Trinetra Haldar on claiming femininity in a world that polices it

In a world that parochially views medical transition as artifice, even as it sells beauty procedures to cis women in the garb of empowerment, what does it mean for a trans woman to claim her femininity?  

In the mirror, I see a woman shaped by time, choice, and intention. A face softened by estrogen, a body that moves through the world with a quiet confidence hard-earned through transition. Femininity, once far into a distant horizon, now feels familiar—something I live rather than chase. But to access this femininity in a world where beauty is rigidly defined is to understand how power and desirability have long been governed by history, geography, and privilege. To be a trans woman is to know, intimately, that beauty is not merely an aesthetic; it is a currency. One that determines who is seen, who is safe, who is celebrated.

To access that currency is to engage with standards shaped by colonial pasts and globalised presents. In an industry still captivated by the aesthetics of whiteness, accessing femininity as a trans woman is fraught with contradiction. Beauty, here, is both freedom and confinement, self-expression and social contract, empowerment and erasure.

The Weight of Inherited Beauty Ideals

Beauty, as we experience it today, is an inheritance of colonial violence. The privileging of light skin, sharp noses, delicate jaws—these are not biological truths but cultural impositions of a time when racial hierarchies were reinforced through aesthetic norms. In India, this inheritance remains visible in the ubiquity of fairness creams, the choice of actors being cast in films, and the casual assumption of who is considered “classy” or “refined”.

To be a trans woman navigating this terrain is to witness the ways in which gender and race intersect with startling clarity. Femininity, for us, is not merely a birthright; it is something we are told must be earned. And yet, even after the endless medical, legal, and social labour of transition, we find ourselves judged not only on the authenticity of our womanhood but on its adherence to these inherited ideals.

Medical Transition and the Aesthetic of Authenticity

Medical transition is often misunderstood. It is framed as a cosmetic indulgence, an elaborate performance for external validation. It is, however, a deeply personal reclamation of the self. Facial feminisation surgery was not, for me, a quest to “look like” a woman—it was the process through which I could finally inhabit my own skin without the dissonance that dysphoria imposed. The softening of bone, the shift in proportions, the gentle transformation of my face were never about conformity. They were about coherence.

But beauty, in this context, becomes a double-edged sword. The same interventions that bring us closer to ourselves are framed as “trickery” by a society that cannot reconcile authenticity with transness. A cis woman who undergoes an augmentation mammoplasty is perhaps doing it for confidence; a trans woman with the same procedure is “deceptive”. This asymmetry reveals the way beauty is policed when it crosses the boundaries of gender, and how the very same society that demands we look “convincingly” feminine resents us when we do. We forget that the same intervention is gender-affirming, whether one is cis or trans.

The Racial Politics of Femininity

To pursue femininity as a trans woman in an Indian context is to navigate an aesthetic hierarchy that remains deeply racialised. The colonial fixation on light skin and Eurocentric features still lingers—sometimes overt, sometimes subtle. The fair-skinned, straight-haired woman is the default heroine, the embodiment of aspirational femininity. Brown skin, coarse hair, and non-Eurocentric features are still treated as markers of the “everyday woman,” never the aspirational ideal in much of the Indian context. While this is changing, it is a slow burn, especially in mainstream Indian entertainment. With audiences beginning to engage with the idea of pan-Indian cinema, one is yet to find out what this means for an evolving idea of beauty. 

For trans women of colour globally, this hierarchy manifests in patterns that are impossible to ignore. Dark-skinned trans women—especially Black and Dalit women—face systemic erasure in media representation, even within queer and feminist spaces. Their access to beauty, and, by extension, to social safety, remains constrained by standards that reward proximity to whiteness. This dynamic forces us to ask: How do we, as trans women navigating these structures, assert our beauty without succumbing to the narratives imposed upon us?

Femininity as Personal and Political Terrain

Femininity, for trans women, is never merely aesthetic. It is survival, it is safety, it is social ease. It is the difference between being addressed as “madam” or being harassed as an imposter. But beyond these external stakes lies a more profound, internal truth: femininity, for many of us, is a homecoming. It is the moment when the reflection in the mirror ceases to feel like a battleground and becomes a place of belonging.

This pursuit, however, is often pathologised. Trans women are accused of being “obsessed” with beauty, as though the cis world has not spent centuries demanding that women derive their value from it. The assumption is that our engagement with femininity is artificial and contrived. Yet what could be more natural than wanting one’s internal self to align with the external form? To seek coherence in a body that, for years, felt like a dissonant instrument?

The Industry’s Reluctance to Change

Despite the rhetoric of inclusivity, the fashion, beauty, and entertainment industries remain tethered to Eurocentric ideals. Campaigns that feature dark-skinned models or trans women are often framed as progressive anomalies rather than normative representations. Traditional ideals of beauty continue to dominate editorial pages and casting calls alike, while inclusion of non-normative beauty largely remains performative and tokenistic.

As a trans woman working within these spaces, I recognise the dissonance. I see the tendency to tokenise difference while maintaining its foundational biases. Transness, when palatable, is celebrated; when it deviates from the familiar, it is sidelined. And yet, visibility, however imperfect, remains a necessary disruption. Each trans body that occupies public space, each face that challenges conventional aesthetics, forces the industry to confront its limitations.

Claiming Beauty on Our Own Terms

To access femininity as a trans woman is akin to a tightrope walk. The world demands that we adhere to its aesthetic rules, then punishes us when we succeed. It frames our medical transitions as artifice, even as it sells beauty procedures to cis women as empowerment and self-care. In the midst of this contradiction, the task is to assert that trans femininity, in all its forms, is as authentic, as complex, and as unyielding as any other expression of womanhood.

My transition brought me home to myself. Gender-affirming surgery, hormone replacement therapy, the small rituals of beauty—these were not acts of submission to societal standards, but of creating an authentic self in evidence-based ways. Mental health outcomes, as proven by decades of research, only improve when a trans individual finds this congruence between mind and body. Whether in writing or in a voice several octaves deeper than the conventional standard, whether in a face that reflects my truest self or in the ambition to tell diverse stories through entertainment, I find power in this idea of self-authorship. The world may interpret this through its narrow frameworks of race and gender, but the truth is simpler: beauty, for me, is not about passing or pleasing. It is about presence. About existing fully, unapologetically, as the woman I have always been.

In a world still fixated on conventional femininity and who the ideal woman is—mandatorily demure and weak, playing the relentless role of caregiver—simply standing here, in this body is an act of quiet defiance. There is such gratitude for cis and trans ancestors alike who fought for the freedoms we have today as women of trans experience.

The mirror no longer feels like an adversary. The woman reflected there is real, undeniable, and mine. And that, perhaps, is the truest form of beauty—complex, ambivalent, powerful.

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