Check-Up #44

I haven't been up to a lot recently. Life just kind of grinds on and I still haven't been able to get away on holiday but hopefully I will within the next couple of weeks. I've bought a few things recently: a nice black sweater dress that will definitely need a splash of colour to it somewhere, a red sweater top, a houndstooth dress from Hell Bunny and a Captain America themed purse. However with each purchase now comes the worry that I'm buying too much and that I have nowhere to store it and that's without the worries over my weight. Dressing is still one of the only joys I get out of life now. The other day at work I was given an award for long service and I didn't feel anything. I just felt sort of numb. Not that it's been the greatest time at work. 

So anyway onto a few other things and recently I've been using an AI clothes changer to try on different outfits. The one I'm using is here https://bitstudio.ai/ai-clothes-changer but there are plenty of others out there. It reminds me a little of Cher's 'Dress Me' computer program in Clueless and feels like a continuation of what I started over 30 years ago by drawing myself in different outfits and later on using Photoshop. You simply upload a photograph of yourself in one section and one of the outfit you want in the other. This can be grabbed from anywhere by it a clothes website, photograph or a still from a film or TV show. The site I'm using at the moment gives you 5 free images per day or you can sign up and pay for more. 

Onto a couple of media things and recently I saw the film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma which was an interesting one. The writer/ director is Jane Schoenbrun who previously did We're All Going To The World's Fair and I Saw the TV Glow so if you like queer horror that riffs on the Friday the 13th movies then give it a watch. One of the film's themes is repression and there's a scene in it that made me think of TF captions and stories when our heroine Kris describes wanting to be in the film and going from being the nerdy girl to the 'slut' running away from the killer through the woods in a crop top and pants. I've also been watching sitcom Silicon Valley for the first time and I love the style of Monica Hall, very much the sort of business casual I would love to wear for work. I'm also watching The Big Bang Theory spin-off Stuart Fails to Save the Universe and Denise's nerdy style is also fun. 

What It Feels Like For a Girl

Recently I've been catching up with some television including Russell T Davies latest series Tip-Toe which was really powerful plus What It Feels Like For A Girl. This series came out in 2025 and is an 8 part adaptation of trans woman Paris Lees' 2021 fictionalised memoir of the same name. Lees took events from her life but added the fictional character of Byron as a proxy for her younger self. 

I also found this a powerful series. Set in Hucknall in Nottinghamshire in the early 2000s it centres around teenager Byron. They aren't the nicest of characters and when they get into terrible situations they seem to make it worse with their own acid tongue but yet you still sympathise with them due to Ellis Howard's magnetic performance and an understandable background. Byron's dad is a macho type who wants his son to be just like him and mum did a 'Shirley Valentine' which made me think about how that cultural touchstone seems to have faded from memory now (Shirley Valentine is a 1989 film based on a stage play about a woman who leaves her husband in the UK behind to live a new life in Greece). 

Byron's journey to realising they are trans is handled in an interesting, almost matter of fact way. There are no huge, defining moments like staring at a dress in a shop window or trying on mum's bra in fact, despite some hints from their past, they don't seem to think about it much until they steal a wig in a scene which is played mainly for laughs. To rewind slightly, Byron falls in love but when their boyfriend suddenly ghosts them they are inspired to go looking for him in Nottingham and instead find a new queer friend group including transwomen Lady Die and Sasha. Once the wig is 'obtained' Sasha offers to do Byron's make-up and from then on they start to dress more femme on a regular basis. The final episode sees Byron out and proud and starting again after a spell in prison and, in one of my favourite moments, following a rift with Die the two make up in the very British way of bonding over taking the mick out of a friend. It did make me quite emotional by the end too and made me wish I was a bit more confident in dressing how I want to. 

Here in the UK the series is still available on the BBC iPlayer. 

Ellis Howard as Byron in a BBC publicity photo for
What It Feels Like For A Girl (2025)