How Wearing Leggings Changed My Life

By Malorie Cooper

A transgender woman's journey of self-discovery and how she learned to live without walls.

My name is Malorie, and I can almost always be found wearing leggings...unless I'm wearing a catsuit.

Why am I telling you about my unconventional fashion choices? It's because my outward appearance is an expression of my inner self—and just like I no longer hide that I'm a woman, I no longer hide other aspects of who I am.

I live authentically, and I'm joyfully honest about myself with everyone around me.

All of this might cause you to think I'm a bit strange, but it also gives me a rare perspective; one I hope to share with you.

Growing up as a man who knew that she was a woman helped me to learn a lot about myself, men, women, society, and humanity. I'll share with you how I knew I was a woman at a young age, how I suppressed that knowledge, and how it eventually forced its way back to the surface and demanded I be honest with myself.

Dive in and find out why wearing leggings changed my life, and how my personal path of discovery just might help you change your life as well.

Oh, and you don't have to wear leggings while you read this, but it wouldn't hurt... ;)

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wooden Pen Press
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643650432

Book preview

FOREWORD

My name is Malorie, and I’m a transgender woman.

I decided that I’d start here, not at the beginning or end, but where I am right now. This is going to be the first of two books about my journey. Not because I’m trying to milk you out of twice the money, but because I know that my journey isn’t over, and I plan to change the world for the better before I’m done.

High hopes, right? Well, I think a good attitude is always the best place to start.

I even know the title of my next book: How Wearing Catsuits Changed My World. However, you’re just going to have to wait for me to get a bit older and have a few more experiences under my corset before you get to read that one.

You read that right, catsuits and corsets. You might already know that’s the sort of thing I wear, but if not, well…now you do.

Yes, I’m rather unconventional. I see the world differently than most people, and while that has caused me a lot of problems in my life, I’ve learned how to leverage my differences to gain a unique perspective. I hope to share some of that understanding with you, and maybe help you to see the world in a way that can help you out.

I don’t have any special wisdom, I’m undoubtedly wrong about some things, yet I’m delightfully foolish enough (or so I hope) to think what I’ve learned is worth sharing. Even so, I plan to live long enough to learn many new things that make me smarter, wiser, and give me greater empathy for my fellow humans.

Because there’s no greater danger than thinking you already know it all.

But this book isn’t about what I hope to learn so much as it is about what I have learned. It’s about the fact that you reading this book today is a direct result of my decision to get rid of my jeans and start wearing leggings (don’t worry, it’ll all make sense).

Malorie Cooper

Danvers, 2019

PART 1 – FALLING APART

A GIRL DEFINED

I was on the bathroom floor, curled into a fetal position as uncontrollable sobs wracked my body. I knew it was stupid, there was no reason to feel this way, to feel so wrong.

After all, I hadn’t gone through any great trauma, I hadn’t suffered any loss, or witnessed anything terrible.

Sort of.

I’d looked in the mirror. While naked.

It was something I took great pains to never do. But it was all there, waiting for me. My hairy skin, flat chest, narrow hips, hallmarks of a male body. Not to mention what was between my legs. Definitely not female.

But in my mind, when I closed my eyes and thought of myself, I saw a tall, statuesque, blonde woman. Her breasts were moderately sized, waist nipped in, smoothly curved hips leading into long legs.

At least I actually have the legs.

It was the person I had always seen myself as, had always wished to be. Dreaming of being her was how I had fallen asleep for most of my life, wishing I had another body, one where the outside matched the inside.

That wasn’t my first bout with gender dysphoria, and it was certainly not going to be my last.

Eventually, I picked myself up off the floor and finished shaving my body, taking care not to cut myself as random shuddering sobs still hit me.

If you follow me on Facebook, you might remember that day. I posted about it, still crying as I wrote out the message and sent it into the ether. I didn’t want to forget the visceral emotion, which is why I put it out into the world. I wanted other people to know what gender dysphoria was, and I wanted any other trans people who came across it to know that they weren’t alone.

Our experiences are not all the same, but we share a special bond nonetheless.

Of course, the next thing I had to face was worse: laser hair removal. Where? Everywhere. Someone else, likely a twenty-something woman, was going to see my naked body in its entirety.

My male body.

By this point, I’d been dressing and presenting as female for months. I was very good at feminizing my body, and I passed very well, considering I had not yet started HRT (hormone replacement therapy). No one had seen me looking like a guy in months, not even me (as evidenced by my strong reaction to seeing a man in the mirror).

The idea of another person seeing me laid bare was almost paralyzing.

But as any transwoman can tell you, there’s something we dislike more than people seeing us all skinny-hipped, breastless, and sporting eggs and sausage between our legs: and that’s body hair.

There is nothing that will out you as having been born with a male body more than body hair. And so, I pulled myself together and got ready to go meet this young woman who would have to see…all this.

But as I was getting dressed, I forced myself to watch myself in the mirror. I made myself really look at my body, a body which is perfectly fine as it is—if you’re into looking like a guy—and I realized that self-loathing is poison. It would strip me of joy and rob me of future happiness as my transition progressed.

It was a thief, a thief that I was determined to deny.

And that was when I established a new axiom in my life: No matter where I am, what I look like, or what I’m struggling with, I have to love myself now.

Because if I don’t know how to love myself as I am now, how will I know how to love myself when I reach my goals?

That wasn’t the first new truth I’d established in my life on this journey, but it’s one I know applies to everyone.

Love yourself. Now. Right now. You are deserving of love. Yes, you’ve made mistakes. Yes, you have a long way to go. But little ol’ you will do a lot better if someone is rooting for them—and that starts with you.

You love you.

I know it’s hard sometimes. I’ll give you a helping hand, though: I love you too.

Of course, I have to tell you the story of how I got where I am today, and in the best Malorie fashion, I’m going to jump around a bit. Because for me, to accept that I was transgender, I first had to understand it. And that meant I had to really figure out what I was stepping into by becoming at least two letters of LGBTQ+

So let’s kick it off with that. What the heck does it all really mean?

PART 2 – THE FOUNDATION

WHAT’S WITH ALL THESE NEW TERMS?

Feel free to skip this chapter if you’re savvy when it comes to the differences between sex, gender, gender expression, and sexual orientation.

I’m going to start with a detour, lay a bit of groundwork, and establish some basic nomenclature so we can communicate more effectively. I’ll do my best to keep it brief.

A lot of people (myself included) wish we didn't have so many labels for people, that we could all just be humans. But here’s the thing: labels are often very important because they allow us to seek out like-minded people and to identify our peers when it comes to careers, hobbies, belief systems, behaviors, or general interests.

In my software developer career, we had many labels that were used to define our specializations as well as skill levels. Labels such as DBA, DevOps, and Architect, all convey useful and necessary meaning. In my writing career, we use the terms plotter and pantser to describe writing techniques. We use labels like Romance, SciFi, and Fantasy to label books in order to help readers find stories they’d be interested in.

Without these labels, you’d have to describe everything in annoying detail just to say you want a book where elves, dragons, dwarves, and humans may live in a mythical land accessible through a biker bar in NYC guarded by elves. OK…you might have to drop some details to ferret out that one as well.

So what about all of these new social/gender labels? Why are they so darn annoying, and why do we all have to use them?

Well, luckily, we don’t all have to use them all the time, just like most of us don’t have to remember industry terms used in knitting or model railroad construction.

But for people who have been on the outside looking in, who have spent most of their lives thinking they’re alone, these labels help them find other people like themselves, and forge bonds and friendships.

This is important, so I’ll say it again.

Gender and identity labels help people find community and form friendships.

So, to help spread information about what all the various labels mean, I’ll share a few with you and lay down the rationale. But before I dive into that, I want to discuss something that I think a lot of people don't fully grok because it involves some language changes that are newerish—the difference between sex, gender, and sexual orientation.

The term sex has always meant what many of us think of as our biological sex—aka, the shape of the bits between your legs (which may or may not align with your chromosomes). The usage of this term is largely the same now as it’s always been (albeit with some nuance I’ll get to later).

Gender, however, is what sex you identify with (or how you don’t identify with either). For the vast majority of people, their sex and their gender are aligned. Gender also has nuances such as the gender you are, and your gender expression. An example of this would be effeminate men (be they gay, drag queens, or regular guys with big feels). They may view themselves as entirely male, but their gender expression may range far into the female side of the spectrum.

Sexual orientation is who you are into. Your sex and your gender have little to do with your sexual orientation. Being a lesbian or gay are sexual orientations. In some ways, being into blondes or hot Asian dudes are also sexual orientations; it’s the direction you tend toward (where you are oriented) when looking for a partner.

From there, we move into some other terms, many of which have been around