this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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My partner offered to do my makeup today. I was excited both because she's been iffy on the whole transition thing and because she's very good at doing her own makeup and I was excited to get some instruction.

I've always thought I look young for my age and fairly attractive (if you're into mountain men) so I was cautiously optimistic about the results. But when she was done I looked in the mirror and my first thought was: shit, I hope Napoleon comes through that door and puts me out of my misery. I looked like an old french duke or a sad theatre queen in a Christmas pantomime.

Without the makeup I looked around 5 years younger than my age, but with it I looked easily 25 years older. My eyelids especially looked like poorly tanned leather. I know estrogen is amazing for your skin, but Jesus Christ does it have some heavy fucking lifting to do.

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[โ€“] CackNClap 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Don't be too disheartened, makeup really does sit differently on different people and there are specific techniques your wife probably hasn't needed to be aware of. I (AFAB-woman) noticed when I put my makeup over a friend's (AMAB-TBD) shaved face it looked surprisingly different and I had to make it darker in those areas to blend with the cheeks and forehead. That made a huge difference and that was without even looking up a tutorial. Also eye primer will do wonders for how that makeup sits. There's a lot of frustrating trial and error that I'm sure dysphoria will not help, don't lose hope immediately!

[โ€“] Berengaria_of_Navarre@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

That's good to hear. I was just a little shocked at exactly how bad I looked and a little frightened that I might always look like that. She kept saying that this or that "wasn't quite right for my skin tone" or "ideally I'd use X colour eyeshadow, but I don't have it". So there's an element of it not being suitable for my skin tone, but I didn't expect to look like a 70 year old drag queen at a chappell roan lookalike contest.