By Keili González* Since adolescence, I've wondered how my trans identity relates to beauty. Why my body was and is rarely seen as beautiful. I was always taught that being trans—being visibly trans—meant being ugly. Being able to critique the culture that circulates and is imposed upon us leads to questioning beauty standards. Thinking about this means analyzing and dissecting a system that keeps people in their own little world, in an individualism that doesn't allow us to dare to imagine different conceptions and diminishes them. The heteronormative and patriarchal culture, which, incidentally, plays into the binary of woman and man, labels us as disobedient. Because we don't play by its rules, it strips any kind of conception of beauty from a trans body.

What is transvestite beauty?

Beauty is not an objective fact. To conceive of it as something monolithic is to violate ourselves. Being trans is not something that should limit or define us; it is a collective construction of "we are as far as we go." To propose a single category, without questioning it, would be to adopt what harms us.

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What would the objectivity of beauty be when we talk about bodies? Under certain parameters, it would be conforming to certain standards: height, measurements, and weight, among others. These are requirements created through consumerism, the culturally violent constructs proposed by a mercantilist and cis-heteronormative system. That's why, when we talk about the transversality of our identities, we propose freedom: that desires—our desires, your desires—have full scope and not limitations. Desires that don't cost us, as trans people, our lives.

Why am I questioning trans beauty?

Because, as I said, under this culture, beauty implies fulfilling certain stereotypes: being white, thin, "woman" and of course cis (not trans) and heterosexual. It is common for trans women to be told that we are beautiful as long as we erase the "masculine" characteristics from our bodies. I do not mean to say that trans identities cannot coexist with heterosexual norms, because it would be conservative to frame it as a prohibition. I propose we begin to critique the established order and what culture imposes. The constant task of deconstruction and unlearning expands our freedoms. Violeta Alegre's opinion column, where she asks, "What are we talking about when we talk about trans love?" , helped me to unpack, problematize, and overcome that barrier from my adolescence, when I believed that being beautiful was a direct cause of feeling loved. How did I do it, and how had my identity been constructed? At that time, I thought it meant conforming to heterosexual standards.

That noise, today is a melody (trans stereotypes)

My starting point back then wasn't very theoretical, but it was part of my development. "The first attraction between people is visual," I thought. From that perspective, I felt beautiful and privileged.   I remember when I first encountered the trans and gay scene in Nogoyá. We used to get together at a friend's house. There, we'd have pre-parties where we'd "get ready" (dress up with clothes and makeup) to go out and work as prostitutes on National Route 12 to earn some money to survive.

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The "stop," as they usually call the pick-up spot, is located ten blocks from where "Nati-Nati" lived, one of those comrades who lent a hand to those on the path to liberation. Hundreds of trucks used to pass through there, as it's a strategic point where National Route 12, which leads to Paraná, Provincial Route 39 to Rosario del Tala, and Provincial Route 26 to Victoria converge, forming the "Rosario-Victoria" road link. The get-together always started in the afternoon. We drank mate and talked about what was happening in our lives. They would often ask me how I was doing in school and what my relationship was like with my male classmates. All of that was sadly unknown to them.

My first time

One afternoon, I was the protagonist. I decided to feminize myself to accompany them. They began to explain to me the rules "to avoid making a fool of myself" in front of a society that sees everything in binary terms. The preparation, although implicitly established, consisted of putting myself to the test, a stage that allowed me to go on stage, that is, to accompany them to "the parade." This involved mastering high heels, waxing, putting on makeup, styling my hair, and knowing how to "tweak" myself, that is, walking in shoes that made me look 12 centimeters taller, not touching my facial hair when kissing someone, hiding my genitals and enhancing my features, incorporating feminine characteristics of becoming "woman" and, of course, stereotypical.

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The moment of evaluation was the errand. That day it was my turn to go buy something at the rotisserie around the corner, so as not to take too long cooking and so they could leave early for the "parade," collect some pesos and then go to the traditional dance at the Argentine Society. It was a construct I built early on and from a privileged position, because I wasn't forced into prostitution. I wasn't in the extreme situation of my butterfly friends. Although I did have to learn to negotiate with that adult world, laden with stigmas and prejudices about our community.

When I realized

As an adult, having embraced and navigated activism, university life, and feminism as a way of life, I confronted myself with pain and anger during the process of deconstruction. It stemmed from having made invisible and hidden who I was, simply because it made the other person uncomfortable. It hurt me to have been forced to lose my voice, hide my penis, spend hours waxing and putting on makeup—"dressing" myself—to spare the world the inconvenience of my existence. I had been taught that being trans was synonymous with being ugly. Being able to break with this meant the right to explore other ways of living, thinking, desiring, feeling and being, and for that being to be according to my own rules, without responding to what the heteropatriarchy expects of me. The problem isn't beauty, it's the hegemonic ways of thinking about it. It's about starting to re-examine what has constituted me—us. To love each other, to cherish each other, to desire each other, to redefine our bodies as beings capable of attracting. Faced with a society that we will not allow to rob, dispossess, and deny us, to be trans as a performative and revolutionary act. To be trans, but this time feeling beautiful and desired. Keili González is a trans activist, she lives in Nogoyá (Entre Ríos province).  ]]>