I have been on hormones for 5 months now and the cumulative effects are starting to show.  My face is softening up nicely and my body shape is beginning to change and re contour.  I have loss quite a bit of muscle mass, resulting a much slimmer look over all.  My hair is growing quite well and is now over my ears.

Basically things are heading the best direction possible.  I am very aware that I am now entering the "awkward phase" where I am beginning to not look that male anymore but I also don't look fully female either???  I am not fully out at work and so I am in boy mode.  People are beginning to talk They know somethings up.  I have come out to some work colleagues and plan to come out to my immediate team next month before i take a few days off.  As far as the general office is concerned I am a gay guy, so the fact my appearance is changing  and I seem to have lost a dramatic amount of weight is making people put 2 and 2 together and making 5.  They think I am ill.  I work in a huge open plan office and it can be quite intimidating when i know tongues are wagging. 

I know this awkward phase may last for quite a few months as the hormones need to continue their work, laser hair removal needs continuing on my face (halfway through so far) and my hair needs to grow longer.  I know I must come out the other side eventually, but i really don't like this inbetween phase I feel very self concious.

How have others on here dealt with this?  When i wash my hair it looks lovely and glossy and has body thanks to HRT but it isn't mens hair anymore.  People have said behind me "look at his hair"  As if it is something odd?

Any feedback appreciated.xx

I'm going through this right now too.  My experience:

No comments for - being hairless, laser hair removal patchiness, plucked eyebrows, female deoderant
The odd comment for - long nails, different physique

My hair however is an entirely different story.  For some unknown reason a guy having long hair is like an open invitation for comments from people in my office.  I think I've had at least one comment every single week for the last six months on this.  Sometimes it's jokes, while other times people have literally told me to get my hair cut.  I'd like to say that I've handled it with good grace and been good humoured about it all, but frankly it gets tiresome when people can't accept a straight forward answer of "no, I'm growing it out".  I even had someone who was working for me get remarkably aggressive on this.  It was genuinely bizarre as he wouldn't accept my simple responses.

So yes, if your experience is anything like mine, expect the hair comments to continue.  I've had similar where my colleagues think I might be 'ill' or some such.  I would like to tell them the truth to put their minds at ease, but we've had plenty of redundancies lately so I've had to be cautious.  I mainly just remind myself that I need to keep my job performance high and ignore any gossip, but that isn't easy and it has got to me some days.  I do also remind myself that it won't be much longer until I'm fulltime at work when I can then clear up the confusion properly.

Keep them guessing. Say nothing. Pass off any questions.

Seems to me, any problems will be theirs. If you react, even trying to help them with reassurance, you're just playing that silly game.

Think about, for example, someone asking you if you have had SRS. Now I would think the appropriate answer would be to ask them how they would feel if I walked up to you and asked you about your genitals? Of your wife?

The point is, you tell people what they need to know. How much do you know about their private lives?

It's my experience, that even with aggressively inquisitive people, few like sharing their entire private life. You shouldn't have to either.

I shaved off my facial hair soon after I started HRT.

The most comments I got were how young I looked without the beard. 

-Sandy

Well for me, it went like this.

I began HRT and it was fairly effective in changing my face. I was going under a lot of stuff in those days, I had anxiety attacks and depression, so I had a few friends involved in the process.

Those "friends" did me the favour of spreading the rumour around, next thing I knew, I was 4 months on the stuff and the whole class at university knew. I don't know if it was good or bad, but it did have me go full time fairly quick.

The price we have to pay to be congruent with the stuff that's in our heads, you just have to ride it out until your comfortable with what you got.

Being a teenager again can be hard.

Well, I saw no point, or chance, in hiding that I was on HRT. Rumors about me being on HRT before had sprung up a few years before I had even started. So when I did start, people knew pretty quickly somehow. By 3 months, I was full time. So I didnt have time for the 'awkward stage'.

I'm sort of the same, my close people know and accept that I'm changing others don't know and see me changing. My close people have asked what they should say when others ask about me. I told them to tell the people to come to me and ask what is going on.

I'm enjoying it

I suppose it could be said I'm in the 'awkward phase'.. I look at it a little differently, I look at it as a second adolescence.. A chance to experiment, have some fun with what I wear and how I behave.. The recent realisation that I could no longer do the whole 'guy mode' act was a real positive..

Sure, I get some questions.. But they have all been polite and non-judgemental - even when I do volunteer stuff at my aunt's church.. I did a catering job recently for hen's night, so there was a whole bunch of early 20's women.. The only questions I got were about the food - and what lipstick I was wearing.. Oh, and some sympathy for the joys of growing boobs.. 

I found being 'out' made dealing with my awkward phase much easier.  At first I tried hard to hide everything, but I was starting to get so self conscious about it that I told a few people at work (or rather, my partner told them).  One of these people then took great pleasure in telling every person she came across, a week or two later all the customers and my colleagues all knew.  I didn't have any bad reactions, in fact it made the whole social transition a lot easier as women would talk about things with me that they probably wouldn't have said otherwise.

Quote from: Laura26 on February 15, 2012, 05:11:31 PM
I'm going through this right now too.  My experience:

No comments for - being hairless, laser hair removal patchiness, plucked eyebrows, female deoderant
The odd comment for - long nails, different physique

My hair however is an entirely different story.  For some unknown reason a guy having long hair is like an open invitation for comments from people in my office.  I think I've had at least one comment every single week for the last six months on this.  Sometimes it's jokes, while other times people have literally told me to get my hair cut.  I'd like to say that I've handled it with good grace and been good humoured about it all, but frankly it gets tiresome when people can't accept a straight forward answer of "no, I'm growing it out".  I even had someone who was working for me get remarkably aggressive on this.  It was genuinely bizarre as he wouldn't accept my simple responses.

So yes, if your experience is anything like mine, expect the hair comments to continue.  I've had similar where my colleagues think I might be 'ill' or some such.  I would like to tell them the truth to put their minds at ease, but we've had plenty of redundancies lately so I've had to be cautious.  I mainly just remind myself that I need to keep my job performance high and ignore any gossip, but that isn't easy and it has got to me some days.  I do also remind myself that it won't be much longer until I'm fulltime at work when I can then clear up the confusion properly.

This is very similar to me.  I have plucked my eyebrows a little more over recent months, and I wear female body spray.  I also wear a little clear mascara if I feel brave .  However none of this draws attention like my hair or my body shape.  Weight loss seems to be the trigger for many people's curiousness.  My body shape will continue to change (hopefully) and my hair will continue to grow.  So the changes will become further enhanced.  Eventually I hope people will realise that  will realise the reason i look so different is because i look more feminine.  By then it should be common knowledge anyway.

Thanks everyone for sharing your experiences.  Although our transitions are all very different, we all pass through certain stages and face similar challenges.  Here's to "sisterhood"

I'm not on HRT yet but decided to avoid awkward questions & strange glances so I told most of the people I work with daily & let the workplace grapevine inform those I hardly ever speak to.

One worker & a manager have since decided to make my life as hard as they can, the managers been moved to another building (because he's useless) & the co-worker is now regretting trying to make life hard as i'm returning the favour & every time he tries to skive or does something wrong i'm straight on his case, i've had a few opportunities when I could have put in a grievance against him but that may turn others against me.

The bright side of this is that I can wear light eye make up, nail varnish & womens jeans & t-shirts & no-one bats an eyelid, I get looks in the street but random strangers are all non-entities to me

I'm just myself. I don't tend to act like I care what others think, even though I get looks from guys like  all the time. I'm not full time yet, but I've been maamed a few times while presenting as male. When they realize I'm a "male", they don't even act any differently towards me, they just adjust their pronouns and such. Just keep your smile visible, it helps. Chances are, people don't even know what transgender HRT is.

Quote from: kelly_aus on February 16, 2012, 01:52:30 AM
I suppose it could be said I'm in the 'awkward phase'.. I look at it a little differently, I look at it as a second adolescence.. A chance to experiment, have some fun with what I wear and how I behave.. The recent realisation that I could no longer do the whole 'guy mode' act was a real positive..

Sure, I get some questions.. But they have all been polite and non-judgemental - even when I do volunteer stuff at my aunt's church.. I did a catering job recently for hen's night, so there was a whole bunch of early 20's women.. The only questions I got were about the food - and what lipstick I was wearing.. Oh, and some sympathy for the joys of growing boobs.. 

I think thats a really good way to think. The whole transistion can be daunting and with many problems, but hopefully we can all remain positive and we'll all be much happier for it. i'm *trying* to treat it with a bit of humour as well - otherwise i know I'd get really down about the whole situation. Its arduous enough without the added pressure of all these self-doubts floating around inside my head 

Wow.  You girls have extremely perceptive coworkers.  None of mine have said anything.  I'm out to a couple, and when I came out to them, they were oblivious.  They also haven't told me that anybody is talking about me, even when specifically asked.  And I work in IT, with what I would consider very intelligent people.  Maybe us brainy introverts are more facinated by our inner workings than the world around us?

A transphobic (yet, not homophobic) co worker told me today that I was the girliest guy he'd ever met. He knows fully about transsexualism but he doesn't know about me. People tend to be naive unless you drop some major bomb hints or they are ->-bleeped-<-s or something.

Didnt occur to me that this was another bonus to being fulltime before HRT, no silly assumptions cos my collegaues know im trans.

Hi Jenna;

Nice to see how smoothly everything seems to be moving along for you. I can already see a significant difference in your presentation. I hope you can see it too. I'm watching for motivation as I'm almost 40 and working up the courage still to move the next step! If I can liken it to an underage allusion I would probably liken it to needing a drink or too before ending up in a tattoo shop. HRT isn't quite like that though!

I've often wondered how everyone tries to bridge the awkwards stage and how long it lasts. One of the best things I've done was do one of those makeover sites where I could take a picture right now (no hormones) and see what I look like with semi-realistic haircuts. My partner has certainly appreciated it, I think she was surprised that I could probably be close to passing as a lesbian Phys Ed teacher or something! LOL... I've already had questions based on the weightloss and some wonder whether I am sick or running again. I'm slowly growing my hair (too slowly...) and working on the more feminine available guy's clothing (e.g. linen is my friend!).

Regardless, keep this thread rolling updating us on the transition through the awkward phase. I certainly would find it helpful and I think a few of us late transitioners would value it. Take care.