I had a haircut on Monday. Really short. I like the feeling of short hair, with no hair touching my neck or ears, especially in summer.

My mother doesn’t approve. She hasn’t seen this haircut yet but I already know what she will say, or at least think, because I’ve heard it before. “Why do you cut it so short? You look like a boy. I don’t like it.” She also cannot fathom my choice to not try and push my almost non-existent boobs into a more feminine shape.

My goodness how liberating it was to stop wearing a bra! And to think that I longed for one when I was a teenager and all the other girls had them and not me, because my body was a bit late to puberty.

With age (if one can talk of “age” at my age… I’m not exactly a wise old woman) I am gradually acquiring a wonderful disregard for other people’s opinions about things that do not concern them.

Today I wanted to explore these expectations of appropriate feminine appearance. I wanted to take a self-portrait that would make me look as unfeminine as possible.

What makes a woman look feminine? Softness and curves. Posing tips for portraits of women boil down to bending everything that can be bent, tilting everything that can be tilted, and shooting nothing straight on. The corollary is that for a masculine look, you accentuate the angles and the squareness.

Women are posed to look slimmer. Men are posed to look strong and confident.

Women tilt their head forward and are photographed from above, men are more likely to be posed leaning back and photographed from below.

I cheated and borrowed Eric’s cap for some of these. The baggy t-shirt is all my own though.