There's a lot of things we will need to do, in order to get any logical result.

Male pattern balding screams out fairly loud, MAN. And saying some women have hair loss troubles never really in the end solves anything.

People don't see female cancer victim, they see man that is bald.

So it means a wig. Wigs, wonderful things wigs, till a sudden gust of wind makes you clearly a person that HAD a wig on. Because as much as wind can make a total mess of real hair it won't blow it off your head.

And while it won't be a problem to wear a wig on a cool day, a hot day is another thing.
And on a freezing cold day, well a hat might give real hair hat head, you can always go in the rest room and wet it dry it brush it and you are ok. Wigs though, you pull off hat and it takes the wig with it. So you avoid the hat, and your head gets cold, possibly covered in snow. Yippee figgin hurrah
Or it pours rain, and hurrah, my wig is soaked.

Or you go to the beach and drat, can't dive under the water.

Wearing a wig will not be easy for me. But, looking nice will be so cool. But being a slave to fretting over it will take some work.

It comes down to 'so Lesley, how much are you willing to work for that look?'.

That's the nature of my thread here. The things you must do, how much are you willing to suffer for that enhancement?

I found out today, that my nice new top, it doesn't reeeeeeeally look all that great. It likely would be ok if I had breasts. So am I willing to wear breast forms just to look correct? I suppose it is the mirror of the FTM crowd being asked, 'so, how much are you willing to do to hide those hooters eh?' I suck without them, and with them some will think it sucks for having them. And I suppose there are plenty of FTM persons that were given a very nice set, yippee, how do you hide Ds.

Bras are no more fun to a MTF than they are cis females. And real or artificial, a bra is a bra, and it's a confining article of clothing.
There is NO way I look forward to wearing a bra around the house hehe. If HRT goes nuts and gives me noticable breasts, I'm not wearing my bra at home just to feel womanly.

I am ok more or less with the shaving actually. Yeah it's a chore, but, it takes less time to shave, than it does to make lunch. It's not the end of the world. Now laser, that's suffering. I can see spending the insane amount for upper lip and the chin area, as that is just too much a discolouration and a nuisance. I'd rather spend some money to see to it I am not spending and spending and spending on cosmetics to cover it up.
But I have been getting by with the rest of the body. And heck, I have been noticing, plenty of women, they are actually fairly hairy when you look close eh. My hair is simply darker in colour. But it is a small matter to turf easy access hair.
So I am likely going to call laser suffering not a constant need to shave. And all that not spent cash means a lot more clothing too.

You need to really plan out what you will suffer for, and not.

Now REAL suffering, I think the waist line certainly measures up as my one real big area for hard core suffering hehe. Sure I can just accept my shape, but no, a person needs goals that are not easy sometimes. Something to strive for. Oh I DO want to be able to wear a swim suit that makes some of my male buddies really uncomfortable

What am I willing to suffer?

The easy answer is anything, at least if I have to suffer through it then the suffering means i'm still alive.
I've suffered abuse, threats & badly concealed s->-bleeped-<-s.
I started HRT about a month ago, my endo told me that HRT may clear up my exzema but for the last few weeks it's made it worse, for the last 5 days my arms & much of my torso looked like I had been set on fire, I think/hope my skin is getting itself back under control, from time to time my skin flares up & then the bad skin flakes off & this always leaves my skin baby soft so i'm hoping this is just a temporary thing whilst my body adjusts to its new hormones, I will however state that if it doesn't improve then HRT will have been worth it as i've never felt so comfortable in my skin (even though my skin hurts like hell).

Before starting HRT I had niggling doubts that i'd taken the wrong path but after a month of low level HRT I no longer have doubts, i'm like an arrow shot from a bow, my course is set & the target is clear to me.

10 lbs of cross-linked polyethelene foam rubber and vinyl, with every square inch of skin covered.

I cosplay wild, elaborate, expensive and fragile costumes sometimes. They take months and hundreds of dollars to build, but when I'm wearing them I feel free. My body dissolves and for a few hours I get to be Something Else, and treated appropriately. People see me out of the corner of their eyes, and the look on their face when, for a split second, they truly believe I'm for real... it's priceless. That split second is the only time that I ever feel like I'm "passing".

The tradeoff? Drowning in sweat, pain in every muscle in my body from wearing this gigantic apparatus that forces me to walk and stand unnaturally, having restricted breathing when the mask is on, flirting with heat stroke every minute I'm in costume, stinking to high heaven... and the time and money spent to make it.

But that "moment" is the reason I keep coming back to it. (And I guess having my pictures taken and put all over the internet is fun too.)

Well I have to say I cannot say what I am willing to risk - except my life when I have surgery.

But what I was willing to suffer through was everything. My entire existence, my job, my family, my social inclusion everything was on the line and I placed it there. Then the laser, the consults, the finding people who could help in any way. The insults, the funny looks, the hesitancy in talking to me.

What I was willing to suffer? Everything; but one thing I did know, the pain of living as him was far greater than any suffering I went through.

Cindy, whatever you are on the outside, on the inside you have a beauty the world doesn't have enough of

You've seen to it I suffer a lot less than I might.

I have spent 20 years dealing with depression from more than one source, and they have tried more than a few quick fix pills that mask they don't cure.

You on the other hand, don't mask the pain, you remove it. I hope that makes your journey a little less troublesome.

I wouldn't trade you for a million others.

Quote from: Lesley_Roberta on October 15, 2013, 08:14:13 AM
Cindy, whatever you are on the outside, on the inside you have a beauty the world doesn't have enough of

You've seen to it I suffer a lot less than I might.

I have spent 20 years dealing with depression from more than one source, and they have tried more than a few quick fix pills that mask they don't cure.

You on the other hand, don't mask the pain, you remove it. I hope that makes your journey a little less troublesome.

I wouldn't trade you for a million others.

Ditto