A recent sto­ry in The Sun of Lon­don both gives hope and sinks the heart: A trans­gen­der cou­ple, Arin, 17, and Katie, 19, are cel­e­brat­ed for being the ​“cutest sun-baked cou­ple on the lake.”

'Fabulous' is deviance with a high gloss, the most stylish middle finger you could thrust at the oppression of normality.

For a sto­ry like this to appear with­out mor­al­iz­ing in, of all places, a tabloid like The Sun is aston­ish­ing. And yet …

Arin and Katie are pre­sent­ed in a way that implies trans peo­ple can only be accept­ed if they promise to be ​“adorable” and con­form to gen­der expectations.

What kind of recep­tion awaits far less per­fect bod­ies, per­haps those with the scars show­ing? What hap­pens to those who don’t tran­si­tion so beautifully?

And what about those who refuse to pass, for whom not look­ing ​“right” is part of the point?

As a cis-female (a woman born woman) my bod­i­ly con­cerns pale in com­par­i­son to what my trans friends might expe­ri­ence. Still, I’d like to lose an unspec­i­fied num­ber of pounds, and I some­times won­der about what I’ve pub­licly called my ​“floopy [sic]” breasts.

To some extent, I’m ensconced in a queer and trans fem­i­nist, rad­i­cal bub­ble — a social and polit­i­cal net­work that rou­tine­ly dis­sects and rejects nor­ma­tive ideals of what a body should look like.

So, you’ll under­stand my dis­may when a long-time friend demand­ed that I wear a ​“prop­er bra,” and poked fun at me in pub­lic for my breasts. Or my unhap­pi­ness when she said I lacked fash­ion sense because I dress like a frumpy male jour­nal­ist. (I like men’s jack­ets.) In oth­er words, I was policed on my gen­der pre­sen­ta­tion and deemed not ​“fab­u­lous” enough.

To make it all the more sur­re­al, this indict­ment came from some­one who pep­pers her con­ver­sa­tion with words like ​“affirm­ing” and ​“fat-pos­i­tive.”

I’ve since dis­en­gaged from the now erst­while friend, but I remain con­cerned about what I see as a dis­turb­ing trend among rad­i­cal queers and trans peo­ple. These com­mu­ni­ties boast about being the most body-affirm­ing, yet, iron­i­cal­ly, are heav­i­ly invest­ed in their own hier­ar­chies of beau­ty. It’s not enough to be body-pos­i­tive, one must be fab­u­lous to the core.

​“Fab­u­lous” is hard to define — like porn, one knows it when one sees it. Fab­u­lous­ness orig­i­nates from a queer cul­tur­al his­to­ry that includes John Waters’ care­ful­ly-craft­ed mus­tache, RuPaul’s high heels and singer Beth Ditto’s unabashed­ly fat body. ​“Fab­u­lous” is deviance with a high gloss, the most styl­ish mid­dle fin­ger you could thrust at the oppres­sion of normality.

In the new world of ​“body pos­i­tiv­i­ty,” fat­ness and gen­der-non-con­for­mi­ty have been inter­pel­lat­ed into an implic­it: Be fab­u­lous or else! Dove’s ​“Real Beau­ty” ad cam­paign, for exam­ple, insists on affirm­ing that you should find your true beau­ty — all the while telling you that you real­ly, real­ly need to be beautiful.

The recent cel­e­bra­tion of Ditto’s wed­ding on both British Vogue’s web­site and alter­na­tive sites empha­size her Jean Paul Gaulti­er gown — it’s not enough that she be a woman of size, but that she be gor­geous. Would she be as cel­e­brat­ed if she wasn’t armed with an arse­nal of style? If she decid­ed to be unfab­u­lous­ly fat?

Of course, this address­es what to many is a felt need. In a world where gen­der non­con­formists, trans peo­ple and peo­ple of col­or (the ones who aren’t adorably so) are mocked, harassed and even vio­lat­ed, often in pub­lic, for how they look, there are rea­sons to pro­mote an affirm­ing cul­ture. But as venues like the Sun high­light queer style as desir­able, main­stream affir­ma­tion comes with nor­ma­tive strings attached. Lis­ten­ing to queers give each oth­er fash­ion advice, I’m struck by how much they’ve inter­nal­ized both the lan­guage and dic­tates of mag­a­zines like InStyle: ​“You need a pop of col­or, hon­ey!” and ​“Wear­ing a belt will give you a waist.”

What if some of us don’t want waists? Is there a place in this world for slop­py and unfab­u­lous queers? Can we decide that, for some of us, dress­ing up is pre­cise­ly that: some­thing we do on spe­cial occasions?

I’m not advo­cat­ing for puri­ty here, and I’m not unaware that we all have con­tra­dic­tions. I might live for a 100 years talk­ing crit­i­cal­ly about unre­al­is­tic body images, but I will always want to lose more pounds. I love fash­ion, both its his­to­ry and its glo­ri­ous seduc­tions. A well-cut jack­et will have me swoon­ing; the small­est sign of hand-stitch­ing sends me into ecstasy.

But I do wor­ry about younger queers com­ing up and out, who feel a pres­sure to be fab­u­lous, dar­ling, just fab­u­lous, haunt­ed for­ev­er by the sneer­ing ghost of Pat­sy Stone.

Are we — and they — des­tined to be scold­ed if we don’t cinch, pinch and puck­er all the time?

I’m tired of feel­ing com­pelled to affirm every self­ie that shows up in my Face­book feed, to ​“like” yet anoth­er image of some­one who needs to be reas­sured that, yes, they’re tru­ly lovely.

In the world I occu­py, ​“body pos­i­tive” cul­ture has led to a new tyran­ny of fash­ion, and a demand that we be fab­u­lous for­ev­er and always.

Is it real­ly so impos­si­ble for us, rad­i­cal queer fem­i­nists, to cre­ate a world where we dis­pense with the idea that phys­i­cal beau­ty is a mea­sure of worth? Instead of greet­ing every accu­sa­tion of ugli­ness with an affir­ma­tion of beau­ty, can we sim­ply shrug our shoul­ders and move on to big­ger issues?