Gender Gymnastics
A Vignette
By Maryanne Peters

The routines were easy, compared to the problem of making my body look like that of a girl in that skintight leotard. The hair was easy – I had enough of my own to pull back and up, and then I had a fake bun that could be fastened in place very firmly. It needed to be for the floor exercises and the vault so it would not be dislodged during the tumbles. The only problems was that for some reason the bun was red hair – it still seemed to work.

But under that costume I needed to hide a waist cincher, false boobs and a “gaff” – a strap to totally conceal what was in my crotch. All of this stuff needed to stay in place through significant flexing of my body.

Why go to all this effort? It was just that my sister’s team needed an emergency replacement and she and I had been in gymnastics together for years. I could do this.

The thing is, that as boy I had worked with the same equipment as my sister and it had worked with me, but then, after I turned 13, I needed to move on to “male apparatus”. The rings, the parallel bars and the pommel horse are all about upper body strength and I have to admit that I was never able to develop that to compete within my own sex. I guess I found out that I was a weakling. I sort of dropped out, which is sad, because I really loved gymnastics.

Our mother was our coach, and she had been a top gymnast. She had always talked about following the rules but when my sister suggested that I could fill in for Danielle, a team member who had to attend her grandmother’s funeral on the day of the last round of competition, she decided that the whole team should be consulted.

“This is something that I would normally never consider,” she told the huddle. “But the situation is not really about points as we have what we need to go through. We just need to have a full team in order not to lose our place, so we are not really cheating. Is that the way you see it too? You all know my son and he is happy to fill in, but nobody must know. If we all agree to this, he will join us tonight as Amelia, a cousin from out of town. You must treat him as a girl, do you understand? We may be disqualified if the officials find out, so we must all be sworn to secrecy. It is only this weekend competition and then we should have Danni back for the semifinals. Are we agreed?”

There was no way anybody could say no, not even me. I was called over and I could see that none of them had even recognized that it was me sitting at the back wearing my puffer jacket. When I took that off and slipped down my sweatpants I could see everybody looking at me in amazement. I could almost hear the whispers asking what had happened to my junk.

I had my hair up and I was wearing the team training leotard, and my sister had even applied a little bit of makeup to my face. I had been surprised how much like a girl I looked, but I was to look a whole lot better on the day of competition.

But that night, after training one of the girls volunteered to have all the girls around to her place for a sleepover. I suppose that would have excluded me, but my sister and the other’s had taken to heart Mom’s – “You must treat him as a girl” speech. She approved and I was taken along to experience “bonding with other women”. It turned out to be a formative experience.

We spent a lot of time talking, and then it was decided that we should watch a “chick flick” movie. I can’t even remember which one it was, but I was told that it was accepted that everybody watching would cry at the end, and that would need to include me. Not forced tears, but let the story carry me away, and if I felt like crying, don’t hold it in as a boy might, but let it out. I laughed at the idea, but sure enough, at the end of it I was bawling with the rest of them.

Then we talked about hair and makeup and that was when the bun appeared. As they said, I had all that hair and a great hairline so I could have my hair drawn back to match the team. But it would require some “work on those eyebrows”. My eyebrows (and my eyes) are naturally dark and a little shape made me look spectacularly female.

Then we all shaved our legs and our armpits. Even when I pointed out that our costume did not require clean pits I was told that a shave down was part of the pre-competition routine and not up for argument. Somehow, I felt that the smooth skin made me better. Perhaps that was why I was.

We all washed our hair with the same stuff and pit night cream on our faces and went to bed.

Somehow, after that night, I just felt that something had changed. Something inside me had just clicked, and it was not that I was just back into gymnastics again. I felt that this whole feminine thing was the real objective, and I was better at it than any apparatus. But my final preparation concentrated on the floor exercises and the balance beam. Thise are the two disciplines where feminine poise and movement are observed and marked. I wanted to excel in those areas and not just the bars and the vault.

We did well, and we stayed in the competition. I had a fantastic time with my team of girls as we supported one another and danced around high-fiving and giggling, but I was ready to step back when the missing member returned.

But I was not ready to step back from being female. I was hooked. Our mother often said that competitive sport is about finding out about yourself. She mean that it was learning whether you had the physical and mental strength to achieve to your full potential. I still believe that. But in my case what my brief foray into female gymnastics allowed me to find out about myself was that I was female and probably always had been. Now I am ready to commence to transition to become complete in every way.

It will be a challenge, but I am ready. I am gymnast, and I now have my all-girl team for support.

The End
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© Maryanne Peters 2026

Author's Notes
1. The image is called “Dont worry brother, you can [be] my sister” by Quokkaqwen on Deviant Art
2. This is a classic change by circumstance - see my comment to a recent blog on disappearing tropes