Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hi all,

I'm sure this topic has been done to death, but I can't seem to stop obsessing about the size of my feet. It really gets me down. I'm 5'7 but my feet are roughly a UK women's size eight. If I get standard width then it pot luck as to whether they are wide enough, so I usually have to get wide fit, and even they hurt my little toes a bit if they have a heel on (although I think this is might just be breaking in). I generally feel like my feet look out of proportion to the rest of me, but I don't know if I'm blowing it out of proportion. To me they look like ugly big paddles of meat, and I feel so sad when I see women with nicely proportioned feet that look great in any shoe. I'm worried they'll always gives me away as trans.

If anyone else has felt like this and overcome it I'd love to know how!

I'm a size 13.  I'm 6'2"...

I honestly don't care what anyone else makes of me.  There are things that can't be changed, and I'm OK with that because I transitioned for me, not the rest of the world.

The best day of my transition was the day I stopped caring about what others thought.  Free your mind and the rest will follow.

Hugs,
Jill

totally get you there  :-\
I'm a US women's size 10  :( it definitely bugs me, I'm pretty selfconcious about them... buuut, they're not gonna change, right? so when I find myself obsessing over them I just change my thoughts... :)

Here are a list of famous women with large feet to show you that you are not alone. All of them have larger feet than you. Don't fret over it.
http://www.elle.com/pop-culture/celebrities/celebrities-with-big-feet#slide-2
The sizes are US, so subtract 2 for UK.

I am 5'9" and I take between a 9-10 US woman's. Two of my friends who are 5'7" or less are both size 10 US and they do just fine and they are both under 30 I might add. I think if they can pull it off I am pretty sure it is nothing to worry about.

Case in point I went to a B-day party of sunday and the activity was bowling. The one girl took a 10 and she is much shorter than me and I took a 9 and the topic never came up at all. Sometimes things we worry about are not what we make them out to be.

Relax and do not sweat the small stuff !

My wife is 5'11 and size 13 as well.  She's cis.

Quote from: Jill F on November 05, 2014, 04:55:55 PM
My wife is 5'11 and size 13 as well.  She's cis.

Maybe y'all evolved larger feet out there in cali so you have a better chance to stay upright during an earthquake.

Quote from: Jaime R D on November 05, 2014, 04:59:18 PM
Maybe y'all evolved larger feet out there in cali so you have a better chance to stay upright during an earthquake.

<shooting unicorns out of my nose>

My fiancé and I have the same size feet (11 womens US).

Before I met her, I always thought my feet were kinda big...but first time I saw hers, I commented on how "cute" they were (they looked quite proportional to her 5' 8" body) She laughed and said we have the same shoe size, as she had borrowed my new sneakers.

I'm 6' even, so I guess that makes my feet just a bit smaller than what "cute" would be for me.

Its all how one perceives it, I suppose.

Quote from: Jaime R D on November 05, 2014, 04:59:18 PM
Maybe y'all evolved larger feet out there in cali so you have a better chance to stay upright during an earthquake.

This is not the "bad jokes" thread.


Even though that was pretty good, LOL!

;)

One thing I have started to realise is the difference in fit between men's and women's shoes. I was always told to get nice roomy shoes when I was male, so if I felt a pair of shoes were even slightly tight I'd get the size up, which would usually be a bit long, leaving my big toe wallowing in real estate. I took this mentality into buying women's shoes, until I started to notice that women's toes are generally crammed right up to the side of the shoe. So is some of it just that my feet haven't had the years of slow torture that would've made them an easier shape to buy shoes for? Or that I'm just being a bit cowardly and giving up on shoes at the first sign of slight rubbing? It sounds absurd I know but I do wonder!

I actually tried taking some pictures of my feet with my phone to demonstrate to you all just how horrifyingly huge they are, but they don't look that big in the pictures! I still wish they were at least a bit smaller. A UK size 8 is either a US 10 or 11 depending on what chart you look at. I'd genuinely be a lot happier if they were a UK 7. Whilst I know they won't get smaller with hormones, is it beyond hope that they might at least look a little prettier? :D

PS I know how dumb this all sounds, but the rest of me is making progress and I always seem to have one thing that I get horribly hung up on. It used to be my nose, but that's fixed now, so it's moved on to other things!

EDIT: here's a photo that gets across what I mean
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi1373.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fag371%2Famy211%2FMobile%2520Uploads%2Fimage_zpsba90fcc7.jpg&hash=2463a66bda36155f0a648d7267659a02d7c30cbb) (http://s1373.photobucket.com/user/amy211/media/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpsba90fcc7.jpg.html)

Relax my CIS sister has size UK8.5 feet. It isn't a big deal.

For what it is worth your feet can actually change and even potentially shrink a little. The muscle and soft tissue can be affected by estrogen. Size 8 is easily within the normal shoe size for women so you will be able to get plenty of nice shoes. I am 6ft and size 9. It could be worse, albeit my feet are very slim :P

You should actually be really glad you're still within the range to buy normal shoes haha I know many girls on here would kill for your shoe size so just feel a bit more grateful :) Your feet might actually just shrink a size from hormones so just be wishful & grateful cause it could DEFINITELY be worse :)

Are you on hormones yet? Because your feet WILL SHRINK. I was an US men's 9 (so ~11 women's) pre-HRT, now 2 months in I'm a women's 9 (~7.5-8 mens).

I was extremely surprised I lost so much size so fast. I compared feet with my mom the other day and we're almost the same size (she's 8.5).

All my old shoes look like clown shoes now and I'm not looking forward to dropping a couple hundred on new shoes for guy mode >_<.

UK size 8 / US size 10 feet are a BLESSING let me tell you.

Go to any shoe outlet place. Notice that the shoe sizes tend to cut off at that size exactly.

Peruse.

Realize that you can have any shoe that you want, because they are not the most common size but still common enough that most stores carry it.

It's a blessing. You will see :D

It's not a case of just size though, it's proportion. INow girls with bigger feet but they are much taller so they look in proportion, whereas I am short so my legs tend to look a bit stumpy then they finish with these chunky feet. And they are quite wide, so whether an eight fits or not depends on whether they do it in a wide fitting. I've tried size 9 but often it's too long.

I get that I'm not being entirely rational but this is one of the biggest sources of dysphoria for me. I've been on hormones for 9 months now.

Quote from: Squircle on November 06, 2014, 02:06:07 AM
It's not a case of just size though, it's proportion. INow girls with bigger feet but they are much taller so they look in proportion, whereas I am short so my legs tend to look a bit stumpy then they finish with these chunky feet. And they are quite wide, so whether an eight fits or not depends on whether they do it in a wide fitting. I've tried size 9 but often it's too long.

I get that I'm not being entirely rational but this is one of the biggest sources of dysphoria for me. I've been on hormones for 9 months now.

Sorry to hear that Squircle :(

Looking at your pic though I see nothing to be ashamed of at all. I understand how it feels though, there was a time that my feet and hands gave me lots of dysphoria. I am almost exactly the same dimensions as you. It continued until I realized that a lot of my cis female friends were both shorter than me and had the same shoe size.

I think with time your feet might actually become less wide, with the skin thinning that commonly occurs with estrogen. I don't think mine have changed much, but I know that my feet fit much more easily into shoes that were once almost too tight when I started transition. I had the same thing as you as well, with being used to buying shoe sizes too big. Shortly after I realized it I started buying shoes that were too small... go figure :P

And for what it's worth, I really kinda like your screen name. Cute :) Welcome to the forums!

Quote from: Jennygirl on November 06, 2014, 02:13:58 AM
Sorry to hear that Squircle :(

Looking at your pic though I see nothing to be ashamed of at all. I understand how it feels though, there was a time that my feet and hands gave me lots of dysphoria. I am almost exactly the same dimensions as you. It continued until I realized that a lot of my cis female friends were both shorter than me and had the same shoe size.

I think with time your feet might actually become less wide, with the skin thinning that commonly occurs with estrogen. I don't think mine have changed much, but I know that my feet fit much more easily into shoes that were once almost too tight when I started transition. I had the same thing as you as well, with being used to buying shoe sizes too big. Shortly after I realized it I started buying shoes that were too small... go figure :P

And for what it's worth, I really kinda like your screen name. Cute :) Welcome to the forums!

Thanks Jenny! I think it's probably a stage that I just need to get past. Perhaps with confidence and more changes from hormones I'll just become more comfortable with my body and get less hung up on the little things. I have been fairly lucky in other aspects of my transition, I started out looking fairly androgynous, so perhaps I need to start focusing on the positives more and stop dwelling on the things that knock my confidence.

Haha, my screen name comes from when I was younger and in the Cubs, we used to say 'form a squircle' because they never came out circular or square, but something in between. I'm pretty binary in my presentation but I feel like my personality is kind of gender neutral, even though I feel female. So squircle just kind of fit

That last message got cut short and it won't let my edit it, but just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has replied, it's been really helpful

Quote from: Hanazono on November 06, 2014, 02:58:29 AM
ok. so you can't shrink your feet (they're bone!)
why not try to grow taller?

Play some basketball, and maybe the air up there will be fresher as well :)

Quite a few people report their feet shrinking. This can be due to muscle & cartilage shrinkage. It's a very controversial subject but I can definitely see it as a possibility

I'm us woman size 12 and only thing that bothers me is difficulty to buy any nice woman shoes in whis size in my country.
No one ever pay attention to my feets to be honest ;)

Quote from: Nevara on November 06, 2014, 01:27:07 AM
Are you on hormones yet? Because your feet WILL SHRINK. I was an US men's 9 (so ~11 women's) pre-HRT, now 2 months in I'm a women's 9 (~7.5-8 mens).

I'm 11 month on HRT and my feet do not shrink even 10 milimeters :)

Yep I would agree, US 10 are a blessing, anything larger and it gets harder. I'm lucky being a women's 9-10. I think when our feet are larger, whilst it's harder to find a shoe, we can also be wise about what we put on our feet. I mean just the same as if you had larger hands, you wouldn't want to attract attention by wearing really standout bling on your hands, I would look at shoes the same way. I wouldn't draw attention to my feet by wearing some crazing heels. Having a size 9-10 I can still find some quite nice shoes, albeit the range does start to taper off around there in most stores though.

I take a UK size 12/13 (US 13/14). Safe to say I am completely screwed! Thankfully my preferred style is more towards gothic/rocker so New Rocks and Converse are pretty gender ambiguous and go up to clown shoe size. Down side is I know I am never going to have pretty shoes  :'(

Proportions are relative to what you are wearing. As long as you don't go out of your way to draw attention to them I doubt anyone is going to notice, I know plenty of cis girls who are between 7-10 UK size and are totally comfortable with that.

Feet? I'm more worried about my hands.

It could be worse, you could take a half size in shoes, and end up being eternally condemned to shoes that are either too small or too big.

Regarding flaws and dysphoria, we are acutely aware of our flaws and therefore assume everyone else is. In fact the opposite is usually true. Your perception of your flaw is magnifying it in your mind, I had a similar thing with my shoulders when I started out, wearing them un covered made them feel huge, despite my hips and shoulders being in line with each other and I would be fine if the were covered.

Things you can do - rocking styles that don't draw your eye to your feet will help you deal, leggings and ballet pumps may be a cute look, but if it's making you hyper aware of your feet, try adding leg Warmers or wearing boot cut jeans. Being born cis doesn't mean you have a perfect body, stuff like foot and hand size is genetic rather than from the effect of hormones.

Quote from: Bellatrix on November 06, 2014, 04:58:55 AM
I take a UK size 12/13 (US 13/14). Safe to say I am completely screwed! Thankfully my preferred style is more towards gothic/rocker so New Rocks and Converse are pretty gender ambiguous and go up to clown shoe size. Down side is I know I am never going to have pretty shoes  :'(

Proportions are relative to what you are wearing. As long as you don't go out of your way to draw attention to them I doubt anyone is going to notice, I know plenty of cis girls who are between 7-10 UK size and are totally comfortable with that.

Lol Bellatrix, "clown shoe size", I love it  :D

So there you go girls, if you were worried about your shoe size, just think of the poor clowns out there

\/ Just pretend he's a clown \/

:icon_birthday:

Can we get a Clown smiley please, b'day doesn't cut it for this

I have size 13/14 as well; my feet arrive in the room before I do.

New Rule: No more whining about any shoe size below size 10's, hahahaha.

well, although I wear a size 10 in US, I live in Brazil and they only sell up to a 9 in big stores here :( sucks finding the most amazing pair of heels just to tell yourself: oh well, no size 10 :icon_pissed:
shoe shopping is a battle, but thankfully I'm just 1 size above the normal range, so it's not impossible to find  ;D

A suggestion...don't forget EBay and Amazon.

I got an amazing pair of Aerosoles riding boots, size 11, for $70 shipped off EBay!

I'm a size 8 1/2 for women or a 9, it depends on the shoe... I wish they were smaller and more feminine. Hope HRT changes them a bit.