When I saw this topic, I felt like I already had many ideas for it - even though I have no intention of undergoing some sort of transgender surgery, I had toyed with the idea of switching genders in the past quite a bit. Just for clarity, I'm a male and this is how I would envision myself taking the body of a female.
Clothes - So many choices!
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Many women lament about how frustrating it is to select clothes to wear sometimes. I can understand that sentiment, but at the same time, I would be thrilled to have way more clothing options than I currently do. Since I live in a country with a tropical climate all year round, I hardly wear anything other than a T-shirt and pants outside. It's honestly pretty stale, and even though I appreciate that it takes no longer than a minute to decide what to wear, I think I would enjoy it much more if I had more choices to pick from.
If I felt like I wanted to look girly, I could wear a sundress. Something more comfortable to study in a cafe? Maybe a simple blouse and jeans. Out for a party? Perhaps a tube top. And besides, there are way more clothing designs for women as well. I'd probably be having a blast shopping for pretty outfits and peculiar designs.
Hair
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Another thing that I really like about women's hair is that it can be very versatile, especially if you have long hair. Tie it up into a bun, braid it, tie ponytails or twintails - there just seems to be way more options for how you want to style your hair. Of course, this comes with the huge problem of managing long hair, which seems to be very costly to manage in terms of time and money. Washing my hair would become an hour-long scrub every few days instead of the quick 5-minute daily ones that I do now.
I'd like to think that how great it looks in photos would be able to justify just how much maintenance long hair requires, but I would think that it would become just another chore after a few months.
Camaraderie amongst Women
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It's no surprise that women's friendships are different from men's friendships, with one of the biggest differences being that many women tend to rely on each other for emotional support, whereas men don't do the same with other men. As someone who likes to rely on and be relied on for emotional support, I feel like this would be a very welcome change.
Unlike men-women friendships where there is emotional reliance, there would most likely be no chances between women for misunderstanding one another's behavior as romantic interest. Being able to talk freely with one another without having to worry that your actions and words can be misconstrued would likely feel pretty liberating.
And of course, even between women who aren't friends, it does feel to me like the "sister code" is observed in some ways as they implicitly understand the struggles of being a woman. Whereas amongst men, it does feel like in many situations everyone's just fighting to be the Alpha male with hardly any regard for other people.
Dating as a Woman
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And if there was one thing in particular that I would want to do as a woman, it would be throwing myself on a dating app and trying to date. After all, women are the choosers on dating apps and often have many people who are willing to date them rather than the other way around. It would be interesting to see how dating feels like on the other side of the table, where everything is taken care of by the other party and all I have to do is sit pretty.
Of course, I'm also aware that online dating for women is not all flowers and roses, with meeting weirdos and people with malicious intent being a real possibility. That being said, I'd like to think that I would be fit and resolute enough to be able to deal with these kinds of situations as a woman.
The Biggest Negative: Dealing with Society
As a woman, it's almost certain that I'll have to always be prepared for things like unsolicited sexual advances and being a target of casual sexism and discrimination. As a man, I don't have to think about whether the person approaching me in this shady alley has any intention to rape me. I also don't have to be viewed as the person who should be giving up his job to be the primary caregiver once I have kids. Women deal with these kinds of issues on a regular basis and I have no doubt that it causes a great amount of mental distress to some of them.
This would most likely be the biggest potential problem as a female - dealing with the way our society treats and views women.
Would I like to be a woman permanently?
Honestly, if I had a choice, I probably wouldn't mind it. Although the world still greatly favors men in many aspects, I feel that it isn't as relevant to me as I'm not aiming to be at the top of the food chain. I work in an industry that is largely meritocratic, and plenty of women do thrive in it as well. I think that I would be rather content with an average life that would allow me to experience the world in a different light by becoming a different gender. It would be like playing on New Game+ in a video game.
I hope you enjoyed reading this; I found this exercise to be quite interesting and even though I didn't have enough brain juice for the other questions, I'm quite curious to see how other people answer those questions.