How long did it take for HRT to make you pass?

[Ruth Ruthless]

Hey, I'm 3 months on mtf hrt and my face is what I have the most dysphoria about. I feel there have been absolutely no changes there unfortunately though I have been getting some breast growth... but as I said the face is most important to me and breast growth feels worthless to me if my face doesn't change.

I'm a non op transgender doing hormones and laser and I want to avoid other operations if possible. Me not wanting to do bottom surgery means in my country I am denied any financial help with other surgeries because I "am not a full woman" according to the sex change commitee here in Israel :/

So basically 3 questions... and I know YMMV which is why I hope to get lots of answers to see the general range of possabilities.

First: poll! Did HRT do enough to your face to allow you to pass without facial surgery and if so how long did it take or when did you start seeing changes?

Second: How long should I wait to see what HRT and laser hair removal do before it's likely this is as good as it gets and I need to consider surgery if it's not enough?

Third: I always was skinny even now after hormones I have to "work hard" to get fat and it always goes first to the tummy before it spreads elsewhere, and I lose it elsewhere before I lose it in my tummy... and I want to pass but I also want to stay skinny. Could that be stifling my transition or probably it's just going to take time either way?

Thanks in advance to anyone who answers! And my apologies if this has been asked a lot...

This is a video I shot 4 days ago so you can see how I look now. People still refer to me as male all the time and I want to work in acting and no one hires me because I don't look female enough for them and I don't want to work as a man.

[kelly_aus]

Hmm.. There's a couple of things I'll say in respose to this..

I'm not sure that my looks were the most important thing when it came to passing.. Confidence and attitude carried me a long way to start with - and still does.

It took about 12 - 18 months for me to see any real changes in my face - and even then they were fairly subtle.

Do I pass? It seems so.. Either that or I'm yet to come across someone rude enough to say something..

[suzifrommd]

I was on E for about six months and Spiro for about 3 when my face started 100% passing.

However even before that, I got really good results just by wearing bangs and  glasses that covered up my eyebrow area. That obscured my eyebrow ridge and forehead area, which are my biggest problems. Given your picture, I would say that they're your biggest issue as well. Cover them and your passability will go way up.

[Jenna Marie]

First off, I see a woman in your video. So it may be partly that you're too hard on yourself; I also thought I saw zero changes even when strangers were gendering me female already.

Secondly, HRT had made *some* facial changes by about 3 months, and after 6 months I was never misgendered again, even in boy clothes with a male ID. Which I think answers the question about whether I needed surgery, too; I have had no problems with being gendered correctly and while I wish I could fix some things about my face, they're all the usual complaints that cis women have too. I would give yourself at least a year, but realistically, wait as long as you think you can stand - and pay attention to how other people, esp. ones with no preconceptions, approach you.

Lastly, sorry, no idea about being skinny... I was chubby when I started HRT and have gained weight since.

[Aquarelle]

Maybe it will sound a little bit discouraging, but I am more than 13 months on HRT and I don't think I pass... Still a lot of people call me "sir"... I am not even thinking about fulltime at this stage

[Nicolette]

Hey, I'm 3 months on mtf hrt and my face is what I have the most dysphoria about. I feel there have been absolutely no changes there unfortunately though I have been getting some breast growth... but as I said the face is most important to me and breast growth feels worthless to me if my face doesn't change.

Shalom aleichem. I feel your impatience, but three months really is too short a time to cause any major visible changes in fat distribution within your face and body. It can take up to a couple of years or more if you're a slow developer. Even after that, you may find that you still require some sort of facial feminisation surgery.

Starting in my early 20s, I passed without facial surgery, but had some anyway because I wanted the testosterone induced 'rough edges' smoothed out, and I needed the confidence boost. You know what? It's only after 20 years of being on HRT that I'm really feeling pleased about my body. Surprises keep on happening.

In the meantime, whilst HRT changes are in progress, you should work on other things, if you are not already doing these things. Things like your voice, make-up, dress sense and mannerisms. I can't help you with these things. But I know that others here can.

[KayXo]

Did HRT do enough to your face to allow you to pass without facial surgery and if so how long did it take or when did you start seeing changes?

Yes. Within a few months (3-4) of starting HRT. But, I was also doing laser. The significant reduction in facial hair combined with HRT helped me pass quite quickly. I already had an androgynous face to start with and quite long hair, so that helped as well. I also gained much weight (30 lbs) during those months, in part due to HRT (especially Androcur-cyproterone acetate) and because I stopped smoking. I was too thin anyways so it was good.

How long should I wait to see what HRT and laser hair removal do before it's likely this is as good as it gets and I need to consider surgery if it's not enough?

At least 1 year on a sufficient dose of hormones for you prescribed by your doctor. Eventually, you might want to switch to electrolysis to be sure hairs are removed permanently and don't EVER come back. Hairs coming back as you live fulltime as a woman would be problematic.

Could that be stifling my transition or probably it's just going to take time either way?

I think a minimum amount of fat is necessary to grow breasts, have a fuller, rounder face, hide overall masculine features and make you look more feminine. Recently, increasing my estrogen helped me gain weight and give me a curvier, more feminine appearance with better breast growth. Eating carbs, although not healthy if eaten in excess, will also help to add fat. Bioidentical Progesterone helps with this, in some.

Good luck!

[Ruth Ruthless]

Thank you to everyone who replied!

It's great see the variety of experiences here being shared. It helps me feel more comfortable knowing that in comparison I'm just starting and there is still time for the hormones to do something. It's just I saw lots of videos of trans women who saw changes very quickly and it's nice to know that just because it didn't happen so quickly to me it won't happen later.

First off, I see a woman in your video. So it may be partly that you're too hard on yourself; I also thought I saw zero changes even when strangers were gendering me female already.

Thanks for the vote of confidence My girlfriend seems to see a woman too and I guess she better as a lesbian But I was at a wedding yesterday and telling people my name is Ruth didn't stop them all from addressing me as male, even when I told them to please address me as female... They just couldn't do it and kept on slipping.

So I'm definitely not passing yet. Yesterday was rough on me and I did the horrible mistake of binging on wedding food, in addition to some further binging I did the day before...

The thing is that while I always had a thin body overall even when eating a lot, my tummy can and does fill up and bloat up very quickly and it is very apparant in comparison to my otherwise thin body. It seems my body resists putting fat anywhere but my tummy and waist.

I've been doing feminization exercises in a video I found here and they really helped slim my waist significantly as well as shape my tummy in two weeks. But all that was lost in two days of binge eating and I'm back to where I started two weeks ago. My chest size below the bust is 80cm and my waist started at 80cm, my tummy was at 90cm from two weeks of eating lots of fried food. I got my waist down to 76cm and my tummy down to 84cm and had a nice little curve there! Those two days though got my tummy back up to 88cm and my waist back to 80cm and so the waist curve was totally lost. My butt grew a bit by one cm, but it was insignificant to how giant my tummy looked compared to the rest of my body and how it overshadowed my small breasts and how my waist curve was totally gone.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's this video that I used.



And I plan to run as well
http://running.about.com/od/trainingschedules/a/3weeksto30minuterunninghabit.htm

So that dilemma is solved, it seems that eating sensibly and exercising to get my tummy as thin as the rest of my body and making my waist thinner helps a lot more for me to get closer to an hourglass figure than trying to fill up which seems to go 90 percent to the tummy before it goes anywhere else.

So on the skinny vs feminine front I think I have nothing to worry about anymore, I just need to keep up eating healthy and exercising and avoid binge eating like I did.

However even before that, I got really good results just by wearing bangs and  glasses that covered up my eyebrow area. That obscured my eyebrow ridge and forehead area, which are my biggest problems. Given your picture, I would say that they're your biggest issue as well. Cover them and your passability will go way up.

Thanks for the suggestion! My wigs before this one had bangs and it didn't seem to help me pass. On the contrary, I think it made the wigs stand out more that they were wigs because it looked like I was hiding something. As for glasses, I've tried various glasses and I haven't found something that helps me pass. Glasses also hide the eyes and the eyes can help pass so it seems to be I gain something and I lose something when wearing glasses.

In the meantime, whilst HRT changes are in progress, you should work on other things, if you are not already doing these things. Things like your voice, make-up, dress sense and mannerisms. I can't help you with these things. But I know that others here can.

As I wrote above, I am exercising and that is helping a lot but I need to be careful not to ruin it with binge eating.

Voice - I got "find your female voice" from YouTube but I need the discipline to work on it. A bit hard to be motivated when I feel I don't pass anyway because of my face. I also have a bit less motivation since my girlfriend likes my deep voice as it is and hated it when I tried to speak in a female voice but on the other hand I have more motivation since I advertised myself as a transgender actress and got offered to possibly join an acting agency so I am guessing I need to have access to a female voice if I want to play female roles.

So yeah, I should work on that.

Makeup - I've been checking out YouTube a lot about that, especially about how to handle hooded eyes but I kind of hate how my face looks with makeup and how my face feels with makeup. It kind of feels like lying about my body. Which is the same reason why I now keep my pushup bra in the closet because now that I have boobs, however small - I'd rather people get to know me with my actual breast size. So it is with makeup that it hides my natural complexion which in my opinion makes me look a bit more naturally feminine than makeup face if it weren't for the horrible stubble I still have.

So basically, because of that and because my girlfriend prefers how I look without makeup, I'm wearing makeup only for acting work where I know they won't be flexible about how I look.

This is my attempt at doing makeup.





Basically just foundation to cover stubble and then the rest of the face because then the contrast looks weird, some blush beneath the cheek bones, mascara and my lips tend to dry up so I put on an anti lip drying lipstick which I still put on when my lips are dry regardless of general makeup.

So this is my "work" look but for the rest of the time, even in my blog videos I prefer to not use makeup. I don't think makeup really helps me pass. Especially all sorts of heavier options people suggested I try. At best it makes me look like a charicature of a woman. I haven't seen any noticeable improvement in how people gender me when I'm wearing makeup.

I do wear a wig though since I can't grow hair, so despite what I wrote I'm not really completely "honest" about what my body looks like but that's as far as I feel comfortable going. Again, mostly because I don't think makeup really works for me. It doesn't make me look like the kind of woman I'd like to look.
--

As for dress sense, I can't seem to find a good balance here. Either the clothes I wear seem too feminine and people say I look too much like I'm wearing a costume. Again, the charicature of a woman problem. And then I try to wear tight casual female clothes and some people say that it doesn't look like I'm wearing feminine clothes at all...

Basically I don't want to look like an imitation of a woman. I don't want to look like a barbie doll. I just want to look real and I don't want to set unrealistic expectations about my body like I have wonderful C cup breasts like my pushup gives me but then people tell me that I'm "not doing enough to be a woman" and then if I do everything I can then they say I look like I'm wearing a costume.

Yes. Within a few months (3-4) of starting HRT. But, I was also doing laser. The significant reduction in facial hair combined with HRT helped me pass quite quickly. I already had an androgynous face to start with and quite long hair, so that helped as well. I also gained much weight (30 lbs) during those months, in part due to HRT (especially Androcur-cyproterone acetate) and because I stopped smoking. I was too thin anyways so it was good.

I'm doing laser, but they have me do it once every two months and my first treatment seemed to kill only about 20 percent of my beard. So I don't think it's going to be happening for me in 3-4 months but tomorrow is my second laser session on my face so we'll see. They said that after the treatment I should not shave for two weeks for the best results, because otherwise there is a risk of hairs getting stuck under the skin rather than coming out by the end of the two weeks. Did anyone else get told that when doing laser?

So anyway, letting my beard grow for two weeks is going to be a nightmare, and waiting 2 months between sessions means my laser treatment is going slow. I signed up for 14 treatments, meaning 2 years and 4 months and the person who did my first session said she doubts even that will be enough.

And at least most of my beard hair, the hair that shows most prominently as stubble, is black and my skin is white so hopefully that helps.
--

So to summary:
- Thank you again for the answers and especially for sharing your experiences so I could see exactly what YMMV means in this instance.
- I hope the details I went into what I'm doing didn't bore you, I just felt I wanted to share them in response to what you wrote.
- I also hope that it didn't sound like I'm shooting down suggestions or that I don't appreciate them because I really do. If you have more suggestions based on the information I've shared, you're welcome to share them.
- The last two weeks of exercise and the last two traumatic days, especially the wedding where I binged and everyone misgendered me - have taught me a lot about my body and what I need to do with it while waiting and hoping for the hormones to work.
- Thanks to your sharing I am a bit more okay with giving the hormones and laser treatment a year or two to work.

So thank you everyone for all your replies!

[Aquarelle]

BTW, that fitness video of getting female shape and proportions always seemed suspicious for me, because when I watch a workout video, the first thing I pay attention to is how the instroctor looks like. In the manner of speaking, the woman in this video have no waist and I don't think she has a good shape, so If a genetic woman couldn't achieve a nice feminine silhuette, I am not sure I will follow her advices...

I, personally, did these exercises, but IMHO, they don't lead to the desired results. I have found much better and effective solutions (working for me) in YouTube, that are giving results relatively fast.
These are several high intense workouts of Victoria's Secret models (especially Adriana Lima, Candice Swanepoel and Miranda Kerr), combined with Yoga flows - I did the VS workouts on monday, wednesday and friday, and the Yoga - on tuesday and thursday. Of course, this regime have to be combined with proper dieting

[Ruth Ruthless]

For me personally her exercises worked (until I ruined it with tons of junk food in two days) and I'm not sure my waist can get slimmer than it did because of my bone structure. I know it gave me results for fact because I measured my body every day. Then again I only did it for two weeks.

Can you give me links to the resources you mentioned so I can try them too?

[Jenna Marie]

The not doing enough/wearing a costume thing resonates with me... and the sad thing is, nothing will solve that but time and patience.  I used to feel incredibly awkward every time I presented very feminine, and it showed; over time, I stopped feeling like I was "on stage," and then the impression that I was just wearing a costume also faded in people I interacted with, if that makes sense. The early, awkward, androgynous period can be SO hard, but it does pass. I promise. You'll get there, but the only way to get past this phase is through, unfortunately.

(I also ended up 42DDD and still growing. Be careful what I wish for, I guess!)

[Ruth Ruthless]

Wow, I thought trans people normally have an A or B cup.

BTW, I've been measuring my body daily because I am scientifically minded and obsessive like that to observe the changes without bias getting into it and I am getting spontaneous spurts of breast growth followed by nothing happening with my breasts. Literally, one morning my breast width was the same as usual and then in the evening it grew 2 centimeters and settled there again.

Isn't there also a chance that the phase won't pass and I might need facial surgery? Or is that chance relatively slim?

[androgynouspainter26]

HRT doesn't do nearly as much for the face for thin people like us, I fear.  The same goes for breasts.  I'm still a double a after an entire year, and that's just because my entire family is very svelte.  My profile pic was taken about a year in to my HRT, and I still have a hard time passing, even with makeup.  That being said, things are certainly a lot better now than they were a year ago. 

FFS is oftentimes only one way to achieve a more feminine face though; I started experimenting with contouring makeup about six months after I started hormones, and the transformation is really quite dramatic when I have the time to put in all the work required.  Mind you, my thumbnail here is usually about half of what I do.  It's not an ideal solution, but it can and will work for someone with your features.  I'd recommend going a bit further with your highlights, especially on the cheekbones, temples, and a darker contour for the rear jawbone.  Also consider sharping your lips with a liner to make them appear larger.  You actually have a fairly androgynous face, so with a bit of practice you could probably pass with more involved makeup should you choose!

I think people turn to surgery very quickly without exploring other options.  I actually have opted to have FFS, but there is more than one way to feminize your appearance, and you should explore every avenue before putting yourself under the knife and such great expense...You do have some progress to make, but saying that there's no way for you to pass without surgery is certainly premature...best of luck to you!

[Jennygirl]

3 months is increeedibly early!

I think it was around 3 months that I had my first passing experiences at night. They were few and far between, and with a lot of help from makeup and wardrobe.

I wouldn't let it bog you down on making progress in other areas of presentation, and I would recommend starting a savings for yourself. That way in a year or so if you still aren't happy with how you look, you could potentially do some FFS work. If you are happy, though, maybe you could travel somewhere neat or really treat yourself in some way.

And I agree, I think you've got an excellent starting point and you look extremely feminine to begin with

Have you ever tried eyeliner? I later found out that was my ticket to passing which started to happen on a fairly consistent basis around 6 or 7 months. Best of luck to you

[Jenna Marie]

Ruth : I'm sorry for the confusion; I didn't mean there's no chance that you won't need FFS. Unfortunately, as you know, there's no way anyone can know that without a crystal ball.   But that feeling that you're constantly playing a part/in costume, and the way other people pick up on it and treat you as if you're fake, WILL pass with time and experience. And it's sometimes amazing how far confidence and comfort can take someone in terms of passing, too.

That breast growth pattern is normal, too. They do seem to grow in spurts, and then take "resting periods" - when I bet something is still happening, we just can't see it - and then the cycle begins again.

I've heard the myth about breast size in trans women, but I'm convinced it *is* a myth, since after seeing hundreds of women report their breast development - they seem to be all over the map, just like cis women. (And the average cis female bra size is 36C, but it's an *average*; to get that number, there have to be significant amounts of people both smaller and larger than that.)

[Ruth Ruthless]

And I agree, I think you've got an excellent starting point and you look extremely feminine to begin with

Thank you, Jennygirl! It's amazing how trans and queers can't help but see me as a woman whereas cis people even when they try to see a woman constantly slip up and reveal they see a man. My girlfriend is queer and she often has trouble understanding how people can resist so much the idea I'm a woman and why is it so hard for them? Just shows how immense it would be if our culture evolved and how much it really isn't our fault that others can't see who we are.

Regarding breast development,  I guess it depends on overall body shape and size but probably for thinner girls like me I might be stuck in double a. And after all,  due to skeletal structure my chest is wider than it would be if I was born female meaning the tissue is spread out on a bigger area so more tissue is needed to reach the same depth and the late age of my second puberty does sound reasonable that it would lower the body's responsiveness to hormones. Then again, I look pretty young for 34, I guess so maybe my body is relatively responsive for my age. Also interestingly enough for me at least my blood before hrt was t the lowest normal for male and e highest normal for male. So my body really wasn't hyper male to begin with.

[Jessica Merriman]

Just be patient and remember cis girls take around 10 years to fully mature physically. You will get there!

[FalseHybridPrincess]

Well 3 and a half months for me...

People gender me female in my male clothes , cool story...

still from what I ve seen  most people become passable around month 7-10
but it depends...

[Jennygirl]

Yes it is a mix of a lot of things, HRT just being one of them although it does seem to help a lot especially with the body. The other stuff comes with learning and experience over time.

Congrats on being gendered female in male clothes so early on, FalsePrincess That is indeed a pretty cool story!

[FalseHybridPrincess]

Yes it is a mix of a lot of things, HRT just being one of them although it does seem to help a lot especially with the body. The other stuff comes with learning and experience over time.

Congrats on being gendered female in male clothes so early on, FalsePrincess That is indeed a pretty cool story!

Thanks,

what I ve noticed is that when you are early on hrt and present androgynous you can be gendered like both...
for example female at one store male at another...

we shouldnt forget that everyone has a different perception of what is male and  what female , so no matter what we do we might not be able to meet somebodys criteria of what female is but we might as well meet somebodys else ...