The Trans Girl Urge to Swag Gap

Words: Andie Kirby

Make it stand out

I only agreed to our first date to prove him so horribly incorrect.

​“Hip Hop music sounds really corny a lot of the time,” Theo iMessaged.

I had just returned to Los Angeles after a week spent in Brooklyn, where I mentioned having streamed Playboi Carti’s Die Lit over and over because it’s a fabulous record. Because blasting “Old Money” into my AirPods on the F train whenever I’m in the city is one of my life’s greatest pleasures. That song has healing properties. 

​We’d had enough compatibility over text before this remark, I thought. So despite his horrible (and likely racist) take, I met Theo for dinner in Highland Park. I lean argumentative: I’m a culture writer. Should I find him attractive and interesting IRL, this dispute over our first dinner could become a really cute story one day!

I arrived in my new Margiela tabis and a Brandy Melville sundress. For that good high/low brow balance. Theo is a skater. His long locks were still wet upon his arrival. Spoiler alert, dude: you’re not Audrey Hobert. We never even breached the musical topic I was so hotly anticipating debating: he was too focused on the World Cup. My week’s media diet was the new Ann Patchett novel, Whistler, and the first two-and-a-half hours of Louise Weard’s five-hour psychological trans film, Castration ii. I am so out of touch when it comes to sports - I thought Mbappe was retired and in his 60s, which I told him. No second date with Theo, thankfully.

I met Malcolm, a talent agent (who I think I’m still seeing casually?) a few months before my piss-poor time with Theo. He is ten years my senior, but has never seen Girls. Huh? He laughed when I stated my opinion that all straight men could benefit from possessing a tasteful Supreme graphic tee or two. To avoid sleeping in the matching Cou Cou Intimates undies I wore under my Eckhaus Latta mesh mini skirt and Tankair top out to dinner, I dug through Malcolm’s T-shirt drawer. The best option I could find was one that just said “MALCOLM”. He wears Pilates mom wrist weights on his ankles for hikes around Los Angeles. He has been on and off peptides in the six months we’ve known each other. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

“To be a transsexual woman is to know oneself. To pursue a transition into womanhood is to give a lot up, but it’s for something important, something intrinsic, something nonnegotiable. On the other side of that very specific change lies a self-assured population. There’s an inherent swag.”

Even my favorite prospect from the past six months, ​Ben, fell short on swag. Ben and I were a perfect match: both freelancers, both obsessed with ambient and electronic music. He liked my occasional Susan Sarandon-esque lesbian dressing. He liked my writing. We would discuss LA’s underground scene, discovering which shows we had simultaneously yet independently attended before we ever actually met last year. The problem? He’s 39 years old. In hindsight, when I brought up Jane Remover’s current musical dominance, his response should have been “What the fuck is a Jane Remover?” not an enthusiastic agreement. 

There’s an age gap for sure, but also a swag gap. All of these anecdotes have the latter. The viral term was coined in April 2025 by @itsalmondmilkhunni to describe mismatched styles between two people dating. She expanded to include how, though clothing can be a part of it and serve as a window into the swagonomics at play, a swag gap is more often the result of different energies or interests between people. A fundamental misunderstanding.

​Swag gaps define a lot of straight dating, whether the women are trans or not. Trans women have a unique relationship to the gap though, considering their innate swag: their inherent self-actualisation.

​Corinne Hamilton co-hosts Deeply Unwell, a culture and sex podcast. She’s a sex worker and collage artist who has taken a break from dating. Still, she waxes lyrical about her experience with men’s fascination for trans women.

“They’re all deplorable,” she added. “Older male artist types have always been less cool than their young, trans muses. Lou Reed and Candy Darling, for example. My longest relationship was with a guy 20 years older than me, who worked in the music industry. He would try to introduce me to new musicians or art. I’d always have to tell him I was already familiar.”

She continues, “He was wildly insecure. He would wear a toupee and muscle pads underneath his shirts. He had a nice body; he was muscular,” she said. “It felt like he was transitioning male to male, like in a clavicular way. It was a major turnoff. He seemed worldly, but was a loser. Men are inherently less interesting creatures than all women. They’re denied the same privilege of outward expression.”

Vanneza Gonzalez is a model and makeup artist in Los Angeles who has held similar experiences. “I was in my first long-term relationship, but felt so much more enthralled by the conversations I’d have with other dolls,” she explains to me. “Why would I want to spend time sitting on his lap watching him play Call of Duty?”

She notes how, though swag-gapped, she learned a lot and admired her time spent in this relationship. “He’d send me music that I wouldn’t even listen to if there was a gun to my head,” she said. “He wanted us to be something more, but I rejected him,” she says. “He didn’t mind my transness; he liked me for me. He worked with his hands; it was my dream.”

“He taught me I could be loved by a straight man, but that didn’t make it a balanced relationship,” she finishes.

To be a transsexual woman is to know oneself. To pursue a transition into womanhood is to give a lot up, but it’s for something important, something intrinsic, something nonnegotiable. On the other side of that very specific change lies a self-assured population. There’s an inherent swag.

To be any woman in this world is to understand relationships between people, to see and observe the effects one's actions have on another. To be a trans woman is to simply experience those relationships and actions uniquely.

Any straight woman dating straight men is likely to outswag them, no matter how that gap presents. The best course of action is to hold out hope that one day, we’ll strike the right balance with a guy. In the meantime, we’ll stay inspired, upping our swag with the help of the girls around us.

All men’s names changed for anonymity