Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork with trans adults with disordered eating in the UK, this paper re-considers ideas around trans body image. It explores how an emphasis on appearance works to erase gendered histories, feelings, and social relationships.

Paper long abstract:

Discussions of transgender experience in the UK often revolve around physical appearance. Gender is frequently framed in visual terms, as something that has to be seen to be believed. Historic tropes around 'passing' and being 'born in the wrong body' suggest that trans experience is rooted in what a person looks like.

This paper suggests a notion of the 'cis gaze', which defines trans lives in terms of appearance. The gaze reduces trans experience as superficial, by suggesting that it is literally skin-deep. It also expects trans bodies to align with the appearance of cis bodies - or at least to desire to. These ideas carry into clinical understandings of disordered eating among trans people, which is often framed in entirely visual terms.

Yet, trans people themselves articulate gender in radically different ways. This paper draws from research with trans adults living with disordered eating in the UK. It pays attention to what image and appearance mean in people's lives. The visual cannot be divorced from bodily histories, social relations, and identity. What is seen is also felt and can be a powerful way of communicating with others.