REFLECTIONS IN A DAMAGED MIRROR

Leading Lady

Marie-Therese 55-C-2 FPE.

ED NOTE: This is a little different in the way of Leading Lady stories in that it is not so much of a personal history as it is a "think piece". Marie-Therese wrote such a perceptive supplement to her FPE applica- tion that I asked her to expand it into an article for TVia. Since she sent some pics along with it I decided that she ought to get first billing this issue so here she is. Read her piece carefully and see how closely it hits home.

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Who is that woman we see when we look in the mirror, and whom with all our determination towards modesty we yet find beautiful? As human beings we all have a consciousness of self, and our lives become a quest for our own identity; it is never easy, and for FPs it is inevitably more difficult and more confusing. I cannot answer my opening question for you, and it will be a long time before I can answer it for myself: but identities are in the first instance like dresses, we try them on for size; and just as our taste in dresses forms and crystallizes, so too we grope towards the identity that we will eventually settle for and each reduction of the possibilities means a focusing of the self, and a step towards the narrow gate on the other side of which we will find, or must believe we will find, that fulfilment of the self which however imperfect we will call happiness. Any attempt I make at a commentary on what it means to me to be an FP is dominated by the perspective of the present moment; every report is an interim report; this is how it looks to me now, but I know how far I have progressed in recent years, and it is unlikely that there will not be more changes.

Humans can never be statis; always there is change, and at times we call it progress. Looking back on my own FP life I can now see that it fell into particular stages, easily enough marked. The start in childhood with corsets and knickers; the move into full dressing which is the first

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