Makeup!

[Jess]

I found the absolute best website on the application of makeup that I have run across.  It includes tips on how to make your nose look narrower/wider, how to make your jawline look smoother / less prominent and about a trillion other fantastic tips including some really good tips on concealers.

http://www.101lifestyle.com/beauty/makeup/makeup.html

I just spent 90 dollars on makeup last night, I am so excited!  After work today, the bathroom is MINE! *laughs*

Oh, one thing the site doesn't really make clear, but should have.  Only concentrate on your eyes OR your lips, never both or you'll look like a clown!  If you go with exaggerated / fun / risque eye makeup, make your lipstick a shade darker / redder than your natural color and don't use a lip liner.  If you go with Lips, then make your eyes subtle with soft 'earthy' shades that are close to your skin tone for eye shadow.  Also if you use eyeliner use short, quick, steady strokes to make the line instead of trying to make one long steady line which won't work.  Then gently blend it with a Q-Tip.

Anyway, my question was

I know how to pluck my eyebrows, but I am kinda scared to do it.  Style! Channel is great for things like that and even when I was hiding who I was, I would still religously watch style.  But, if I pluck and shape my eyebrows, I am scared I might make my face too feminine, and then going in to work on monday I might get some awfully strange looks.  The eyebrows are so important to your face and greatly enhance your features and work towards feminizing it.  When someone plucks them to almost non-existance it very noticably looks horribly unnatural.  When someone has horrible bushy, unkempt eyebrows it is very noticable, but when they are a good width, and well arched, it brings out a very feminine appearance that is VERY noticable.

Thoughts?  My therapist did make a very good point in that, for most people, something like this is beyond even imagining.  I could have FFS done tomorrow and it still would not 'hit' them, I would just get comments like, have you lost weight? or something like that.  However, I am not sure I even want to run the risk of that, I need my job.

Jessica

[LostInTime]

Do mini steps, if any at all.  I started to just shape them a little bit and then a bit more.  Nothing very femme but enough to make a difference when I was dressed and out.  After transition I paid $7 to have them waxed and now maintain with tweezers.

[4years]

Very nice tips, thank you Jessica

[AmyNYC]

I always had horribly bushy eyebrows as a guy.  It took me about ten months to get them where they are now, which is where I will leave them.  I did it slowly so people wouldn't notice.  People at work starting having comments about them after about eight months.

Another advantage to doing it slowly is that you won't get carried away and screw them up.  Yeah, most girls overpluck, but they also sit down and try to do them in one night, because they're not worried about being outed.

I talked to my hairdresser about my eyebrows.  (She does waxing on eyebrows.)  I said I had been told by several women that girls would kill for my eyebrows.  She agreed, because, "They're perfect.  They're what every girl strives for, but never seems to get."  She said whoever did them did a great job.  I told her I did them, which blew her away.  Then she asked who taught me to wax, and I told her that, no, I had plucked them to their shape.  She found this almost unbelieveable.  She said it was unheard of for anyone to be able to pluck eyebrows to look as good as mine were.  When I explained that I took ten months to do them, taking out 5 or 10 hairs every few days, in order to not have anyone notice, she laughed and said, "Hey, they look good enough that I might start suggesting people do it that way from now on."

The other advantage is that you can stay true to the original shape by taking so long to do it.  I think eyebrows look bad when you try and manufacture a shape (such as a radical arch) that wasn't there to begin with.  You naturally have an eyebrow shape that is suited to your face.

[Terri-Gene]

Jess, carefully plucked and shaped eyebrows are something that just isn't easy to hide.  things like that are far easier when you are 24/7/365 as it becomes nothing unusual, but trying to hide it when presenting as a man, I'll shut up, but just seems more trouble then it's worth, easier to just own up to it and so what? does it affect my job?

Terri

[stephanie_craxford]

I have very sparse eyebrows, and before coming out at work I guess I was kinda lucky as I had to pencil them in, so depending on the situation I could really make them look feminine or just leave them as they were.  Now I get them waxed underneath, and tinted.

[Jessica]

Terri-Gene, I wish I could be more like you!  I mean that honestly, truely, and sincerely.

I wish I could have just said, who cares, this is me, this is how I am, if you don't like it go cry in a corner, just do it away from me *laugh*

But, I can't.  I have never been able to do that and I don't know if I will ever reach the point that I can.  Thats my fault, I know.  It's just not something I can overcome right now, maybe later on in my life.  Right now I am just trying to be okay with me.  After I do that then maybe I can try and let other people be okay with me.

*hugs*

[4years]

Changes that are not hide able, like eyebrows, or fingernails for instance are generally best left "normal" until you are comfortable enough to start announcing to the perceptive portion of the world who you are.

[4years]

I think a lot of the self-confidence we have is in part from at least some accepting us as ourselves, which is one of the reasons I think it is so important to all transgendered folk to be a member of some TG aware community, even if as silent witnesses.

Even so though it is not "bad" to not be able to look someone in the eye and stair them down into the dirt. I don't think anyone should ever feel they have be able to do that. Personally I like to be able to talk sense into a person (presuming they will listen), but I am so damned agreeable that is hard sometimes. *chortle* I just want to please everyone.

As they say, baby steps! For us both

[Naomi]

Great tips! Hope to be tryin some out tomorrow.

[Kendall]

Keeping feminine eyebrows and long shapely nails is important to me. I also always wear now my ring that has 2 looped tear shaped parts joining together of gold and silver. I refer to it as my >-bleeped-< ring, a merging of female and male. Between the arched feminine eyebrows, long shaped nails, feminine ring, larger chest, and now earings, I feel better presenting myself to others (small steps).

That website you posted is excellent. I have a cosmetology book that shows those and some more with pictures. I am trying to learn stuff like this, and hope to pursue even a career in either TG or normal cosmetology, clothing/color coordinating, and even wig/hair extension techniques. I dont mind selling books atm, but working with style, hair, and makeup would make me feel really good.

[AllisonY2K]

bah..I don't bother with makeup. usually lipgloss and that's it. then again I have a rosy complexion. dark eyelashes too so I skip on mascara. I have eyeliner onhand that someday I will sit down and finally get it right, but I'm in no rush.

(not to hijack the thread, just a side comment: acrylic nails aren't all they're cracked up to be. they're fine and dandy until you need a pair of needle-nose pliers to open the mcnugget sauces because you can't grip the little triangle-overhanging flap thingy. I've had to do this.)

[Cassandra]

I invested in eyebrow stencils. They come in sets of four with the latest eyebrow styles.
The first time I plucked I put one over my eyebrows then took a way to dark eyebrow pencil and penciled in. That way I could approximate how I would look with each style before deciding which way to go. Once plucked they take a long time to grow back so the ease of removing the pencil color made it possible to select just the right look before proceeding.

Cassie

[Kendall]

Pluck em, shape them and just go out like that. Mine are shaped. They are not as prominant when no makeup is applied. Just makes ya look metrosexual. I even pluck them real feminine sometimes, and people seem to talk to me more. Same with my nails being longer. So just do it, especially if your feminine lifestyle is important and dont expect it to go away. Might help in giving out clues to others too. And people might actually think it looks good. I like mine shaped good now, wont go back.