Body

Negativity can blow me. Consider the two following scenarios. If you don't pass as your preferred gender, people are going to judge you all the freaking time. There's just no way around it in today's world. If you do pass as your preferred gender, people are going to judge you all the freaking time, only now it's for some other equally stupid reason, such as your fashion sense, your career, your choice of beer, or any other of your personal nuances. Since you're going to be judged all the time anyway, you might as well make it useful.

Disapproval and approval: they only matter if you think they do.

The only time that personal criticism is capable of affecting you is when you're already insecure about the trait in question. If I had just failed my third math test in a row and some slack-jawed motherfucker called me a dumbass, the comment would sting. However, if the same son of a bitch said it again during the dinner reception after I had been awarded the MacArthur Genius Award, it would not. Regarding my transgendery-ness, fuck yeah I'm insecure about it. I love it and I know it's right, but I'm still mid-transition, and it's a Hindenburg-sized mindfuck. I'm making progress though, and there's a foreseeable end to my insecurity about it. Thankfully, I'm a nerd.

I have a degree in computer science. I rather hate the subject now, but I still think like a programmer. Programs solve problems, and in order to write them you have to know how to do the same. And it doesn't matter if you're building a program or building a wizard robe, both merely require you to follow some logical process, a design. My personal favorite, vanity, is nothing short of designing yourself.

Your body is a container for your personality. You're born into some base shape, but then you get to do whatever the fuck you want with it. You can pierce it, tan it, tattoo it, get thin, get fat, get muscular. If you eat right and exercise, you'll slowly morph into whatever shape your genetics have decided is best. Exercise your mind and you'll get smarter. Or go the medical route and get some plastic surgery or a prescription for Rogaine. We're infinitely customizable. Seriously, we're humans - adapting is kind of our thing. 

So, I've established the obvious in declaring that you have a huge range of control over your physical appearance. Obviously, you can take the basic package and never alter yourself, but that sounds pretty boring to me. That's beside the point, anyway, because my purpose in body customization is empowerment, not entertainment. Actually that's wrong; art can achieve both of those. And your body is art. Artwork is an extension of yourself, it's just more literal in this case. Additionally, taking this stance allows you to feel justified in utilizing the amazingly advantageous disposition of a lofty-nosed artist. Praise fuels your ego and self-esteem, while negativity can be smugly shrugged off with a tactical "you just don't understand my art."

You's can be hip to my jive, or you's can go chase yo'self.

In consideration of my viewpoint that my body is a piece of artwork, I have recently begun looking for a professional photographer. I am currently a rather unusual shape, and I know that in fifty years I'd be mad at myself if I didn't document it now. This is something I am doing entirely for myself. That being said, it seems highly unlikely that my headstrong sense of vanity would allow any phenomenal pictures of myself to sit unseen on a burned CD, quietly forgotten halfway through a stack on my bookshelf, lost between a scratched copy of ZZ Top's Greatest Hits and Everquest Install CD 1. In other words, I'll probably post them here, eventually. I'm pretty sure that's what the internet is for, anyway.