some ads and pictures I was drawn to

My recognition that I was not the usual boy was something I remember vaguely prior to age 9. There was the revelation from my mom that I was supposed to be a girl, or so the doctor thought. As the youngest in my family, that is, the entire family for my first ten years, I was often treated as one needing protection.
The guys were allowed to be rougher while the girls were not to be as athletic and often given advantages in play. I was never typically athletic but like all my cousins, I did come to love sports. But when we played baseball with the wiffle ball I was allowed to bat with the fat plastic slugger like the girls.

It was in 1966 when I became attractive to the first magazine picture (Sophia Loren above). I would stare at the picture wishing it could be ME. A year later, I had what I thought was a "hernia operation" and laid up most of the summer. '67 was a majical year that cemented my allegiance to the Boston Red Sox, but it also found me recuperating on the living room couch for most of the summer. Later in life I was to discover that the surgery was to repair an "undropped testicle" I had been born with.

As I grew into pre-teen and teenage years, I became more aware of my affinity to feminine pictures. It was not who I wanted to be with, but rather who I wanted to BE!

The other pictures I included were a Virginia Slims ad of a woman wearing a see through outfit (I could care less about the cigarette); a pantyhose ad showing a gentleman oogling away from his date to notice the legs of the lovely female seated.; and my all time favorite, Sandy Duncan's gorgeous legs. There was not a day in my teens that I didn't glance at that picture. I wanted to be dressed just like her. My adolescent friends would say that I was a "leg man". However, I just wanted legs like Sandy's.

I'm on a search for more articles and props that made lasting impressions on my identity and have made me realize that gender is truly brain deep.