u/Emilia2117

This is my first post here, so I apologize if I overlooked something, but hello, I am Emilia!

I recently discovered I'm a lesbian and that my "attraction" to men was something entirely else.

I didn't actually start dating until I was 27.

But I've struggled with my appearance (pics on profile) since I was young, feeling like I inherited too much from my dad. I feel my facial features are defined or strong but I always wanted to be femme.

I tried to learn makeup but with my features, I felt like the more makeup I wore, the worse I looked. But I still love make up and I love feminine styled clothes, especially dresses.

But it makes me wonder how well I could present as masc sometimes?

And I'd like to know how to be more femme presenting to!

I want to find myself and to explore and I finally feel I'm in the mental space to do so but I wanted some opinions from the community to help me!

I have always had trouble with my body growing up, so much so that for the first 26 years of my life, I just was numb to the world lost inside my own head. Well I have been reclaiming myself slowly over the last 7 years and I feel I reached a point in my life where I can see myself and really appreciate my body. But there are things that still really affect me.

I will not say why but do to health reasons, I have features that are quite strong, and I cannot bear my own children. And I had massive codependency issues and an inner critic constantly putting me down. My mother in law would try to control what I would wear in public. She would point out my cellulite unsolicited. I lived with her for two years and never once spoke my mind because if I did, she would start a massive fight. There were times I wanted to go grocery shopping in my nice dress and dress sandals and she told me that I would stand out and that I was too proper, but then when I wore my shorts revealing my cellulite, she would not want to be seen next to me.

I used to wear makeup because I felt I must. I used to shave my legs and arm pits because I felt I must. I started to hide my cellulite thinking it was gross. I started wearing casual clothes in casual places. And one day I realized that I am doing all of these things and it was not even for me... but because I felt society pressured me to through peer pressure or media.

I have since healed from my critic, and I no longer live with my in law. But I am left with a vulnerability that I cannot seem to escape.

I see the fake images and ads of women plastered in media like candy. I see the airbrushed images, body shapes that are not normal or average, looks that I will never achieve and it makes me feel honestly like I am not even a woman. It makes me feel I do not meet the physical traits of what society seems to define as a woman. I have internalized all of this poison and I dislike it. I see myself in the mirror some days and love myself just to see a reddit post about women's outfits in sports and seeing the men comment on their bodies like it is normal when it is not, it is gross to me. I hardly watched erotic media in life and now I learned to hate it if it was filmed in the lens of men.

I feel like a magnifying glass has been brought to my eyes and pointed to directly to societal expectations. And I have learned these expectations largely originate from the male gaze.

Why am I expected to wear makeup? Why am I expected to shave? Why do I know instinctively that if I decided to go to the beach with my hairy armpits and my unshaved legs, it could cause some stares or comments from others?

It makes me want to turn off all social media. I want to stop seeing algorithmic bodies and want to see real women.

It makes me want to go to a nude spa and to see women in all of their quote on quote, imperfections, based on what society says, and to internalize them. To learn that women's bodies are exactly what everyone currently has naturally and that the world is wrong for telling me otherwise.

But then I do not feel I would be welcomed in a nude spa. I feel I appear too strongly featured... my voice and body too destroyed from my health condition. I feel if I did not shave and did not conform to society I would get stares.

And I do not want to make others uncomfortable. I just want to learn to love my body and to love other women's natural bodies and to spit all of this poison I feel was given to me against my will.

TL;DR: Societal expectations and the male gaze and made me realize that I do not love my body like I should and I have internalized everything and it affects my relationship to myself.

Does anyone else have issues with this? Am I overreacting or am I crazy for feeling this way? Honestly, sometimes I feel I have lost touch with reality so I do not know anymore.