How do you feel when you see old pics of yourself?
And I ofc mean pics of your 'old self' - pre-transition, childhood, pre-hormones etc... Whatever that means to you!

This came to my mind after just recently going through some old photos.
First, I don't feel bad seeing childhood photos of myself - and never have. I look like a girl in them but whatever. That was my reality back then and I like to look at them to reminisce about things I did back then. I don't feel bad seeing myself as a 'girl child' - after all, that's me! (Though haven't looked at those in a long time.) I only feel bad if said pic is from a situation I remember feeling uncomfortable in. But I'm def not the 'burn all old pics' type! I think that's a curious part of my history.

It does feel a bit weird to see some 'girly' pics of myself around the age 12-13.

Pics from 13 onwards are cool with me coz that's the time I socially transitioned and started identifying as a boy. Ofc I might not quite look like one in all of them - but in general I see a happy me, who's content with himself! I still remember exactly how I felt about them at the time... No matter how skinny I was I always felt I looked 'fat' bcos of my feminine thighs - unless I was wearing something that really accentuated my shoulders. So I wasn't happy looking at them at the time... but in retrospect I see a person who at least tried to be himself.

Pics before the age 20 or so also still reflect the true me - though still find them a bit annoying, knowing that I should've been on T already by that time :/. So didn't look quite as good as I should have or could have!

After that things started going downhill for me... I gained weight and all... Practically stopped binding coz it just was so damn painful :/. Started giving up on transitioning - in practice at least. Became numb & depressed. Started mostly living inside my head. Still dressed in male clothes ofc... but started looking more & more like a female which I absolutely hated. Actually looking at those pics now made me cry. It's just painful to look at a person in that state... so unhappy . And I know in every pic I felt I was a guy but didn't look like that at all...! It was a really painful state to be in. That's why I really started feeling I really only exist inside my head. I really can't stand to look at them!!! In every pic I have a sort of defeated look. Plus the worst part is seeing the chest -cringe-.

And that state lasted until 2016 when I started to look like myself again! The first time I started drawing beard on and stuff - bam, I look like myself! And I was immediately like a different person!!! A very happy & confident person! Since then I've been able to see myself again. I still hate when my face looks annoyingly feminine at times. But at least I'm able to see the guy in them now. The contrast to the past photos is striking! I never stopped identifying as a guy - but the difference between that depressed female-looking person vs. this guy who's confident is huge. For the first time in years I think I look actually better than I used to look before 20! Feels like I got my life back. And now I enjoy looking at & taking pics of myself again,  .

I guess that like you, I am reminded of the way I felt when the pictures were taken.  If they're happy memories, I'm okay, although it is weird to see me done up all girly.  It's the ones where I look acutely miserable that are hard to see. 

When I look and my "old" male pic of myself and compare it to what I look like now I am very happy that I made the transition... there were difficult times with family and friends and with my body accepting HRT but it has all worked out very well in my opinion.

My lasting question and lament to myself (and I am more than certain that most transitioners may ask themselves the same question:
    ..... "Why did I wait so long?"
]

I don't want to see them, in fact I purged everything that pointed to my old self.
I do not want to be reminded nor do I want others to have that picture of me in there heads. Wish I could figure out how to get that picture out of the minds of my old friends. (Yes they are still friends but the view me differently than new friends do.)
I have a new life, leave the past behind!

I don't feel much of anything when I look at them. It's not an attack on who I am now to see them. It kind of makes me laugh to be honest. I mean here's this kid, that nobody knows anything about, nobody can see what's going on in the kid's mind behind the face. It just reminds me how much store we put in appearances and assumptions that can turn out to be wrong.

There's a picture of me somewhere about 8 or 9 holding a kitten and even I don't really recognize anything in myself at that age or earlier. It's like a picture of someone else. School photos seem like pictures of someone else. baby photos - well all babies look the same to me anyway. It could be anyone.

Photos from the 20s onwards and I can see the adult features of the face have come out and some of them are still there now. So that looks more like me. But it's hard to find any photos of me from that era, since I wasn't a taker of many selfies and avoided other people's cameras. I'm still not much into sticking my mug at a camera, but I've accepted my appearance a whole lot more.

I especially hate looking at my wedding pictures. It was a lie. Not about me loving her because that was never a factor, but about keeping secrets. At the time I had no idea that it may have been pre determined. I just knew I was not particularly manly, nor particularly femme but I did know I could not control whatever it was that was bothering me. I've always had an idea that something went terribly wrong, The difference being, now I can talk about it. It is no longer a secret. I have been educated somewhat. And...the people around me give me support.

I don't like having pictures taken period but I don't like looking at my pre transition pictures at all. I don't look like a guy really because I was very androgynous but before hrt I looked like a ruler with feet and my face wasn't as feminine. The only pre transition pictures of me that I haven't found and destroyed are the ones my dad has. He won't surrender them. I asked him why he wants them and he says because Im his child. It's a parent thing I guess.

I can't stand it because it makes me cringe and makes me angry of getting reminded of how much time of my life I had to waste in complete misery and isolation caged into such a gross body, so I don't look at them at all if I don't have to. I have deleted all of them and destroyed the printed ones. I am currently hunting everything from my past down and destroying it.
Unfortunately my parents won't throw those they have away even though I would like to see every last one burn but they have taken those pictures they had on the wall from pre-transition times off when I asked them to even though my dad had argued against it and wanted to keep them at first.

I also don't see myself when I look at old photos at all, I see something inherently wrong, I see misery, I see a lie and an act I had to play because my ID had made me get sorted into that category in society so I thought I had no other option because I didn't know about the condition and the option to transition. 

I would like to rewrite or eliminate the past if it was only possible! At least I don't want to have anything to do with anything from it anymore.

I hate old pictures of me, can't stand to look at them, never have.  I have known since I was 5yo so I never felt like what I see in those pictures, or what I have seen in the mirror pre-hrt and electrolysis.  I was never a straight boy, I always felt like a girl who likes other girls.

If I could burn it all and wipe people's memories, I would.

I think this ties in with your "Do you regret not transitioning sooner?" thread.  Because I don't regret my past, pictures from then don't bother me.  There I was, muddling my way forward to where I am today.  Cool, I made it!

1954:


1977:

Quote from: KathyLauren on March 06, 2018, 06:17:04 PM
I think this ties in with your "Do you regret not transitioning sooner?" thread.  Because I don't regret my past, pictures from then don't bother me.  There I was, muddling my way forward to where I am today.  Cool, I made it!

1954:


1977:

@ KathyLauren:  Great attitude, good memories and wonderful pictures.
Aspiringperson

I am fine when I look at my baby pictures up an till I was 9 ish  than I hate and can not stand looking and all of my pics from than on I have deleted and thrown out most of my male like. There is nothing I like about myself in them I have asked my work to not put in and to remove the ones they have on computer and in the photo albums they have.

Mainly indifferent, though around middle school I started hating how I looked cuz I had dumb long hair, stupid glasses, and braces. I was essentially an ugly nerd, I eventually got into contacts because of this. I looked better with age, high school I developed my style interest more instead of wearing whatever clothes given to me because I didn't care about appearance, really.

Anyways, baby pictures are alright, they might be a little upsetting because of gender roles. There's definitely childhood photos of me in dresses which I didn't like and eventually grew to hate, but I don't resent them as much because at the time I just ignored clothing styles and was just a kid who had to wear dresses. My mom took me to a photo shoot around sixteen which I had to wear fancy dresses for, at the time I would never have wanted to do that but I didn't want to bother arguing about it so I just did it anyways. It was the biggest mistake because those are the only photos I hated with a passion. I secretly only liked the picture where I had a white shirt with a graphic print and a black vest over it, my hand was holding the edge of the vest and I had a serious expression, I liked it and it was a fairly masculine look, but My mom went through and picked photos of me standing around in a gross feeling pretty dress with the smiles I had to force. My mom hung up those pictures on the walls. I was once so furious staring one dead eye to eye I punched it with my bare fist, it cracked and I got rid of it before it was noticed.

I can ignore some pictures, kind of accept it for what it is, and so on.

I never actually liked any pictures of me that much until around high school and college where I started taking my own pictures, where I began to develop how I wanted to dress more, and began to gravitate more to masculinity, until I eventually just appeared to myself as a boyish.

Wolf this a loaded question of yours this time, just saying. When I see my adult pics I see someone unhappy in life and searching for something anywhere but, not finding it. As a kid I was generally happy but, again somewhat lost cause I felt one way but, told I had to be another way. So I see my old pics and it's starting to get to that point that I don't recognize that person as me. Is that weird? I almost see him as another person separate. I say I don't recognize myself because of well the changes so far my face is different. I look like my mother more and before I saw my father more. I haven't really looked back much cause it makes me sad.

The ghost of the past can stay in the past thanks. I don't want to see those photos anymore.

Quote from: krobinson103 on March 08, 2018, 10:17:23 AM
The ghost of the past can stay in the past thanks. I don't want to see those photos anymore.

@ krobinson103:   Actually I do not mind looking at my old pre-transistion pictures.   It is a good reminder of the hard work that it took to transition and it is a satisfying to look at how very far I have come with the dramatic changes in my body.
Now, if I were not self-employed and my co-workers had pictures of me previous to my transition... I would give them a new picture to replace it and politely ask them to not display the old photos.
Aspiringperson.   

Quote from: Aspiringperson on March 06, 2018, 10:25:56 AM
When I look and my "old" male pic of myself and compare it to what I look like now I am very happy that I made the transition... there were difficult times with family and friends and with my body accepting HRT but it has all worked out very well in my opinion.

My lasting question and lament to myself (and I am more than certain that most transitioners may ask themselves the same question:
    ..... "Why did I wait so long?"
]

@Aspiringperson you remind me of Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan's Island. Such a clean and wholesome looking woman. I had a crush on here back in the day. There are quite a lot of the ladies on here that I think are beautiful.
I know I'll never look like that but who cares I'm happy. As far as my pictures of the (old me) they are just memories to remind me not to dwell on the past but to look to the future and embrace it with a happy heart. I'm native american and I was taught that scars are just proof that you lived and to me old pictures of me are like those scars.




Love
Bobbie LeAnn

Quote from: Aspiringperson on March 06, 2018, 10:25:56 AM
When I look and my "old" male pic of myself and compare it to what I look like now I am very happy that I made the transition... there were difficult times with family and friends and with my body accepting HRT but it has all worked out very well in my opinion.

My lasting question and lament to myself (and I am more than certain that most transitioners may ask themselves the same question:
    ..... "Why did I wait so long?"
]

Your before picture is very cute but you looked very feminine. If you had longer hair in that picture you would have looked like a young girl. Your current picture is really pretty and you are absolutely passable 100%.

The only photo I have of my dead self, is an old grainy polaroid picture. I can show it, and the only thing people really notice is that I didn't have boobs back then. The photo quality is so bad, that they can't tell anything else from it.

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I always avoided having my photo taken, but the few photos I have, I struggle to recognise the person I see, apart from the fact that I was over 30kg heavier than I am now, I see someone who was unhappy. I'm probably projecting my feelings of my dead former identity, I don't like what I see.


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