But what about just enough? The in-between. Concealer, some mascara, a little blush (barely there but still working) a compromise. Not quite glam, not quite natural, just enough to pass. Just enough to smooth over the questions before they come. “You have to always have been trans to be ‘truly trans’” (Stone, p. 225). Just like trans narratives are forced into a before-and-after structure, this level of makeup lets me exist within a “believable” femininity, one that doesn’t challenge but doesn’t erase. It’s safe. It’s effective. But it’s not really mine.

Then there’s full glam, the hyperreal. A face so sculpted, so perfected, that it becomes something else entirely. Power, beauty, performance, excess. But excess is its own kind of danger. Too much, and I become suspicious, artificial, a spectacle. "Once captured, the ape says he had no choice … he had to accept the cage of human subjectivity” (Preciado, p. 19). Femininity, at its peak, can become another kind of trap. The more flawless, the less real.

And what about when I break the rules? Art makeup, bold colors, asymmetry, when I feel most like myself, but also when I am least understood. “Trans as an act of artfulness, an act of creation and possibility” (Green, p. 66). I could wear this out, but I’d be noticed. And some days, I don’t want to be noticed. I’ve already thought about it too much, I’ll just hid my acne and settle with that.