#ftm selfies

so. left is 2009 my graduation prom

right is sometime between then and 2012 when i was going to college and living with my aunt

For the pre testosterone ftm in your life.

These methods have helped a lot with my dysphoria because when I'm having a bad time I can look at my pictures and know that I can still look more masculine even before I start treatment. Note that this is from experimentation, and very brief research. You or your friendly neighborhood ftm may not see the same results.

For reference here is a picture from back before I had realized I was trans.

And here is a more recent masc picture I've taken.

So let's break some of the obvious stuff down.

Cutting your hair short can help you start passing, but for the case of not being in a safe environment where you can do that you still have options. One of those being another trick all together. Hats.

On the whole men are more stereotyped to wear hats. In more recent fashion trends that's typically going to be a beanie or a snapback. For our purposes a beanie can be your best friend. You can tuck long hair into a beanie, preferrably in a ponytail, and use the end of the ponytail to create bangs. This won't be as successful as just having a short haircut in my experience, but it can be better than nothing.

Now another obvious point is the clothes. My clothes are baggie in the second picture, but that isn't everything. Because I'm wearing a binder here I used the horizontal stripes to accentuate how flat my chest looks, and selected a dark t-shirt so you can't see my binder through it.

(If you live in colder climate wearing an undershirt over your binder can not only be an extra layer, but it can help cover straps and create a more smooth figure.)

Now onto the jawline. The difference isn't quite as obvious in these pictures, but I have an overbite and have been trying to correct it. In the first picture I'm not correcting, and in the second picture I am. Bringing my jaw forward ended up making it look sharper and more square. This is something I wouldn't recommend doing for something longer than a selfie, especially if you don't have an overbite. Don't do this if it causes you pain, and you don't need a big shift to pull it off.

I have very feminine hands so I tend to keep these out of selfies as well, and in future selfies I'll experiment with contouring and very subtle natural makeup to see if that will further help, but I haven't quite gotten that far yet.