I've come to the conclusion that I'm not really cut out to be a woman.

It's not that I mind being female. Hell, I like it. The clothes are more interesting. I can cover my multiple multifarious blemishes and complexion crimes with goo and end up looking a lot better as a result. I get to have long hair and nobody says a thing, let alone tries to convince me to cut it. I couldn't imagine being anything other than a girl and I'm perfectly adjusted to the fact that I AM a girl. It's just that in a lot of ways I don't really feel like I fit the template.

I've tried, honest to God. I just can't get my head round girls' stuff. I think that in a lot of ways I think male. Every time I test the gender of my mind on those quizzes you can do about it I always get told the same thing: that when it comes to my brain, apparently I'm a bloke who just happened to end up with two X chromosomes.

... Okay, I admit it - I like being a girl but at times I've wished - and wished quite fervently at that - that I was a boy. Never mind that I don't want to be, I'd still like to be. Just for a little while. And simply for the frisson.

Why am I thinking about this? A close encounter with the Harvey Nichols catalog. I've decided I do not like Harvey Nichols. I think Harvey Nichols is a waste of time and I dearly wish it would go away. I was complaining about the fact that it seemed to assume that not only did I have a grand or so lying about I could randomly spend at five seconds' notice, but that I would want to spend said spare grand on a jumper costing £280, a skirt costing £550 and a bangle costing £210. Sorry, but NO article of clothing is worth THAT much money. I don't care what said 280-pound sweater is made of, how prettiful it is or who made it. At the end of the day it's just a goddamned sweater.

Anyway.

I complained about it. Then I realized I was bitching about the price of women's clothing and how stupid people were to pay that much for anything whilst wearing a pair of (oh-so-comfortable) boys' trainers and sitting in a highly undignified sprawl. With my feet on the table. And looking about as ladylike as something which wasn't very feminine at all.

... I sit like a guy.

In fact, I sit like a guy to SUCH an extent that a (gay male) staff nurse on one of my placements asked me if I was into girls.

Huh?

I consider the stereotype. I consider my own nonconformity. I have long hair, an almost pathological inability to go out without make-up on and a fondness for skirts - albeit worn with heavy boots rather than dainty high heels, but skirts nonetheless. I do not exactly look like the cliche butch lesbian. In fact I think I look like pretty much any other average-looking woman out there. With an Eastern European peasant figure, of course (I'd have made a great farmer's wife, I really would have. I've sure got the forearms for it) - but if some guy I work with can ask me that there's obviously something about me which seems masculine. Horribly so. I can't figure it out. Do I move like a guy? Talk like one? There's got to be something, right?

(In related news, my MOTHER used to discreetly hassle me about not defining myself too early. Translation? My mother thinks I'm gay. Hang about... isn't SHE then the one who's trying to define ME?)

And I have no idea how these people can be so sure about something that still baffles several shades of Hell out of me. I mean I'm the one in here, for heaven's sake. I'm not transgender, I know that for a fact. Perfectly well-adjusted to the idea of myself as female. These days, I don't consider myself as having a sexuality - I'll end up with the person I end up with (though I have a feeling said person is more likely to be a woman than not) and I don't see how it matters what they are as long as I like them. I just don't know if I'm really cut out for this 'girl' thing when so much of the girls' stuff out there leaves me cold at best.

Which I guess makes it a good thing that there's no right or wrong way to be female, and I'm perhaps thinking too hard about this, but I've been up since half past five this morning, so indulge me. Please. I've had a long day and I'm not really in the mood to be profound about gender relations and my own relation to them. I'm just in the mood to rant on about it for a little while.

The Moral of the Story: You will never see laila in Harvey Nichols.