Trans woman here, been on HRT for a couple of weeks now. (No effects yet of course, I know that’s normal, that’s not what this post is about) Of course I am glad to have that opportunity as a young adult but I keep having this uncomfortable thought that this is not going to be what I hope it to, the final puzzle piece for liking my own body and finally feeling good about myself. A bit of a background info: I look terrible. Not just in the regular mtf dysphoria i-don’t-look-female terrible, but also the just generally ugly human being way. I die inside a little everytime I look into the mirror and avoid cameras like the plague. Everything from terrible skin quality to weird looking chin and cheeks, wide shoulders while looking like a stick that’s barely over the healthy weight minimum. And it’s not like I don’t do anything for my physical health, quite the contrary: I do daily workouts, get enough sleep, eat healthy and sleep enough, don’t drink, smoke or consume anything with much sugar or fat and I spend a lot of time outside. Additionally I have a hygiene and skincare routine that’s probably more intense than the ones that some beauty influencers promote. All of that amounts to me barely avoiding looking like one of those zombies from Left for Dead. And then I look at people around me living the most unhealthy of lifestyles while looking 10 times as good as me, that’s goddamn frustrating, let me tell you. Sometimes I visit those trans timeline subreddits and I don’t even have to look at the post-transition images to feel like shit. Literally everyone of these people already looked pretty decent at least even before they transitioned, which doesn’t give me any idea if I can even remotely achieve what they have.
And that’s just the physical part of things. Saying that I’m dead inside doesn’t seem fitting, it sounds too negatively connotated. I just got nothing inside, it feels like. I just do stuff in autopilot, not feeling anything about it in any way. In retrospect I don’t know when the last time was that I sincerely laughed about something or was really sad or angry about stuff, it seems like I just go auto-pretend in order to act appropriately or look interesting to others. And once again, I checked what might be the issue there and found nothing I could do to improve the situation. I ain’t depressed or anything and there weren’t any traumatising experiences in my life. So you know, I figure it’s just one of these dysphoria things.
Where did/does that leave me? I arrived at the conclusion a while ago that I did everything I could to feel/look better and the only thing left to do was get on HRT to deal with the gender dysphoria that causes this. And that’s where the doubts come in. HRT in theory is nice and all, it slowly helps shape your body in a better form, improves quality of your skin, makes you more emotional and whatever every second trans hangout seems to have written on their digital pamphlets. The only issue is the metaphorical fine print. Changes vary in their presence and intensity. So yeah, I see those incredible transitions on the mentioned subreddits, I read about people finally enjoying their mental state (shoutout to cows_are_underrated, I hope your transition goes well), and all this other hrt positivity. I’m not a determinist or anything, but I just don’t see all of these things happening to me. I don’t know, maybe I won’t sweat all the time anymore, maybe I’ll grow some small tits or perhaps I’ll feel emotions besides frustration for the first time in ages.
That’s all good and well and I’d rather have it than not, but that brings me back to the title of my post. I don’t think HRT is gonna fix me, and if it doesn’t, I’m simply fucked. This is my last chance it seems, I’ve tried all other options that are usually recommended for looking and feeling better and that thought is honestly scaring me (make that a plus one for emotions felt). So yeah, sorry about that bigass rant, it ended up being longer than expected. This obviously isn’t supposed to be some fishing for compliments bullshit, you don’t know me and never will, I just had to get this out of my system. Anyway, if you actually read through all this, thanks for paying attention to my yapping I suppose, and have a great day.
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Yeah, HRT won’t fix you. That’s true. It’s not magic even though people keep saying that. I feel like for me what HRT did was give me something to fight and hope for. It gave me something on the horizon to work toward. Your mindset sounds an awful lot like mine before transition. I also went on HRT as a kind of last resort thing and slowly but surely, optimism came into my life. I realized I could customize my body. I could put in work to make my life better, to like myself for the first time ever.
Changes came, but HRT wasn’t the majority of it. The biggest changes were those I made motivated by the hope of being a girl some day. I didn’t believe it back then, but it came true anyway. I’m not even two years in and yet I’m still further along than I ever thought I could get.
And I feel your physical struggles, I truly do. I felt so ugly before transition, went to the gym, still looked like a stick. Couldn’t gain weight for the life of me (I still can’t, which still frustrates me). I thought I’d never pass, that no one would ever honestly think I’m beautiful. And you know what? I was fucking wrong. It took me a long time to realize and I really fought it because I couldn’t believe it when people told me I looked good a few months in. And even now, when people compliment my looks I often think they do it out of pity. But they don’t. I turned out pretty. I’m actually hot, which is still unbelievable to me. But turns out self love, confidence and good fashion sense go a long way. And a nose job lol. (I always wanted one and HRT gave me the guts to just do it!)
So keep fighting, babe. Keep going. It’s going to get better, I swear. Give hormones a year or two. Try to make the best of this life, you’ve only got the one.
I agree with Thereaa. One of the hardest transition is the mental state. That one is hard. There will always be a difference as what you want to look and what you will look.
But you know what. Some people don’t even have that image the one you want to look, the one you want to be. They see you right now and they might think. Wow!
I only started. As well I’m hopeful. It’s going to be a hardeous journey, but I know in the end it will matter.
I started to get in shape with this hope. (I’m obese always had image problem…)
Even if I were to fail or feel like I will… Well I will have achieved something. Nobody’s perfect but someone might find your imperfection as perfect for them.
My fashion sense is terrible. I might just want to express my look as goth later like something I repress during my teenage years. I look more like a bear : I am still bulky… and might not look like “girl” in societal sense. I had built that image repressing myself and my want. Never learned in my family.
I don’t know you or your situation. But I strongly believe it’s always good to keep fighting and hang on. 23 days since I started hrt. Deconstructing gender norms is hard no matter what. Probably at some point will do FFS. But right now. Still in my CO phase as well as HRT journey.
I ended up writing more about me than trying to give advice but I hope I can inspire you a little bit and give you hope since it is a battle of the self.
It’s comforting to see that I am not alone with these struggles and even more so to see that people like you keep their hopes up and strive towards improvements regardless. Imperfections are a normal thing, I understand that. I just wish I had a lot less of them. Nevertheless, I suppose working on yourself and your self image reduces their amount and impact on your life and that’s worth fighting for, even if it’s just a tiny improvement. Thank you for your insight on this.
I suppose when you put it into perspective like this, HRT really isn’t just the amount of its physical consequences. Being able to draw actual active motivation from it sounds like a powerful thing. It’s not that I am demotivated, I’d actually consider myself an optimist, but more out of a “might as well” attitude and not out actual positive feelings towards possible future developments. I’ve gotta say, someday thinking of myself as pretty or even attractive, or god forbid someone else telling me so, is but a crazy pipedram to me. I don’t think I’ve in my entire life ever gotten a sincere compliment about my looks from anyone, so that idea seems rather unreal. Given how you described your experience though, that means it might actually be a possibility, and there’s something very reassuring about that. Thank you for sharing your experiences, maybe there really is something on the horizon that’s worth fighting for.
I think your biggest issue is your constant comparison to others. You won’t feel what you think you want to feel like in a new body with that constant barrage of comparisons.
I get where you’re coming from, comparing yourself to others is rarely healthy. Regardless of that I feel that establishing some standard or goal based on what you see around you is necessary to get an idea on what you’re actually aiming for, be it for the purpose of inspiration or imitation. It’s not that I look at celebrities and go “I want to look exactly like them” but rather the everyday people around me from which I can deduct some bottom line standard that I would very much like to be over since I currently definitely am not.
I can’t say how hrt will help you or not. I’m thinking it might help me one day but…
But I wanted to send you a hug, perhaps that sounds meaningless, sent in digital bytes, but I know it’s helped me to hear that at times. You sound so down on yourself, are you sure you aren’t depressed (I’m not a Dr)? Do you have access to a counsellor/therapist?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the mirror doesn’t know shit! I tell myself this, anyway!
Seconding the suggestion to see a mental health professional about your mental state.
Saying that I’m dead inside doesn’t seem fitting, it sounds too negatively connotated. I just got nothing inside, it feels like. I just do stuff in autopilot, not feeling anything about it in any way. In retrospect I don’t know when the last time was that I sincerely laughed about something or was really sad or angry about stuff, it seems like I just go auto-pretend in order to act appropriately or look interesting to others.
This sounds a lot like how I experienced depression at its peak. You may not suspect that you’re clinically depressed if you’ve never really experienced anything else your whole life. Same principle as gender dysphoria.
What you’re suggesting sounds concerningly logical. I really hope that these similarities are purely coincidental, since I really don’t have the resources to deal with something as severe as this right now.
Even if you get diagnosed but can’t commit to therapy and/or medication, the diagnosis can be helpful on its own. It allowed me to finally take the way I was feeling seriously, as well as overcome a lot of counterproductive ideas, like that I just had “the wrong mindset” or “wasn’t trying hard enough to be happy”. If that’s as far as it goes for you… well it’d be better than nothing, right?
Thank you, I appreciate the digital hug. Concerning whether I’m sure that that I’m depressed or not, I couldn’t tell. Since I never got that impression myself, I haven’t investigated this any further and therefore not spoken to anyone qualified to make judgements on it. Unfortunately I neither have the time, money, nor social freedom to engage with counselling or therapy, so I hope that it’s not something I actually need.
https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/biochemical-dysphoria
It doesn’t really matter if the explanation is true, but the experience is something that many of us go through. The experience that we feel like empty zombies and that after HRT we finally feel real.
At some point after starting HRT I had days where I started liking what I saw in the mirror (and seeing a woman) despite knowing that I objectively do not pass or anything like that. It’s not constant for me, but I have more good days than bad days. Liking what you see is partially gonna be a mental thing, and that’s something HRT might do for you or it might need therapy or something else.
I’m not gonna promise that these things will happen for you, but I hope they will.
Hope you will feel better soon 🫂
I appreciate the kind words, thank you. It definitely helps knowing that I’m not alone with feeling like this and that your mental situation can improve even in the face of comparatively small changes. HRT will perhaps not be the final puzzle piece for me, but it might be a more important stepping stone than I originally assumed. I guess I’ve just gotta wait and find out myself.
Yeah it probably won’t. Like Theresa and Shirow said the mental transition is the biggest influence that can change you. We are living in a superficial world. The internet is filled with survivorship bias(attractive people tend to show off and are more visible), keep that in mind.
I too see myself as unattractive(lack features that our society sees as attractive) and sometimes feel alienated when I consume media. What helped me dealing with that is working on my mental health, and time.
I am in the team “HRT is not magic”. HRT is giving you smooth skin and small titties for the most part, the rest is up for you to do unfortunately.
I wrote a post a few months back where I ranted my emotions and since then my situation improved again. I have bad and good years since starting transition. And I am not alone, we are all struggling, some maybe more than others. Please don’t beat yourself up too much over it. Give it some time.
Perhaps I really shouldn’t draw early conclusions and give everything some time instead. Unfortunately this whole mental self image improvement doesn’t seem to be all too straightforward, I guess that’s also something to be figured out in the future. HRT being the magic that it is sometimes advertised as would have been too good to be true I suppose, but slow and small improvements are still better than none, especially when they enable you to do bigger ones yourself. Thank you for sharing your experience.
A bit of a background info: I look terrible. Not just in the regular mtf dysphoria i-don’t-look-female terrible, but also the just generally ugly human being way. I die inside a little everytime I look into the mirror and avoid cameras like the plague.
As much as the beauty industry wants us to believe that beauty is a tangible goal that we can reach by spending enough on clothes and makeup and beauty treatments; as much as modern Nazi-adjacent *cel ideology wants us to crush our own spirits by believing that beauty is genetically determined and immutable; as much as both only survive by convincing us to care about it at all - it is very much a subjective thing that lies in the eye of the beholder.
In my experience, peoples’ own opinions about their looks tend to have little overlap with what other people actually see. And what other people actually see is like 50% due to their own mental state and preferences/biases. In any case, I seriously doubt people find you as ugly as you feel, simply because it’s unlikely that anyone cares that much about what some stranger looks like. Even if I don’t find you attractive, I don’t WANT to feel repulsed, so why would I bother paying any attention to your appearance?
You don’t control what other people see. You CAN control what you see. Look for the parts of yourself that don’t disgust you completely. Learn to love even the smallest fraction of yourself. Do appearance-related things that make YOU feel good, that feel authentic and true to yourself. Things that make you feel like your body is truly YOURS, regardless of whether it’s beautiful or not.
I’m not even out, I certainly don’t pass, and I honestly doubt I ever will to other people. That doesn’t stop me from looking in the mirror and seeing fragments of the woman I’ll be one day. It’s taken me years, and progress has been too slow to actually notice it, but it’s definitely happened.
I guess it really isn’t smart to judge your own looks based on what you assume others might see in you. Nevertheless I can’t help but feel like looking at me is an uncomfortable thing for others, the same way it is uncomfortable for me when I look in the mirror. I know that they probably just don’t give a damn about how I look, but that only barely makes it better. Perhaps I really should start to focus on what I actually like about my appearance, though I doubt it’s going to be easy to actually find something there. Working on what I want to see in myself instead of chasing after unachievable standards sounds like a good goal, I just hope that I’ll be able to commit to a proper strategy in that regard, with the constant pushback of each improvement being contrasted by the crushing amount of things that I dislike about myself. Maybe someday I’ll also see a piece of the woman I’d like to look like when I look into the mirror, or that’s what I hope for at least.
