#or the blogger is just maudlin today because her neck hurts

[princesswithabraidedcrown]

I sent a picture of Laopo’s Boots and Pearls outfit to the family grouptext because I need a version of that jacket like I need air sometimes (to people other than me, it’s his outfit for the Chacha of love performance). And my mom and dad generally thought it was a cool, if retro jacket…but my sister…she basically asked if it was a dude in the picture and implied that he wasn’t…and that kinda hurt for some random reason.

I didn’t want to get into Chinese masculinity or why the heck we loved Zhang Zhehan’s laoponess over a Christmas request, but her reaction definitely hurt. I don’t even have the vocabulary to explain why it hurt. Possibly because according to her, people must stay in their gender lanes and never deviate. I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to completely subvert my entire gender identity, but I love the idea that I don’t have to be bound to femininity and I can choose how to express it when I do feel feminine. Zhang Zhehan showed me that I could be comfortably myself in whatever manner I felt best and it hurt to have someone I love undercut that a bit.

The fact that it wasn’t my parents that were concerned, but my sister also makes me feel some sort of way. As it stands, my parents don’t particularly mind the little bits of myself I let out…but my little sister… I may just be overly reading into this, but it hurt and I’m trying not to bottle my hurts up anymore. I have no idea if I’m actually going to talk with her about this or just wrestle with it until I come to an understanding. I also don’t know what my counselor’s personal feelings on varied gender expression are, so I’m not entirely sure how well talking about this with her would go. Typing this out into the void has helped a bit, but getting some feedback would be nice.