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.
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.