I Don’t Know What Makes Someone Conventionally Attractive and At This Point I’m Too Afraid to Ask

I recently watched a video called “Thin is back in but why now?” by a YouTuber I love named Khadija Mdowe. They feature a clip of two men discussing Britney Spears’ 2007 VMAs performance where they call her “the fat girl” and say she definitely didn’t “text her dietician”. I wasn’t even offended, to be honest, just deeply confused. She’s SKIN AND BONE thin in the video.

As a high schooler developing my own sexuality and sense of self in the late 2010’s, my perception of popular culture was that the pinnacle of attractiveness for women was “thick” (usually spelled with two c’s, but even typing that now makes me cringe). Of course, even when I was a naive boy, I understood that a thin tummy was the most important thing for anyone to be considered hot in a fatphobic society, but big butts, thighs, hips, and chests have always been described to me as the hottest thing a woman can have. Curves! I now take a shot once a week to have curves! I grew up in a mixed family, and the idea of bigger women being attractive just seemed like common sense. But then I learned that the 2000’s iconic look was the “thigh gap”, which seemed like a massive contradiction. You want big thighs but they can’t touch? What? And no waist but big hips? It’s not just that these are unrealistic expectations, but also ones that don’t make anatomical sense? You want a girl with strong legs but no muscles?

For men, besides being muscular and maybe a sharp jawline, masculine attractiveness was simply never explained to me (although closeted me CERTAINLY had ideas about what made men attractive). Mainstream men’s fashion is plain and inexpressive. Men’s bodies just kind of, exist, or at least that’s how it felt to me. It didn’t help that I was an egg and uncomfortable in my own body. 

On top of all of that, I simply never found many “conventionally attractive” people particularly appealing. Not that they’re ugly, just not my type. While I was repressing my fantasies of kissing cute mall goth emo boys, I never really found the heartthrobs of either gender worthy of a celebrity crush. 

In my studies of anthropology, attraction and beauty standards come up very often. I’ve done lots of studying on the colonial history of western beauty standards, on the simultaneous fetishization and demonization of non-white bodies, and the patriarchy of it all. Maybe because I was raised a boy, or maybe because I’ve always been an annoying contrarian, but I didn’t internalize a lot of these standards. 

Once I started transitioning and realized I was non-binary, I had to develop my own brand new sense of attractiveness, self image, and femininity. My primary lens of viewing femininity was through my mom, but my current femininity is very different from hers. Building my gender from scratch meant I was able to grab whatever influences I actually wanted. Most of those influences being hot curvy goth tgirls.

While my body isn’t perfect, I’m very happy with how I look now. In fact, I think I might pass! But I never do. I do have a bit of a stubble and my voice could use some training, but I also have boobs and a very feminine face. It’s pretty obvious I’m a girl now, yet I still don’t get called ma’am very often. It doesn’t offend me, it’s just deeply confusing. Is the version of femininity I’ve developed not the “same” as the femininity necessary to pass, or am I just being impatient and need to transition “more”? Clearly, I have a lot to learn about what cishet society views as conventional.