How can I be more feminine?

I've been thinking quite a bit lately about femininity.  Just to update everybody, I'm queer.  I've only really accepted this definition for myself for the past 18 months.  To me, queer means I am both man and woman.  My gender is not one or the other, it's a gray scale between them.  At times I am completely masculine.  At times I am completely feminine.  My gender preference seems to follow my current gender, so when I'm masculine I'm more attracted to women and when I'm feminine I'm more attracted to men.  

Now, the problem with that is that I've accepted this as who I am late in life.   I'm not saying I'm anywhere near dying, but I've lived the life of a "Heterosexual Male" for decades.  I'd say we shouldn't consider childhood, but those are formative years.  Being taught that I'm a boy and boys play outside and are tough and don't cry.  Playing sports like basketball, baseball, and kickball.  Cheerleading?  Dancing?  Not even options that were presented to me.  Because as I was raised, boys don't do those things.  

So, I've been taught to be comfortable with society seeing me as a man.  

I don't want that to be my default position any longer.  BUT... I live in a conservative area.  I work in a conservative area.  Let's say I wanted to fully embrace this change, that I wanted people to look at me as feminine or at least as something in between masculine and feminine.  How do I do that?  

Off the top of my head, there's dress, skin, nails, makeup, and hair.  Now there's other things people tend to think of feminine, but I'm going to tackle them next.  Lemme start with these.  

Dress.  If I start with dressing like a woman, for the most part, I'll look ridiculous.  A skirt or dress with hair on my legs is bad.  A blouse would be form fitting in all the wrong ways.  And feminine shoes would be fine, but overtly and singularly feminine.  And then there's the realist approach... I more or less dress like a woman now.  At least how I would want to dress as a woman.  Comfortable shoes, socks, jeans, and a top.  The biggest variable comes in the tops.  I only started wearing t-shirts a couple years ago when I had to go to physical therapy.  Beyond those, I wear comfortable, loose, and highly stylish button up shirts.  I'm talking about a bright red shirt with black stylized flames at the bottom.  A blue bowling shirt with two white panels in front and a bunch of diamonds going through the panels.  A peach shirt with a group of geometric lines going down either side of the front mimicking panels on a bowling style shirt.  

Now, the shirts are still masculine.  They're men's shirts.  They're cut and fit for men.  But the style is quite forward and in general women seem to have more style choices than men.  Those are my casual clothes.  For work, I wear slip on shoes, colored socks, slacks, and a shirt and tie combo.  The only nod I give toward extra style is the fact that I don't wear black or brown or white socks, the shirts I wear are bold in color, and there is always a matching color scheme to everything I wear from socks to pants to shirts to ties to now even masks.  For example I have dark purple shirt.  I'm not talking any type of lavender that is commonly seen for men, I'm talking  PURPLE.  The example to the left is just about correct.  Except I bring it all together with a white/silver/lavender/purple striped tie and a pair of heather grey pants.  I'd love to say I match it with a grey belt and grey shoes, but I only have a black and a brown belt/shoe combination so black it is.  I also match this with a purple mask that used to match the shirt perfectly but now with fading matches one of the colors in the tie.  

Everything starts with the shirts as they are all as bold as this.  Red, Blue, Green, the above mentioned Purple, Orange, and Yellow.  The yellow shirt has a blue tie that works perfectly with it and gives it that University of Michigan 'Go Blue!' spirit, but otherwise all of the shirts have two ties that work with them.  The Red, Blue, and Green all have one to go with khaki pants and one that goes with black pants (double duty for the brown and black shoes/belts!).  The orange has two different ties, but they both only go with the khaki. 

So, they're all masculine cuts, no one is going to confuse these with women's blouses, but they are about as stylish and bold as I can make them.  Sure, some women wear more muted colors and look great doing it, but you only rarely see men wearing as much bold color as I do.  And keep in mind, for the first five years of my job I wore scrubs.... scrubs that were unisex.  They literally WERE women's clothing.  

Maybe if I was in a more liberal area, or had some other support for me to try with, I'd wear something more overtly feminine.  But this is as close as I think I can get here where I live and not have it affect my job.  Now dress would be major affected by many of the categories below.  If they were all in affect, it would culminate in dressing and presenting as completely feminine.  It still doesn't work for me though.  lemme go into them. 

Skin.  This is where age comes into it a bit.  My skin is aged.  No, it's not all pockmarked and wrinkly like an 80 year old, but it does have skin spots showing and it's not smooth as it used to be.  I don't particularly care for it, so it's generally in rough shape.

Nails.  I keep my nails ridiculously short.  As soon as one of my fingernails touch the keyboard, they're done and cut away.  I can't STAND long nails.  BUT... I love the feeling I get when I don't have the opportunity to cut them and they grow out a bit longer than I'm used to.  Yeah, they're still shorter than most women wear theirs, and their not polished or coated or anything... but it just feels feminine and happy when they're longer than normal.  

Makeup.  I don't wear any.  I don't know how to where any.  I figure its like many things in life that require a certain level of practice and skill to not end up looking like a clown and I just don't have the opportunity to try that out.  I know whenever I put on chapstick, I'm imagining it's lipstick and that makes me happy.  But that's not the same as actually wearing it.  

Hair.  For the longest time I wore my hair in a buzz cut flat top.   But it's not a style I could maintain on my own and with 'Rona making it unsafe to go to the barber, I've been using a beard trimmer and cutting most of my hair off.  Right now I use a 2mm cut.  Overtly masculine.  I also wear a beard and a mustache.  I don't like them and I don't like the way they make my face look, but then again I don't like the way my face looks anyway and the beard/mustache cover up the areas where its harder to shave.  

So, I'm not feminine in anything that says femininity... but that's a lie.  

As I was talking in the dress area... not all women dress bold.  Put a woman in comfy shoes, jeans, and a t-shirt and I can dress just like her.  If I were a woman, that's probably what I'd wear most of the time.  Some women, especially in my age group, don't have smooth beautiful skin.  And when they do, its because they put the effort into it by applying lotion and moisturizers to it every day.  Some women keep their nails short and some even bite at them, making them more raggedy than mine.  Some women wear little to no makeup.  Where I work many of the nurses wear little to no makeup.  And someone women have short hair.  From pixie cuts to the buzz cut on the right... and don't tell me she looks masculine!

Being feminine isn't about dress, or hair, or skin, or makeup.  Yes, there are the physical differences like breasts and no penis... but I've maintained that if I were born a woman I'm not sure much would have been different with my life.  Yes... my personal perspective would have been different as I would have been raised as a girl (God, my mom wanted a girl so bad!) and maybe gotten into the cheer team or a dance squad (probably not as its not like I played any sports in highschool!).  

So, if it's not any of those above things... what makes a woman a woman?  I KNOW inside of me that I'm feminine.  I know it as strongly as I knew I was masculine before.  But what way could I express my femininity without falling into the standard traditional trope?  The 1950s housewife or secretary?  Heels, skirt, movie makeup, bouffant hair?  If I saw a woman dressed and made up like that I'd wonder where the costume party is.  

Now I know the argument... go ahead and try some of this stuff.  Get some panties and some stockings.  Try them on, wear them, see how they make you feel.  But I'm not looking to become a cross dresser.  Not that I have any problem with cross dressers, but I'm no desiring to specifically wear women's clothing.  Unless I'm feeling VERY feminine, almost completely feminine, I have no problem with the fact that I look masculine and dress that way.  I have no problem with society seeing  me as a man and treating me as such.  It's their loss, not mine.  

Well, that last part isn't true.  It's my loss too.  I'm losing out on presenting myself as I am on the inside.  I might never be a pretty woman, but I could at least be a woman on the outside.  I don't know... I just want to experience being more feminine and to be seen as more feminine, I just don't know where to put that energy or if its ever going to be worth any effort.