I find HRT is some sort of panacea around these parts as far as facial improvement expectations, so I wanted to get a bit grounded about its real potential.
Wouldn't it make sense that the level of feminization we're likely to achieve can be visualized by imagining our mothers fat distribution underneath our own skin, over our male bone structure? That seems obvious to me.
I think of our features as a gene expression weighted towards your mother or your fathers side. Let's say as a guy you carry more of your mothers features. For me for instance I would assume my cheeks would ultimately resemble hers which are slightly puffy.
The flip side is, if you look more like your father. Wouldn't it make sense that feminization would then be a limited affair?
Thoughts?
I don't know, but I look like a carbon copy of my mother and my sister and my female relatives. I even have birth markers that only happen to the female members of the family. I used to think this is why I'm trans. I kinda still do. So, it would be pretty hard for me to look any more like my mom. So, I was pretty femme to start with. I remember my mom mom was talking about how pretty my sister was once, and then I walked in, and she was all "OMG you two could be twins. It's so cute." I was trying to deny my transness then, so the last thing I wanted to hear was how pretty I am. This was right after I met my sister-in-laws sister and she thought they were messing with her when they told her I was a boy. Funny stuff.
I'm trying to think. Say you look masculine, and you have your mothers appearance, however what if she isn't attractive herself? I would think that's not going to bode well for your HRT facial feminizing prospects. For me I would then have to seriously consider FFS as foremost in my transition (if I'm trying to pass). Or just abandoning the mission completely in order to save myself an immense load of anguish.
I look pretty close to identical to my mom now. I keep a picture of her on my night stand of when she was close to my age. People who comment on it say "Is that you?" Before, people said I looked exactly like my dad.
I think it depends... I also think "feminine" and "attractive" aren't the same thing. I look 100% like a boring middle-aged woman who is well past the wolf-whistle stage/age. :) But I've been gendered correctly everywhere I go for years, and I blend in fine with a crowd of cis women.
Anyway, re: your actual question - I was a dead ringer for my father before I started HRT, including his big square jaw. Now I strongly resemble my mother and sister, except that I'm a bit taller than my sister (she's tiny) and bigger than my mom (she's anorexic). The last time we all went out together as a family, people commented on how much alike all three of us look (and my mother reports that when she was showing off some FB photos at work, one woman actually said "your daughters didn't take after Dad, eh?"). So I guess I'm saying don't underestimate how much fat redistribution and muscle loss can change *apparent* bone structure.
People (who dont know about my status) recently keep telling me how much I look similar to my mother, and how we with my daughter look alike. Looking at my mom's wedding pics (and she was stunning gorgeous, as much as I can see), I dont really get how she and I could look similar, or those might be just facial features... Anyway, when I was younger, my grandma used to say that face-wise I was a copy of my father, lol...
I look like my father. After a few months on HRT and having done my eyebrows and with my wig on (still growing out my hair) I look a lot like my sister. My sister looks a lot like my mom.
I think it's a bit more than looking like your mother or father. We're all combinations of the genes of both our biological parents.
I've ended up looking much like the other women in my family.. But then, I kinda always did..
I can see traits from both my mother and fathers side in me. I don't think genes are weighted really towards one side or the other, there are recessive and dominant traits for sure, but it would only seem weighted to one side or the other if one side had lots more dominant traits. At least in my case, both my parents had medium brown hair, one had green eyes, the other blue, both had pale skin, etc.
I do notice, that my eyebrows have started to look more like my mothers than before...I think, I don't have any pictures of her so I am going on old memories here. My nose was all my mothers from birth, and my cheeks look like hers. I couldn't pass for a younger version of her, but I certainly look closely related. I think you could probably tell I was related to my father too though, if you looked at us close enough.
I look a lot like my mother, my fat distribution is the same as her, and I have even have similar shaped breasts (D cups both of us). When we walk next to each other.. you can see we are mother and daughter.
Ok, I did inherit most of my genes from her.. in my looks, When I was male, i was a male version of her.. now that i am female... i do have her characteristics.
but genes does play a big role in hrt changes.. e.g. if the woman in your family have A cup breasts.. the chances of you getting D's is nil.
Noleen : Well, don't forget genes can skip generations. :) My mother's a 34B; I'm 38DD in expensive bras/42DDD at Lane Bryant. But my father's mother was well-endowed...
I'm not sure. I don't particularily look like either of my parents. Both of them have much shorter faces for one, overall, I'm the genetic freak of the family, the only one to grow tall, have lighter hair, have lighter eyes etc. So, if it is determined by one of my parents, I don't know what to expect.
I'm on break, so I didn't get to read everything, but:
Short answer: it depends on how young you are.
If you managed to get on blockers for puberty, your facial appearance will be much more female. If you're getting on hormones post-puberty, your face will stay largely the same -- the exceptions being feminized and thinner skin, giving your face more of a glow and a lighter shade, and some fat rearranging, which typically influences the fullness of your cheeks (the degree of which varies from person to person). Depending on how well your body hair responds to hormones, you may see some eyebrow thinning or reshaping, but I think this is rare.
The skeletal structure of your face remains practically unchanged by hormones (if you've gone through puberty already). While it's true that your facial structure is dependent on your parents and your genetics, it wouldn't be any different from any other person who went through puberty on the respective (testosterone or estrogen) hormones. This applies to people who are mid-puberty as well: if you reached, say, age 15 while under testosterone, then introduced hormones, your structure would have progressed as a male until 15, then female from then on until growth stops altogether.
The reason some people think that HRT is a sort of panacea for facial improvements is largely because of what it does for your skin. Skin condition is a pretty strong marker for feminine/masculine, and if you add in hair styles that manage to mask your brow bone or make-up that helps contour your nose, augment your eyes or lips, etc. then it makes for a drastic change.
If any of your structure was already feminine (especially your nose, chin, jaw, or brow ridge), then this goes a long way as well with your newly found skin, and can help take away from masculine bone structure.
Other common transition changes that help: laser hair removal/electrolysis. You can lose density above your upper lip (the philtrum) in particular with hair removal -- depending on how thick your facial hair is/was -- which tends to be flatter and more pronounced in males; this is mostly noticeable from a profile view. It goes without saying that removing facial hair altogether and exposing the now-feminized skin underneath serves as another huge pro-female gender marker.
tl;dr Your bones don't really change on hormones unless you have either not undergone puberty or are still undergoing it. The feminized skin (and fuller cheeks) you gain from HRT is a very enabling effect, allowing feminine hairstyles and the removal of facial hair to really take off for you. I hope this helped!
I have quite a lot of my mothers features .face, hair, size , hands. I have my fathers nose though
After the amount of time i've been on HRT, i can effectively say that I look like me if i was born female (for now), and as male i looked very much like my mom, now I'm nearly the spitting image. Can't imagine how i'm going to look in a year. I have my mom's cheeks which are currently developing more and more each day, and my jaw has gone from being round and loose to being angular and edged looking (it must be a girl thing because most women look that way) and the rest of my face has rounded out more. The skin is also way brighter and smoother, and i have developed this sort of natural blush. My chin has also become less defined than it use to be, but i can't say whether that is a result of fat distribution or laser :P
all of which I seem to have gotten from my mother, the natural blush, the soft chin, the angular jaw etc. I have 0 resemblance to my dad, though as male i developed all of him, but after HRT most of it is gone lol. (i developed my father's anger, my loss of voice volume control, my hypertension, my "young looks" and my curly hair, but now Im a sweet, quiet, normal-blood pressure girl who happens to have kept the young look gene and morphed the curly hair gene into a more "wavy" hair gene lol)
genetics are weird -_-
My sister and I could almost be twins these days. Both of us got most of our facial features from my dad's side of the family, but my sister got mom's nose. My step sisters didn't get too much of mom's face either, but people still say I look like a younger version of them.