Baby’s First Transgender Black Friday

The implication that I did not know my inner feminine until my “egg cracked” is ludicrous. Most of us knew since we were children that our biology did not match our psychology, yet this “baby / egg” idea is perpetuated in the transgender community. I have more to say on that topic in the next week.

The above notwithstanding, the title struck my funny bone. After all, this is the first honest-to-Goddess Black Friday since I began hormone therapy. Although Amazon has recommended women’s clothing to me for a decade, and Google Ads have shown me perfume and makeup for years, today I find myself in a slightly different state. Rather than feeling the obligatory guilt and shame for viewing (and enjoying) ads for women’s accoutrements, today I relish my recommendations. Fast-forward to this morning — Black Friday.

Checking the Morning Email

As I woke up, I rolled over, yawned, stretched, and checked my email on my cell phone. Like ya do, right? I found an interesting juxtaposition waiting in my Inbox.

One email was from Best Buy. They recommended I take action immediately! In their assessment, I need a 72” 8K resolution OLED penile compensatory device / television. Should heeding their assessment founder like a leaky rowboat, not only will I miss a great deal, my very manhood will be called into question. Certainly I couldn’t afford that?

Another email came from Ulta Beauty. An exhortation to purchase a fluffy powder brush assaulted my senses. Failure to exercise my commercial duty to my country will give the Fluffy Powder Brush Fairy no further recourse than to leave Maybelline in my silk stocking when the next orgy of spending arrives next month. No self-respecting woman / American wants that, does she?

So which email cut the deepest? In Best Buy’s case, I am transitioning gender; losing my manhood is kind of the point. However, regarding Ulta Beauty, as I transition gender, I do not believe that femininity is skin-deep (makeup-deep?), but is composed of many aspects, most of which are internal. Is this really what the people in marketing think of us?

Marketing Hacks

None of us wants to believe this, but marketing is the way it is because it works. Human beings are rather simple creatures and easy to sell.

Men are targeted with sex: advertisements feature a nubile, winsome young female attempting to convince them that — without whatever product she is selling — there is no chance she will be going home with them tonight. There is a newer breed of “bromance” advertisements recently, and I suspect they do not work as well as nubile, winsome young females.

Women, on the other hand, receive advertisements that hint that celebrities — say, Kim Kardashian — use the product. Since we all know Kimmy’s lifestyle, the implication is that — without whatever product is being sold — men simply will not find them attractive enough to take them home tonight. It might not matter, anyway, because men are all following nubile, winsome young females (see above).

Really, what might be the best marketing campaign is for Kim Kardashian to sell products to men wearing products sold to women. That way, everybody loses at once. Except for Kim Kardashian, of course, but she loses on many other fronts.

Which Truth is True?

As I untangle the advertisements, I acknowledge that — in the midst of my transition — I now fit poorly into both categories.

Because I do not own a MAGA hat, an AK-47, and a diesel Dodge truck, one group is unlikely to recognize me as a man. But due to the overwhelming arguments of Matt Walsh documentaries and, well…just out of general principle, that same group is certainly not going to recognize me as a woman.

Before we congratulate the other group, I find that they are not much better. I have been attacked as a betrayer of the transgender community for refusing to fake a knee-jerk approval of the currently fashionable target of transgender ire.

And TERFs…? Enough said.

The truth, as I have stated previously, lies in the middle. I do not accept that gender is solely a fashion statement to be changed on a whim, nor do I accept that gender is solely a matter of biochemistry and genitalia. Both options are failures to look more holistically at the human experience.

Each of us expresses our gender differently, and identity is not any one component of biology, psychology, or the society in which we express them. It is the composite of all three quickened by our consciousness that forms an integrated identity. Each of us must explore who we are if we expect to become the best we can be. In fact, I contend exploration is compulsory; no identity could be chosen in toto simply to fit in with a group.

As for me, I am going to sit home on Black Friday. My cat is better company than marketing hacks.