Not often, but sometimes, I look back to my old photos and movies. Specially on the very old ones, where I had absolutely no clue on how to apply makeup or even get a wig that “passed”; like many crossdressers, the very first times I dressed I aimed for a sophisticated, sexy style — and which invariably looked slutty and, well, so wrong 🙂
With time, and enough practice, at least on my pictures and movies, I now have a quasi-passable look, which is between casual and elegant. Sure, I wear too much makeup; but you need that to take pictures indoors. I also get a bit bolder experimenting with colours and tricks, and since a lot of the fun comes from the dressing & makeup bit, I actually enjoy it more and more, while in my early years, I was always perplexed on how to apply things correctly (and almost never managed to get it right first time!). I still giggle when I remember that I thought you’d need eye makeup remover to remove all makeup, and that took, of course, hours — and several bottles of remover! It was my wonderful wife that told me that foundation and powder go off with warm water and soap… I couldn’t believe it could be so easy! 🙂
In my country, almost all women hardly wear makeup — only on very special occasions, usually when going out or for a very fancy cerimony, like a wedding. At the very beginning of my experiments with makeup, I used to get frustrated and tell myself, “I’ll never do this convincingly. I never had any talent with painting. Girls start wearing makeup when they’re 12 or 13, they got years of experience, how am I supposed to learn all this in a few sessions?” It was only much later than I realised that most women I know actually have far less experience than I do! Granted, it’s a cultural thing — on many countries, wearing makeup, even just lipstick, mascara and blush, is almost a “daily requirement”, so that means most women would have an incredible experience by doing that every day of her lives. In my country, as said, this is far from the case. My sister-in-law, for instance, can’t even apply mascara correctly (and I’m alwaysalmost telling her that!), and that’s the easiest thing to do. My wife has some natural talent — she’s an artist otherwise — but she definitely learned a few tricks from me, too, although she hasn’t got the patience to go through my whole routine (which takes far less time than she thinks; nevertheless, most of the time I spend in the bathroom is… shaving and depilation, which take an insane amount of time!).
But recently, well, it gets on automatic, I almost don’t think much about what I’m doing any more. Once in a while, I might buy a new product just to see how well it works. Liquid eyeliner, for instance, is a challenge — I definitely need to train a lot more to be proficient with it, although of course you get a too dramatic look with it. Clothes are pretty much the same thing: my closet is insanely limited in size (and so is my budget!), having been originally designed for just one person, but now being shared between myself, my wife, and my other self. So I can’t even buy much more… even if I could afford it (which sadly I can’t at this stage of my life). So I get a bit tired of looking the same way.
The worse bit is that I’ve finally realised that I won’t look any better even after a diet. I get an impressive hourglass shape with my corset now that I’ve lost some weight, but… only from the front. If you watch me from the side, I still look, well, “robust”, to put it mildly. And the large size clothes I have to buy for myself are just impossibly tailored. They all assume that a woman that wears a 38D bra is stocky-, square-, or pear-shaped, and all I get is a straight line which doesn’t show the awesome 30 cm difference between my breastline and my waistline! So, well, I’m wasting my waist… lol
I’m considering to send some of the dresses to a professional to get them cut properly, or put some waistband in it, or some trick like that. I might look a bit better that way. In fact, there is really just a very old black dress in satin that fits me flawlessly. It’s my oldest dress, and, gosh, does it cling to the waist! I’m always surprised when I wear it, specially after so much time looking at how badly the rest of the clothes fit me.
Nevertheless, I think that the “dress problem” can be fixed. The makeup did improve. I finally start to get a decent haircut on my wigs, that look modern and sexy, instead of slutty and out of fashion like on the Rocky Horror Show movie (which is great, btw, although it makes fun of us Tgirls). I just have one pair of shoes that come from a crossdresser shop (and they’re just elegant, not slutty). My accessories come all out of real shops for real women, and I share a lot of them with my wife.
But what is the next step?
I remember that at the very beginning I was frustrated at my eyebrows. They were far too bushy, but, of course, I couldn’t trim them as I wished. I even remember putting liquid latex over them to cover them! (Don’t do it, it’s insane!) But over the years, I looked around myself, and most women in my country don’t have perfect arches on their brows — in fact, a certain “volume” seems even to be fashionable (it gives a face more “personality”!). Well, after years, I’ve been trimming them ever so slightly, just a few hairs here and there. Nobody has noticed that they aren’t as bushy as they used to be. Yes, they still have volume — but they start getting closer to the shape I wish. But since I did this over so many years, nobody has ever noticed much of a difference. Not even my wife! With a little bit of foundation over them, and a white pencil under the eyebrow, they’ll get passable enough — even for a blonde wig. So I’ve learned that with patience I can get a slightly more pleasing look without anybody noticing.
I did the same with getting my “fur” off. Previously, I even had a beard!… which I started to cut very short, so I could shave it totally over the weekend. For a while, people just found it a bit weird on Mondays. I shrugged it off if someone asked me “what happened to your beard?”, and just said I did a bad cut and decided to start it all over again. But since a few years ago I forfeited my beard altogether. People just got used to it 🙂
Legs is naturally easier — I tend to keep them epilated (I use a nice little epliating machine at home — it takes hoursto get all the hairs out, but they stay out for two weeks or more, and at least the whole investment was made just once) since nobody is really watching under my pants… right? Well, it’s a problem if you go out to the beach. However, I’m one of those very rare people in the world that hates the beach (ironically, I live 100 metres away from the sea…), so that’s not a problem.
Breast and arms are a problem. Genetics have helped to answer for the breast: my father has little hair in that region, so I can shrug it off and say that the same happened to me (which is actually not true but… who knows, besides my parents?). Granted, that’s good enough if I wear something high-necked. For the extra cleavage, I naturally have to shave way more than around the neck! My wife doesn’t allow me to shave on my tummy — she has her reasons — but that’s ok: with my shape and body weight, I always have to wear a corset anyway. Everything above it gets neatly epilated 🙂
The arms were a problem. I started with the hands. Not all males are hairy apes; a lot of them haven’t a single hair in their hands, even though they have rather hairy arms and legs. So, over the years, people got used to see my hairless hands. The rest of the arms pose a problem, of course, because I wear polos and T-shirts in the summer. So I did the same thing as with my beard: first, I started to cut them short; then, after several months, I started to epilate them as well (which leaves the arms in a disgraceful state for a few days until the redness wears off; I have to wear long sleeves for a few days). Granted, I’m not very diligent: sometimes I grow them back, sometimes I keep them untrimmed, but on average, I’d say I have as little “fur” as I can get, and almost nobody, except my wife, has noticed it. It helps that I never had very, very dark hair anyway, but a brownish colour. It still feels funny that in my usual group with lots of GGs, I’m usually the one with less “fur”, although, of course, they will have much softer and almost transparent body hair 🙂
So… that’s as far I can go.
What comes next?
One thing is clear: my shape won’t change. Sure, all the tricks in the world can give me a slightly better shape — corsets help a lot with the hourglass shape, and cleavage is easy (and fun!) to do (no, I don’t use tapes — I prefer aDiva instead, and some makeup tricks), and I’ve been gifted with rather good legs and a reasonable amount of bottom to be passable.
Unless you see me from the side or the back. There are no garments in the world that can change your bare arms or your shoulders. Sure, I can cover them — either with long sleeves or with a scarf or so. But they will never look feminine enough. Even the large hands can be slightly changed: wearing fake nails, using more rings, and so on. Arms, however, are a mess. Shoulders and back are even worse.
But when it comes to the face, there is a limit to how much magic you can do with makeup. And here are where my major problems are. My nose is simply too big and too ugly. If you don’t think so from my pictures, well, it’s just because sometimes I can get reasonably good camera angles where the nose is not so visible. Sure, I do some makeup tricks on the nose, but I cannot make it vanish or turn it into a beautiful nose. And that’s just the beginning, of course, there are soooooo many things plain and simply wrong with my face…
You might say that I’m just overly worried about my image; after all, most GG are not supermodels either. Only a very few might indeed be very pleased with how they look like! So I should accept myself like I am — just another plain ugly TG like millions of others — and don’t fret about it. Enjoy what I can! Ugly or beautiful I can still crossdress, right?
Well yes. But I can’t fail to think that if I were a GG, at least I would have a very easy way out: surgery. I might not get rid of my arms, but almost all the rest would be doable. And probably not astonishingly expensive, either. For instance, I know I have nice lips and a reasonably nice eye shape. If I could just get the nose out of the way, it would improve things dramatically 🙂 And boobs, well, there are some places in America (North and South, and speciallySouth America) where every girl has an implant. So those would be simple for a GG.
But as a guy, at least most of the time, these can only be wild dreams. We all know how cool breastforms are, and they’re good enough for having fun. But the face… the face stays, you can’t change it. And if you happen to be robust, there is no way you’ll get a nice shape out of your body, even with the tightest corset in the world…
