I'm not asking if I can pass here but rather if there is anything glaring in my photo that screams "male" and that might be addressed with FFS.

Personally, I don't think so, and I have gotten used to my face and don't really want to change it anyway.

Plus 9 months of HRT seems to be making some pretty drastic changes by itself.  At least my pictures look like it to me even if nobody has called me on it yet.

Anyway, where this really comes from is my own insecurity in trusting myself.  Sometimes I look and think my chin and brows look huge but when I compare to other women with a similar age and face shape I think maybe they aren't  so bad after all.  Am I on the path to getting there or am I missing something and more drastic changes will eventually be needed.

My profile pic is from a couple of days ago right after I woke up.  I did adjust the light slightly to deemphasize my beard since I am still saving up to take care of that.  So, any opinions?




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I'd say your doing fine , just let the estrogen keep doing its job.

Well your chin look okay to me, there a lot of women in your age range with a similar one.

Your eyebrow is about the only detail that may look "male" but as it's about the only detail it's less "important ". Every women have at least one or two "male" features. Unless you're unconfortable I don't think an ffs would be required.

There are a few things in your picture that do stand out to me. There does appear to be some beard shadow, even with the adjusted lighting, and unfortunately that is going to be a very masculinizing feature. Also, it's hard to tell from the angle, but it seems like your eyebrows might look better if you shaped them a bit. But neither of those things would require surgery. The only thing that stands out as something that might require surgery is your forehead, which does seem to have some significant brow bossing. Though again, the angle of the picture makes it hard to tell.

The important thing to remember is, 9 months on hormones is not enough to really tell the full extent of the changes you are going to experience. Two years would be more like it, and even well past two years you may continue to notice subtle changes. My best advice is, that it's really a matter of deciding what you want. Probably anyone would look better having FFS after being exposed to male levels of testosterone for their whole life. Even if you don't need it to pass, FFS could still make you look younger, more attractive, etc. But if you are happy with the way you look and your level of passability, you shouldn't let your insecurity get the best of you.

Actually I have plucked and shaved my eyebrows quite a bit.  Naturally, they can get to be like a forest on their own.  :-). I could use some more precise shaping but at this stage I have been avoiding something too extreme.

LOL. - That last sentence sounds really stupid after nearly a year of HRT.


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here is what my eye brows look like

some pictures with your hair pulled back would give us a better view of your features; it would also be helpful if you included a full profile picture, however, from these pictures I do think that you could benefit from some FFS; mainly focusing on your brow, nose, lips, and chin.

Thin lips is a family trait beyond testosterone.  Even my mother had lips just like this.  But I understand your point.  I'll post a full profile later when I get home.  I was starting to look silly trying to take selfie profile pics here at work. :-)


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Hi Deborah,
You look darn good in the photo that you've posted -- a lot more feminine than I did 9 mos. into my transition. Still, it's hard to give you an objective critique from a single photo.  Before I had my FFS (yes, I needed it), I had an expert do an evaluation of my face and give recommendations on how it could appear more feminine.  She had me send her 6 photos of myself including right and left profiles, right and left oblique angle views, and two front shots.  She sent her evaluation and photoshopped modifications of my photos to give me an idea of how I might look if I implemented her recommendations via surgery.  It was very helpful, and resulted in my going ahead with FSS.

A year into my transition many people told be that I didn't need facial surgery.  Their opinions seemed honest and credible to me in that I seemed to pass pretty well in public.  Still, I had my doubts because I could still see the male in my face, and didn't like it.  After my FSS, I was 'ma'amed' a lot more than before.  Clearly, people saw less masculinity in my face and were a lot less confused about my gender.

Thank you for those comments.  Right now if I comb my hair right I think I look ok, not great but ok.  Out in public I look androgynous given the reactions I normally get.  But that's without any makeup and with my hair more or less combed back.  In other words, without any effort to look one way or the other.  (Yeah, I'm taking it all slow). I do have one thing I think works against me that only time might eventually fix and that's a 15 inch neck.    It is down from 16.5 so I am hopeful on that.  That and I used to think my hair grew fast but the longer it gets the slower it seems to go.

Anyway here are some profile pics with hair back in unretouched glory.  LOL. I've hated combing my hair that way my whole life no matter what look I'm trying to achieve.  I always thought it made me look weird.  From the front my eyes look sunken but from the sides the brow doesn't really look that big.  Or maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for.  I also added the first pic from HRT day one.  To me the change looks kind of obvious but nobody around here has said anything.  If I can keep expecting it to change that's kind of scary and exciting at the same time.  Eventually I guess I'll have to get a professional opinion as was said above but any thoughts on my hideously exposed face? :-)







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So there is some significant brow bossing, and surgery would definitely help there. Removing brow bossing almost seems to have this magical feminizing effect on the face. If you've never seen before and after FFS pictures with significant bossing reduction, be sure to check some out. I don't think your chin/jaw looks too too big, but a surgeon would probably recommend you have some work there, since there is room for improvement. But you really do seem to have changed a lot in 9 months from what I can see, and you're only going to change more over the next year, so I wouldn't book any surgeries just yet. Focus on getting rid of the facial hair, because that is what my eyes are drawn to in your pictures more than anything else.

Quote from: Deborah on October 06, 2015, 05:56:17 PM
but from the sides the brow doesn't really look that big.  Or maybe I just don't know what I'm looking for.

The latter.  ...and I know what you're thinking:  I've seen much worse!  It only protrudes a few mm!

Here's the bad news:  a few mm might as well be a mile to the observer who's brain has evolved to see gender in faces since they were an infant (i.e. all of us).  More bad news:  The brow is the biggest gender marker we instantly and subconsciously notice.  Look at pic #2:  The darkness above the eyelids due to brow shadow and the distance between the lids and the eyebrows (hardly any distance) is a heavy indicator of where testosterone has left its mark.  I hate to say it, but this was noticeable even in your original pic.

So... it's not that your brow is of cave-man proportions haha, no worries, but it is unfortunately well into the masculine range and that's something that no amount of years on HRT could fix.  I'm not trying to give you a complex or anything, but I can tell you'd rather hear the truth than someone blowing smoke up your bum.

Could you pass without FFS?  I think so, given everything else was going well, but FFS would help greatly.

The very best to you!

Hey, if any of you all see this I just wanted to thank you for your critical comments.  That really was exactly what I was hoping to get here.

It's good to get some unbiased observations to make sure I stay grounded in reality.  :-).



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Hi Deb,  I agree with the comments above.  Here's an additional observation.  When forehead reconstruction is done by a competent FF surgeon, he/she will often burr the supraorbitals (upper eye socket bone) to open up your eyes and raise the eye brows to match.  With your strikingly feminine eyes, that change alone would mark you as female in most situations. 

To me you don't just pass. I would never know you were ever make


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