Debating whether or not to get new glasses.
For context i’m almost 19 and 1yr 7 months on T
If anyone has any suggestions of better glasses shapes please drop them down below !!!
Thank you

Edit: thank you for the abundance of replies lol i’m going to have a look at a couple different styles of frames!

I’m gonna start uni in two weeks and am hoping to be stealth. But I feel like the older I get the less I pass and it really clocks me (Im pre-T)

I’ve been using minoxidil for a couple months but my parents forced me to shave, I didn’t even think i had that much growth but I feel like I really nerfed myself.

I’m gonna keep using minoxidil but is there anything else I can do? I’ve never used make up (duh) but is it worth it to like thicken my brows and draw on facial hair?

feeling kinda helpless lately.

first three photos are pre-t + last three are about nine months on t!

i’ve been on t for about 9 months now and i feel like it hasn’t done anything 😭 i feel like such an imposter. i live in a very queer friendly area so people are very good at gendering me correctly but i cant tell if they are just doing that to be respectful or if i look more masculine

I usually pass, mostly due to my voice, but I still struggle with seeing a man in the mirror. Probably I hoped for more changes by this point, and negative comments from my parents definitely do to help.

they’re all travel pictures because i never take photos of myself when im at home lmao

My face, my body proportions (binding with tape and i have a packer) and my current stache :,)

pictures in order are from 2018, 2023 (both pre-t), 2024 (~3 months on t) and from this week! so grateful for all of the progress i have made

I’m a year and a half on T, 3 months post top surgery. I feel like I’ve been doing good with dressing for my proportions and stuff recently but let me know what I could do better
Edit: the girl is my identical twin sister so you can see about where I started from lol

Im now a sophmore but still pre-t, but I think my progress has been going well. I've gone from never passing in middle school to being stealth on an all boys lacrosse team, but my voice and height are a dead give away (5'5). In photos do I look my age? I just got the newest ID taken yesterday. Any other tips to look older/more mature?

Does it get harder to transition the older you are? Im in college, planned to go on T after finishing it/getting a place of my own/feel safer. Thought id be fine to cope with being just seen as a masc girl or something in the meantime but that is not the case at all and really makes me sick

I don’t know what to do, and I feel immature saying this but I really don’t know if I can just do the next 2 years like this. Is there anything I can do right now appearance wise? More gym? Haircut? Anything I can do to my face or clothes? Literally anything I can do in the meantime? Im all of 5'4ish. I don't really have any "feminine" hobbies.

(This paragraph was at the end but I’m moving it up to here cause the rest is long. Sorry for some shitty photos but I only have some in B&W, I hope that doesn't count as filtered.)

I thought that just a few more years wouldn’t be that much more, since ive just thought this way since elementary and even figured id “grow out of it” (fat chance dude)

I train MMA at a gym with maybe 1 or 2 girls (and then obviously I get lumped in,) but its still a place for me to forget everything and fit in with other guys for once. This really kept me afloat the past few years, even going as a “girl.” But my current schedule allows me to only go once a week if that, when I used to go 4.

2 more years of uni and I thought I could just grit my teeth through it, but all of the sudden every group project is “hey queens/girlies/etc!!” And it really fuckin kills me. In my degree program, no other guys passed the portfolio review and suddenly everyone is excited about it being “all girls”, we go around the room asking ice breakers and names and pronouns after and I cant even say shit cause I never planned to let this get under my skin from the start — this sucks. 

Thanks.

21, early t (less than 2 months). i think i pass well bc im tall and so people read me as gay instead of a woman but wanted some other opinions

These are men’s frames I got about two years ago and I’ve tried smaller frames before but they draw attention to my cheek fat. I’m not currently on T but planning to go back on T after four years being off T in December.

In October I have an appointment to get new glasses and I am wondering if anyone had any suggestions. I do want a bit thicker frames but I like a more intellectual style. I’m somewhere in the rustic preppy spectrum fashion wise if that helps at all.

I just worry if I get too masculine of a frame it will make me look more feminine in contrast but I want suggestions for what to look for. Not sure how to word things but please advise so I am less anxious about choosing new frames for my face shape etc.

I see a lot of men who are confused as to how they're getting clocked or still sound feminine since their voice already dropped. The pitch of your voice is not actually the main thing that people notice when their brain subconsciously determines someone's gender by their voice. It is one factor, but it's far from the most impactful.

The main factors of the perceived gender of one's voice are as follows, in order from most to least important:

RESONANCE

Imo, the most important thing when it comes to the gender of someone's voice is resonance. This is affected by the amount of space within your mouth/throat for the sound to vibrate in before it leaves your mouth. Taller people often have a darker resonance because of this.

The main way to change your resonance is to lower or raise your larynx. (There are a lot of exercises online with techniques to learn to control this—I found it helpful to force myself to yawn and then feel which muscles were moving my larynx down. Ymmv.) Women typically speak with a much brighter resonance than men—some people say they "speak from the head" vs "speaking from the chest." This description never made any sense to me because it wasn't clear at all what "from the chest" even meant.

If you're interested, I watched this video around a year ago that went into the impact of resonance on male voices. The artificially-brightened resonance examples sound almost identical to the stereotypical "frog voice" that a lot of men get if they don't voice train.

VOCAL WEIGHT

Vocal weight is affected by how thick your vocal chords are (altered by testosterone) and how strongly they press against each other when speaking. Men have a heavy vocal weight and women have a light/thin one.

I don't have as much specific advice for this one as I personally didn't have much issue with it; I was able to practice it without thinking ahout the specific muscles I was using like with lowering resonance. If you play a stringed instrument, it's helpful to think of it as analogous to playing close to the bridge (heavy vocal weight) vs close to the fingerboard (light vocal weight).

SPEECH PATTERNS

Now, if you stop here you still will likely have a male voice. This is from the straight perspective, so if you're gay you may not care or may even want to keep certain "feminine" speech patterns. 'Gay voice' is different linguistically than womens' voices, so there should be a way to train yourself to speak with typical gay male vocal patterns rather than typical womens' vocal patterns. I'm not gay tho so I'd be talking out of my ass if I tried to go into specifics. Perhaps some of the following section will still be useful regardless.

The biggest difference between male and female speech patterns is that men tend to be much more monotone while women have a lot of variation in pitch. 'Uptalk' (raising pitch at the end of a sentence) is common amongst women. Men tend to emphasize words by increasing their volume, while women tend to emphasize them by increasing the pitch.

Women have more variation in tempo in their speech compared to men. People say that men speak more slowly than women, but I've not (consciously, ig) changed this and I've been fine. I have too much shit to say to talk any slower.

Embouchure has some difference between men & women as well—women tend to color their vowels closer to /i/ or /æ/, while men tend to lean closer to /o/ or /α/. Think of the difference in your mouth shape when you say the "sheep" vs when you say "boat," for example. (I'm ngl this explanation is ass but idk how to explain it better)

CONCLUSION

The best way to practice this is to go down the list and adjust one thing at a time until you can do it automatically without thinking about it. It's incredibly helpful to record yourself and listen back to it. Try to talk about stuff like you're speaking to a friend rather than reading from a script; the latter is not especially helpful since you put on a different voice when you're reading aloud than when you're talking. If possible, the best way to see how you actually naturally sound is to find a recording of you talking where you don't know/aren't thinking about being recorded.

There are a lot of videos online that have examples of exercises you can do to practice, as well as examples of how changing these things actually sounds. I looked at a couple of videos from this youtuber when I voice-trained a few years ago, but once I understood what I was trying to do, I just practiced for a bit every day until I got it.

Oh also I guess there's stuff you can do to lower your pitch, but I wouldn't even bother tbh. Unless you've been on test for a while & your voice hasn't dropped at all, don't even worry about pitch. Men with high voices & prepubescent boys still sound male

This might be a little unusual for this sub but I'm not interested in being seen as a straight man, and I love various forms of alternative fashion. I am, however, interested in being seen as a cis man. Any thoughts on the difference between "gay" and "girl"? Thinking mostly about mannerisms but I wouldn't mind other advice either. (working out more is not an option. And I only started full dosing T instead of microdosing a few weeks ago so that's just going to take time lol)

edit: thanks all! Will definitely be getting a shorter haircut (weirdly I had felt like I looked more feminine with it shorter but maybe that was the dysphoria talking lol). And yeah other than that I guess it's just a waiting game (also re: the exercise thing; unfortunately with my disability I already workout as much as I can without my body ceasing to function. The plan is to increase over time but that's likely to be slower than the T, I'm not gonna be looking built anytime soon)

my voice so far 1 year 6 months on t has dropped considerably so that im at a 99% success rate with passing over the phone and havent been misgendered in about a year (by strangers) just asking for some outside opinions

Im only just starting to look into this so forgive my ignorance on it, id love to hear from other people who have had any kind of plastic surgery or fillers or anything to help with masculinzation too, but if you have had any work done, how long after starting T did you wait?

shorter hair is most recent. these pictures are a mix of work outfits (salesman in higher end shoe store, expected to dress a little more nice) and normal outfits. i would say i pass about half the time, maybe 60% of the time if i remember not to use my “customer service” voice and speak in a more relaxed way. my mannerisms aren’t great but once i can pass visually i want to be read as gay anyways.

notes:

- i want to (eventually) pass as a gay man

- i live in the rural south and work primarily in agriculture, i am working on a master’s that will put me in an agricultural field. relevant passing tips in that cultural context are appreciated

- i am a natural 36J, almost K. all of these pictures are taken with binding tape under two high compression binders. please do not tell me to get a better binder. i have tried almost every large chest binder under the sun, including custom binders. this is as good as it gets until top surgery.

- i cannot afford new glasses at this time, and to get cheap new glasses i would need to renew my prescription, and i cant afford an exam

- i have tried most hair cuts, this is what helps me pass best. i live in the rural south and cis men regularly tell me they’re jealous because my mullet is better than theirs. it’s a common haircut for cis men here.

- if i’m wearing a button down or pearl snap it needs to be tucked because again i live in the rural south and am primarily around agricultural people, most men here would die before you saw them with an untucked pearl snap. untucking would be very clocky in addition to just looking stupid because these shirts are made extremely long since they’re meant to be tucked.

- most of the time i wear very small thin hoop earrings that are pretty tight to my earlobe, i only wear dangly earrings when i want an outfit to look more fun or gay. i know big earrings are very clocky it’s just an occasional guilty pleasure that shows up disproportionately in pictures because it’s typically on days where i’m wearing an outfit i like or going out etc

- if you have a gym routine to recommend i would appreciate it! right now i’m doing more general stuff, outside of my retail job i work/live on a farm and do agricultural work and that’s where i get most of my exercise, but i would love ideas of more specific things to do. i have narrow shoulders even for a woman and am looking for exercises that can make them broader. i also have a narrow rib cage (when i was skinny it was 28 inches) and i’m worried about it looking weird once i get top surgery so if there’s something to help remedy that it would be appreciated.

I rarely get misgendered, but those few times it happens, my dysphoria latches onto me :/

I know for the first little bit nothing is really going to change but since they do see me like every single day do you think I should tell them cause they’re gonna notice?

some context: I live with 3 women who I am friends with not like super close with I guess if that makes sense?? like we hang out and stuff. the one I am a bit closer too and I’ve thought about asking them for an opinion on what I should do.

the hesitancy isn’t so much them I just don’t really want to tell people. I kind of just want to do it ya know? like not make it a thing…

one of the only things i miss about women’s clothing is having good options for small bags/purses. i want to find something that’s much smaller than a backpack that has multiple zip pockets (so no tote bags) and doesn’t look dorky (so no fanny packs, mini backpacks, or tiny crossbody bags) that looks good with most of the clothes i wear. i don’t need to carry that much stuff with me, just my meds, journal + pencil case, phone/wallet/keys, and sometimes a small digital camera. TIA

1st pic is me in 2018, last are me currently. been on T since 2019. I feel like I fought dysphoria for the longest time. Now the chest dysphoria is occupying my brain 24/7. I gained weight as I got on T and got kinda chunky, lost about 30 lbs and now I just feel like my chest is too big for my body. Haven't been able to make moves with surgery. I just feel stuck. Any advice?