As I brush the hair out of my face with a newfound grace, Chloe's voice breaks through my thoughts, pulling me back to the present moment.
"Amelia, are you alright?" she asks, her concern evident in her tone as she notices my momentary distraction. "You seem a bit lost in thought there."
I meet Chloe's gaze, offering her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. "Oh, I'm fine," I reply, my voice taking on a lighter, more melodious quality than I’m accustomed to. "Just taking in the moment, you know?"
As I hear my voice, I can’t help but notice the California valley girl accent and vocal fry affected in it. As a man, it was a vaguely irritating accent but paradoxically at the same time one I would have guiltily found sexy. But it came out so naturally.
Before the others sit down, I decide to take a proper look at myself. I grab the phone sitting on the table, assuming it’s mine, noting in passing how much I love the rose gold color.
As I open the phone to the camera app, I look in disdain at my nails. Part of my mind admires my dainty, cute hands, and how feminine they are, but somehow the bigger part of me can do nothing but think in disdain about the ugliness of my nails! Well they’re not ugly, I try to insist to myself, but all I can think about is that I need to get fake nails on ASAP! My hands need to look good.
I am baffled by my own thoughts, despite the conviction I feel in them. Long fake nails must surely be so inconvenient. I don’t know how I would do anything with them in the way. But no, I really truly felt a strong desire to get them, and genuinely feel disappointed that I don’t have them.
I look at my face in the camera of my phone and feel a similar thought. I know my male self thought this woman to be very pretty, but my thoughts are preoccupied thinking that I desperately need to freshen up my makeup, and hoping that I don’t look bad in the photo Chloe took of me.
But my lips—I know my male self thought me to be good-looking, but as I purse and pout them for myself in the camera I feel very critical. I need lip filler. The thought was fully-formed and full of conviction. I wanted bigger, fuller lips, I was not happy with the way mine looked, and as I glanced over at Chloe I was hit with a pang of jealousy about her lips. They looked good. I wanted mine to look like that.
Feeling off-put by how firm my new opinions were—I knew I would never have cared if this woman had lip filler or not as a man, and had thought she looked quite nice—I contemplated how ingrained Amelia’s personality was in me now and felt a growing sense of trepidation about what was going to unfold. How far would this go? What else in my mind was affected. How differently was I going to behave? Was I still me?
My momentary reverie was broken by a man’s voice, saying, “Primping again, Amelia? You’re always doing that. Don’t worry, you look great!”
I look up to see…
