Trying to be more feminine

[EmmaS]

Hi all,

I was wondering what you guys do to appear more feminine? I could use any advice that you all could give me I really appreciate your help in advance

[SarahLynn]

Depends on how blatant you want to be (if you're out to everyone and full time, etc..).

Little things you can do:
paint your nails (get a mani/pedi) - you can use clear polish if you want to be less noticed
get your eyebrows done (andro or slightly femme)
start taking care of your skin - exfoliate, moisturize
wear feminine undergarments
grow your hair out or get a feminine (or slightly feminine) hair cut
get your ears pierced

Hope that helps

Best wishes,
Sarah

[Alainaluvsu]

Use your hands as body language when speaking.
Elbows in, wrists out!
Cross your legs or keep them shut when sitting.
Head up, chin down.
Loosen up!
Use primer if you wear makeup.
Lip color / gloss is HUGE in appearing feminine.

[justmeinoz]

All of the above, plus look after your skin and hands.  Moisturising is a must.

[vivienne]

Smile

[Incarnadine]

Can I add a question along the same line without hijacking?

Any thoughts about things you could do to feel more feminine without it being visible on the outside?  I'm continuing to explore feelings without making too many obvious or disruptive changes.

- Hope

[Rita]

Growing out your hair is a slow slow process.  You can start there and all that will be noticeable is hair growth.

Stop focus on masculine exercise and try to focus on feminine exercise.  Feminine exercise its focused on flexibility and calm.  Masculine is about muscle an energy.

Obviously life is a balance and you need to do both no matter.

Practice your voice in your own privacy.

Once again get a manicure, just dont grow your nails or paint them.  Just have them shaped rounded.

Just a few things you can do without really raising any alarms. 

[Incarnadine]

Growing out your hair is a slow slow process.  You can start there and all that will be noticeable is hair growth.

Good ideas!  Unfortunately, 36 years of testosterone (and a genetic "gift") have left me with two large baldspots racing to see who can reach the other one first! 

[Rita]

Good ideas!  Unfortunately, 36 years of testosterone (and a genetic "gift") have left me with two large baldspots racing to see who can reach the other one first! 

I'll be honest with ya, start transition asap then with T-Blockers at least.  See if any hair grows back, but be aware of erectile dysfunction.

If you have to wear wigs, going to a wig shop and trying stuff on with a freshly shaven face is always nice.  I did this before HRT and it made me feel better about myself when I saw myself in the mirror. (https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/392041_10150496425735781_1546561295_n.jpg)

That image was a year ago, pre hormones.

[Annah]

and if you plan on wearing heels make sure you know how to walk in them first before going out in public. There is nothing more cringing than seeing someone walk like a linebacker in heels.

[UCBerkeleyPostop]

Volumes upon volumes have been written just trying to define what femininity is and analyzing how women present themselves.

There are significant differences in gesture, posture, movement, and general bodily comportment: women are far more restricted than men in their manner of movement and in their spatiality. In her classic paper on the subject, Iris Young observes that a space seems to surround women in imagination that they are hesitant to move beyond: this manifests itself both in a reluctance to reach, stretch, and extend the body to meet resistances of matter in motion --as in sport or in the performance of physical tasks-- and in a typically constricted posture and general style of movement. Woman's space is not a field in which her bodily intentionality can be freely realized but an enclosure in which she feels herself positioned and by which she is confined. The "loose woman" violates these norms: her looseness is manifest not only in her morals, but in her manner of speech and quite literally in the free and easy way she moves.
In an extraodinary series of two thousand photographs, many (p. 67) candid shots taken in the street, the German photographer Marianne Wex has documented differences in typical masculine and feminine body posture. Women sit waiting for trains with arms close to the body, hands folded together in their laps, toes pointing straight ahead or turned inward, and legs pressed together. The women in these photographs make themselves small and narrow, harmless; they seem tense; they take up little space. Men, on the other hand, expand into the available space; they sit with legs far apart and arms flung out at some distance from the body....

http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth200/gender.html

[SarahM777]

On some of the mannerisms,if you got teased a lot about it as a kid,you already have them,their just masked. Some of it is letting go of what we taught ourselves,and letting go of those will let the others come through.