Getting the biggest thing out of the way first - the hair. Yang is fiercely, FIERCELY, protective of her hair, to the point where she on several occasions has more or less thrown a temper tantrum about it being damaged. It’s even implied, to the point where I’m not sure if it was directly confirmed at some point or it just became popular fanon bc of the implication, that her first haircut that Tai referred to resulted in her semblance activating for the first time.

Her hair is something incredibly important to her, and while this experience is not universal or necessarily unique to trans women, basically having a breakdown because of any damage to hair really implies that her hair symbolizes something more than just presentation. I can attest to this, I once scream-cried in a car because of a bad haircut that chopped off half the length; the loss or negative change to something that many trans women find key to our gender euphoria is incredibly traumatic. Also, this is a really minor and coincidental thing, but we only see her with her hair up when she is in her childhood home with her father and extremely depressed and angry. Hair frames the face and can ease some feelings of dysphoria tied to jaw shape in public.

As for clothing and other presentation, in volume 1-3 she presents almost hyperfeminine and plays up a femme fatale kind of personality. A lot of trans women, especially after first coming out or just while we’re younger, present extremely feminine as a sort of distancing from masculinity as well as more or less overperforming gender to combat dysphoria, which can sometimes be unhealthy. Obviously, this is far from universal, but for butch trans women, this is extremely common to be the case before transitioning more into presentation that is more comfortable. Yang is a great example of this progression; in v5-6 she starts wearing more masculine clothing, and in v7 she finally gets her butch disaster suit. It’s clear that she is happier and more confident in this progression, and clearly, Blake appreciates it too, lmfao.

The fact that she is more confident and doesn’t give a shit about how men see her later on only adds to this; the infamous v1 line of compulsive heterosexuality contrasting with how she treats men she dislikes with open disdain now is just very butch dyke, and young trans women often get hit with a ridiculous amount of compulsive heterosexuality in order to overperform gender roles like I stated before. This also just jives incredibly well with the pressure of her being an older sister as well as a mom for Ruby; she’d have to perform in like 3 gendered roles at once, and it’s almost no wonder she finally got more in touch with her presentation after being alone, sad as that is.