Summer is almost over in Berlin, hopefully the very low temperatures won’t hit us very soon! It also seems that I have to start changing the things I am wearing in order not to catch a cold. In the mean time I will just pretend we still have temperatures between and 20 and 30 degrees, plus the feeling of being on the beach with all my friends, that will keep me warm for a couple of days.

It’s 5:30 pm and I have to go out in half an hour, gotta take shower and get ready… I ask myself what should I wear, see all my shorts and realize they are ‘too’ short, then I remember all the things that are related to short-shorts and how easily your image can be missled while wearing something or having a certain type of face. Some people have called me a twink and said I wear outfits for twinky guys, and also said that look I pretty much like one. The common idea of a ‘twink’ is pretty much an attractive, boyish, young and slender hairless gay man.

There is nothing wrong about being a ‘twinky boy’ or a ‘bear’ or any other type of person, but we should think that all this labels that have been created for us, made us look like being in a supermarket where you can choose by colour, size and type of guy. About a month ago I decided to shorten my hair as much as possible, thought the result would be people not seeing me anymore as the ‘ very-cute-twink ‘ they saw before… And it did work, now that I have my short hair I feel very comfortable about the heat and the image I project and feel satisfied about it, I can still wear short-shorts without falling into the same label and things seems to have changed a bit.

Sadly, twink-alikes are given the ultimatum between becoming one of the group or simply pray for someone who wants you and doesn’t feel like rejecting every boy whose body doesn’t fit the regular standards set for very young guys…

Do men wear makeup?

The question itself would have been ridiculous around 10 years ago, now many guys wear make up, I am not talking only about the cliché of homosexuals wearing make up, No! I am talking about regular guys, people who simply want to hide a pimple or make their eye bags look smaller. From the guy who is the Metrosexual until the very straight guy who just want to look his best on a date with his future girlfriend, they all want to look more appropiate and fit within the new ‘standards’ of beauty.

I remember my friends in Catholic school making fun of me just for saying to one of them that I use foundation to cover some pimples I had ( thank God they disappeared ), then realising some years after that they had pretty much done the same thing I did… Nowadays, I don’t wear any makeup, just because my skin turned out to be good and I follow a healthy diet, but if I had to, I would wear some foundation to hide pimples.

One thing I could also say about this ‘guy makeup thing’ is, no matter the gender, you can do pretty much whatever you want to your body, it’s your choice to look however you want to look, to follow this trend or the other to wear black, yellow or pink. Don’t let society to decide everything you have to do, and please do not let Fashion to tell you how you have to look like.

It is proven that men value appearance in their partner much more than vice versa, this does not mean he can forget about his appearance, still the judgement to these type of men is present. My point is (again) that we can all put as much makeup as we want, judgement is something overrated and there’s enough ‘normal’ people out there to even care about it.

When it came out in the news that the UK government was considering changing the law to allow same sex couples to marry, I jokingly suggested to my partner in a Facebook status update that we get married.

I say jokingly because marriage was never something I particularly wanted or felt I needed. I was happy to support the fight for marriage equality, though I didn’t think I’d ever want to use the right myself. My partner later told me how surprised he was that I suggested it, even as a joke.

A year and a half later, we are just married. It was a very simple ceremony. There were just two guests to act as witnesses, no more. No flower arrangements, no seating plan, no rings.

You see the main motivation for me and my partner of nine years to marry is to have the legal benefits and protections of the union; we’re not particularly interested in the ceremonial stuff or in sharing our love with the world. It is personal; it is for us.

Really, the main protections we will get as a married couple (at least in countries that will recognise our union) are a kind of insurance policy that only become relevant in the worst potential moments of our life together.

If one of us is dying in hospital, the other has the right to visit at any time and without question; if we own property together, one of us won’t be forced to leave when the other dies in order to liquidate the dead partner’s assets. Of course there are positive benefits too, such as paying a slightly lower rate of income tax, but that’s not what we’re doing it for.

However, it’s not all cold, legalese to me. It took me a while to realise (or perhaps rather, to admit to myself), but there is a part of me that is somewhat sentimental about the whole thing. I will enjoy introducing my partner as my husband, ironically co-opting (and perhaps also simultaneously subverting) the elevated status of couples that are married rather than those that are not.

Though we don’t plan to live in the UK again, I am quite proud to be from a country that has had the sense to introduce marriage equality. I now make the most of that right gratefully, in the hope that future generations of same sex couples who want to marry in the UK will not have to think that they are privileged to be able to do so, because they really aren’t.

If you’re not from a country that has marriage equality (or even if you are) and you have a partner you want to have control of important decisions should you not be able to make them for yourself consider setting up a simple power of attorney, as it will be recognised in almost every country in the world. Also, setting up your wills in such a way that you leave your assets to each other could make things a little easier too.