I just visited a site and oh my god, how extremely beautiful they are! I am so happy for them but at the same time for some weird reason it really depresses me. There is absolutely no way I could ever even come close to their beauty...one of the benefits of starting at a younger age...I didnt start howmones until I was 36

They might have had ffs.Can you post a link to the site I'm curious.

I have learned not to torture myself in such a fashion.

Even if you start young it's no guarantee, You don't know how viciously envious and green I get of other some younger some older MTF's on here but I seem to be of the generally younger group but yeah I think they are so much better looking than I could ever hope to or expect to be and I look and see masculine bone traits in the mirror and it makes my dysphora worse. And I feel like strangling myself for not starting when I was 17 or 14 or 10 or whatever.

But when you start thinking like that you begin comparing your life to others and you think that you should have started younger and that's not fair on yourself your situation was radically different and you did what you had to do and thought was right at the time, You have every reason to lament what you lost but we all lost something and no matter how young you were you could have been younger and we share that feeling,

It helps you more to think on why you did transition now and why you needed to go at 36 instead of when your 46 or 56... Try to take solace in what you have got and decide what you need to do from there to make your peace.

I was very fortunate.  My puberty was halted at tanner stage 3 when I was 13, and I was able to start HRT at age 16 and had GRS the day after my 18th birthday.  I don't compare my life to anybody.  My life started at age 18 when I was rid of the hated male appendage which I should have never been born with in the first place.  I am 22 now and have never looked back.  My only regret is that I am not able to have children.  I am not sure if science will ever be able to help there.

And just looking at many pics of the women on here, in various stages of transition...

A whole huge bunch of them and the boyz in fact are better than average male female looking?

I could log onto the elite models website.... and then what you find out is that media modules are physical freaks....atypical of what normal women are all about....

Models make up a tiny % of the 'real' population, but are all we ever see in books, TV's film, magazines etc...

But they are not the norm...

So as someone else say's why keep torturing yerself?

Cruella with her experience of advertising will know and confirm what I also know from years of experience in broadcasting. 99% of models are heavily airbrushed and photoshopped. See some of them in real life and whilst they are along way from being ugly they certainly don't look so pulse racing.

Same goes for a lot of the stuff on the internet in general. The internet is not reality folks! Most of it is a tweaked version of reality designed to sell you something or other, yes even people's personal sites - mostly they are trying to sell you the idea that they are younger/prettier/fitter/cleverer (delete as appropriate) than they are in real life!

For that reason photos online are the wrong yardstick. Fact is I KNOW for certain I can walk down our local high street without makeup and look as good as, if not better than, perhaps 80% of the women of my age! That's good enough.

Ok so put me up against some young airbrushed and photoshopped model and I don't look so hot but I can live with that because my photo is unmanipulated and real! Theirs aren't.

A few random thoughts:

1. even among the GG crowd, there are gorgeous women, pretty women, average women, and homely women. All the timing in the world can't overcome bad genes (and i don't mean gender genes here)

2. photography is less trustworthy than ever these days, depending on the sight I wouldn't assume the given woman is really all that hot if you saw her at the grocery or the park.

3. while none of us here post pics which seem to strive for "runway model glamor", I would say just in the "average everyday good looks" (like one might see in the facebook av of a GG, for instance) that some of our members can hold their own with any collection I've seen. and of course, realistically, not all of us can - but I refer you back to point #1

4. All that said, YES, as a general principle, starting younger is better. but that's not a death sentence in terms of being attractive. i've not taken the first hormone, had the first surgery, or even laser - and still have 100 pounds of ugly fat I don't want...and yet I'm still already better looking than I had ever hoped to be and way better looking than "he" was. I can imagine, realistically, that if I had the money to address all those issues, and partake of a few other minimal treatments, I could pull off a reasonably above average MILF look. and i think many here have way more going for them than me.

5. In reference to #4, I, for one, have no real sense of needing to compare to the glamor girls. I'm never going to be a model or walk the red carpet or anything so the utility of that is limited. If I'm going to measure myself against any other standard than "girl next door" or "MILF" attractivness (which is basically what I'm going for) then MAYBE I might give in to the temptation of being jealous of the "sex kitten" or "bimbo" stereotype ...but that probably just goes back to my inner slut trying to get out again, lol.

We can't all become the persons we once hoped we might be. Instead of looking to others we regard as superior in one aspect or another, let us look at ourselves and the road travelled. Look at who you are, how you have grown as a person and ask yourself if your life would truly be richer underneath a vast amount of cosmetics, false praise and photoshop skills. Nothing is actually made better by praise as true strength and beauty comes from the person itself, not from others.

here is a link
http://www.tgguide.com/

then scroll down and look right below the following line: Meet T-Girls and Admirers in Los Angeles



By the way I just LOVE these little icon buggers

Quote from: iris1469 on September 23, 2010, 01:42:21 PM
here is a link
http://www.tgguide.com/

then scroll down and look right below the following line: Meet T-Girls and Admirers in Los Angeles



By the way I just LOVE these little icon buggers

I see your problem - you are beingtaken in.

those people in the pics - don't live in LA!

On my page it says "See T-Girls and admirers in [my town]"

You find this on every site that's partnered with a dating site, AFF or whatever - "see what (we think) you are looking for in [your home town] by coming to our site"

it's a lie.

the people in the pics are NOT available through the site, DON'T live in your town, and are quite possibly not even trans.

and their pic has definitely been airbrushed and shopped and so forth.

I know this because I live in a small town and if any of those "t-girls" actually lived here, I would know them.

Girls have to put up with what they get.

That's the way it's always been.

But at the risk of sounding cliche, beauty comes from inside.

Yeah, Tammy's right. Those girls don't live in LA at all, they live in my little town, here in the South of England.

edit, accedently wrote Tanny.

Really sorry Tammy

just to prove the point, I refreashed that page several times and so far i've counted 30 seperate "hot T-girls" in this town of 8,000 or so that I never knew about before, though for some reason "sluttybitch" on one page has a different pic but the same name on a refresh and then the girl who originally had that name shows up with a different name on the next refresh.

that should give you an idea how fake it is. 100-1 says none of those girls are actually trans at all.

Oh, and some of our members are just as pretty as they are.

Like I said folks, NEVER confuse the internet with reality!

The two are NOT the same.

Take it from an old timer who has been around online since the days of JANET and ARPANET (pre 1970's)!

Darn it and I didn't start hormones until I was 48, no hope for me then, lol. Now where did I put my photoshop software and airbrush plugin..........

It is fake on that site and seems a bit doggy too.


Stardust

I live in a college town, and there are some really cute, pretty college girls here.  Will I ever look like them?  Not unless I get a body and age transplant.  Then I look around, and there are some OK college girls and a few that were not blessed.  They're still a lot younger than I am, but I then realize that I'm doing OK for an old broad - especially for one with decades of testosterone-poisoning. 

Don't compare yourself to the most gorgeous.  Who are you?  Are you a good person?  Are you working to become the best person you can be?  Looks are nice, but what kind of person are you?

In another few years all humans will be depressed because they aren't as pretty as animes.

- Kate

Quote from: stardust on September 23, 2010, 04:28:08 PM
Darn it and I didn't start hormones until I was 48, no hope for me then, lol. Now where did I put my photoshop software and airbrush plugin..........

It is fake on that site and seems a bit doggy too.


Stardust

To be fair - the pics were just in an ad...the site itself might be fine.

Heck, even the site advertised might be fine. that "here's a (bogus) pic of a person in your town" routine is pretty standard fare for all hook-up sites.

It might be dodgey, even for them - but it also might be as credible as any of the rest of them (ever how credible you find such sites to be)

it's a given that (now) here in 2010...

If kids with TG issues are picked up the hormonal management is tres better....

And the results less distressing (apart from maybe the parents) for all involved...

But this ideal is not one most of the posters on this site have benefited from....

But there are many stories here of people who did transition late in life and still make it through....

If the terms of success if we were only measured on the external appearances and whether you look like (dial in nation of choice) supermodel...

Then we would have all mostly patently failed...

But fortunately most of us live in the real world as opposed to a fantasy one....

Take a look at my profile pic.. It's been obviously photoshopped.. I could just as easily made the changes far less obvious.. I haven't started HRT yet, so my face/body is entirely masculine, so you can see wht can be done with a little photoshop work.. I evened out skin tone, removed beard shadow and softened a few of the lines and wrinkles..

The reality is that I don't expect to look like anything but  an "Average Woman" and that's fine.. As long as I'm the best person I can be to go with it..

These "truly beautiful" women are very, very much a minority.. Just as they are in the GG population..

I'm also fairly sure that none of the girls pictured on that site live in my town..

Just for a laugh, I signed up to a trans dating site, and none of the girls there look quite that good.. Wouldn't surprise me if the pics you linked to were GG's..