Not every woman makes up in her underwear, regardless of what the majority of men would like to believe. But the undisguised sauciness of the idea appealed to Tessa. It was as if the part had been written just for her.

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