Trappings

Her comment stayed with me. The woman had ended up getting a recommendation for a video created by a transgender person whose title was "I enjoy being a girl"

She bemoaned that any emphasis on false eyelashes, shoes and clothing were just trappings of womanhood and did not represent what being a woman truly is and of course she was right. These are just superficial indicators of gender and an equivalency would be like saying that being a man is all about Nascar, bulking up at the gym and watching football.

What is interesting is that many people (whether gender variant or not) buy into this narrative and ostensibly become walking gender stereotypes I suspect as cover for what may be missing inside. Therefore this woman was only partly right but taking a shot at this older transgender woman whose content is mostly not about appearance was simply too tempting. In fact in her videos, this content creator is always very casual and often presents without a stitch of makeup.

Many people (transgender or otherwise) do in fact focus more on internals and there are those who transition from male to female and perennially live in T-shirts and jeans whilst some genetic women obsess on always dressing to the nines.

It's a big world.