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.
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!
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.