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Clothes Lists

Best Sports Bras for MtF Bodies

photo of woman wearing grey sports bra
Photo by RF._.studio on Pexels.com

Sports bras are a necessary part of any MtF wardrobe: they’re comfortable, concealing (if you want), and provide needed support as your boobs grow.

But finding the right sports bra can be a challenge, especially for trans women. As I’ve written about before, the post-pubescent male ribcage is wider and deeper than the equivalent cis female’s. Additionally, trans female breasts tend to be a little lower and more widely spaced than cis female counterparts.

This generally makes finding bras that fit a challenge, and while sports bras are inherently more forgiving than underwire bras, they still can be uncomfortable if not fitted properly. Common problems include:

  • The band-to-cup size ratio is too big, leading to a fit that is often loose for trans women with larger bands but smaller cups.
  • The shoulder straps are too short, leading to the bra riding up into the armpits during the day.

So here are my favorite sports bras that fit well for MtF body shapes.

Jockey Seamless Sports Bra

My go-to is the Jockey Seamless Sports Bra. It is super soft and has wide, removable cups. The double layer in front provides plenty of coverage and lift without the cups if you want a slimmer look. Though it’s advertised as ‘seamless’ there are still visible seams on the shoulder straps, though the main band is pretty low-profile.

This sports bra is a racer-back style, and best of all the straps are deep enough that it won’t dig up into your armpits. The cups are also plenty flexible while still providing good support for smaller breasts.

Balanced Tech Printed Performance Seamless Sports Bra

If you’re looking for a great strappy sports bra for lower impact activities, the Balanced Tech Printed Performance Seamless Sports Bra is a great choice. It comes in lots of nice prints, and has a good amount of support for a light sports bra.

The extra wide band at the bottom is why I love this bra; it doesn’t ride up and provides a surprisingly comfortable fit without being too constricting. The adjustable straps make it easy to position low enough on your chest so it doesn’t ride up into your armpits.

This one does tend to run on the small side, so you’ll want to size up when you order.

adidas All Me Sports Bra

My third recommendation is the adidas All Me Sports Bra. This is another ‘light activity’ sports bra, but a really good choice for A to C cups. This is a great bra for when you don’t feel like wearing a bra; it doesn’t have a lot of fabric so you almost forget you are wearing it.

I really like the straps instead of the full racer-back, though they aren’t adjustable. But they have plenty of length and stretch without too much pull, so the bra doesn’t ride up. Sizing is just about right and the pads are removable.

I’d love to know what your go-to sports bra is!

Categories
Appearance Lists Makeup

MtF Makeup: Foundation Tips

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Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com

If you are new to makeup and want to know what to focus on first, the answer is easy: foundation. Like its name implies, foundation is the key to an elegant, easy makeup routine. If you get it wrong, everything else will look wrong too.

Luckily, a good foundation routine is pretty easy to get right, with some trial and error. Here are the tips I found most helpful.

Tip 1: Find the right color match for your skin tone

I wish someone had explained this to me at the very beginning: foundation is not like a coat of paint. You need to match your foundation to your natural skin tone, otherwise you’ll have that overdone, fake look.

Unfortunately, there is no other way to find a matching skin tone than trial and error. I have a fairly neutral to warm skin tone, but when I first started out I went way too light. When the foundation doesn’t match your skin tone, you run the risk of looking blotchy where coverage isn’t 100%.

There are a couple of good tools for finding your skin tone match. I like the Maybelline online tool – simply take a photo and it’ll tell you the matching color to buy.

Once you know your base color, you can use findation.com to translate into any other brand of makeup. It’s worth trying out a few different brands to see which you like best.

Last note: you’ll have to change your foundation throughout the year as your skin gets lighter or darker.

Tip 2: Don’t go too heavy

Nothing makes foundation look wrong than over-application. Too much foundation will give you a cakey look, and counterintuitively, often makes wrinkles and other imperfections stand out. Too much foundation also is a pain to keep up throughout the day – you’ll need to spend a lot more time touching things up.

The key thing to remember about foundation is: use just enough to get the job done. If you hare having problems hiding beard color or other skin imperfections, consider a color corrector or concealer rather than applying more foundation.

I also don’t recommend starting with heavy-duty foundations for this reason; its too easy to over-apply and get a fake look.

Tip 3: Try different application techniques

Everyone’s skin is unique, and what works for some won’t work well for others. There are three main ways to apply foundation:

  1. Use your fingers. It’s messy, but gets the job done well.
  2. Use a makeup sponge. A lot of people swear by this. You can even buy swanky makeup sponges.
  3. Use a brush. Any broad makeup brush will work.

I have big pores on my cheeks and nose, so I never could get sponges to look very good. They smeared the foundation on top of my skin, rather than getting into the pores.

For that reason, I tend to use a brush or my fingers, depending on how much time I have.

Tip 4: Try tinted moisturizers

Recently, I discovered tinted moisturizers. If you don’t need as much coverage, these can be a really great way to get a more natural makeup look without sacrificing coverage.

I really like the BareMinerals tinted moisturizing gel – it is super light weight, but provides a good amount of coverage and needs very little touch up during the day.

The downside of moisturizers is they can look a little too dewey (or wet), so you’ll want to follow the next tip.

Tip 5: Use a powder

I also wish someone had told me this early on: use a fixing powder. Foundations typically dry with a wet look (very popular these days), and a powder on top with take off some of the shine and give you a more normal look.

If you still want that fresh dewey look, you can apply the powder around your face, but leave it light on your cheeks and center of your face. A fixing powder will also help your makeup stay in place throughout the day, and reduce smudges.

What foundation tips have you learned?

Categories
Exercise Lists Mental Health

How To Cope with the Lows of Your MtF Transition

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Some days suck. For a variety of reasons, or no reason at all, you’ll feel lonely, inadequate, ugly, fearful, listless, or unmotivated. You won’t have the energy to practice anything, and it will feel hopeless anyway. The worst days are when you question yourself or your choices, and wonder if it all would have been easier if you’d continued repressing your true gender identity.

Sound familiar? Don’t worry, you’re in good company. Every woman who has transitioned has had these days. Transitioning is an incredibly hard process, and there are bound to be some days where you just don’t feel up to the task.

And that is perfectly ok. Some days you don’t have to be up to the task. Some days, it is perfectly ok to dress in your old clothes, forget about bras and makeup, and just watch TV.

Generally when I’m feeling this way, it is for some common reasons:

  1. Lack of sleep: whenever I don’t get enough sleep, my mood and motivation take a nose dive. Everything feels hard, even simple things that I usually enjoy doing. Even an hour less a day can have this impact, and it usually takes a few days to fully recover.
  2. Over-exercise: when I exercise too much and don’t rest enough, I feel really anxious and, obviously, tired. Over-exercise raises cortisol levels and creates that sense of overwhelming fatigue that makes regular things feel impossible.
  3. Hormone changes: I notice that any changes to my HRT regimen can cause a few weeks of pretty bad moods. Spikes, or dips, in testosterone or estrogen can cause both euphoria or depressive feelings.
  4. Alcohol and unhealthy food: I notice that my mood can be materially impacted by what I ate, particularly if I’ve been drinking alcohol and eating really fatty foods. Both can have a really profound impact on my mood, and this seems to be getting worse the older I get. A few drinks and I don’t sleep very well, leading to a rough morning.

And then, sometimes, I’m just having a bad day for no reason I can identify.

If you are feeling overwhelmed, here are a few things you can do.

  1. Take a nap: if you really are exhausted, a nap can do wonders. Especially if I’m in a really bad mood, I find an hour long nap can really make me feel a whole lot better. Don’t sleep too much though, or it might affect your sleep cycle, which can lead to more fatigue.
  2. Take a sick day: mental health is just as important as your physical health. In the same way you shouldn’t hesitate to take a sick day if you can physically function, you shouldn’t hesitate to take a sick day if you can’t mentally function. It is totally ok, and in fact, demonstrates that you care for your whole self, not just your body. Sleep, watch tv, go out to eat, visit a museum; do whatever you need to do to recharge and build up your mental reserves again.
  3. Do some light exercise: it may seem counter-intuitive, but light exercise can actually make you feel more energized. Take a walk, or do some stretching or light yoga; anything that gets your heart rate up.
  4. Lean on your support network: nothing can make a bad day better than a hug from someone you love. Your friends and family are there to help you in times like these, so lean on them. Even if you are estranged from those you love the most, there is someone in your life who thinks you are great just the way you are and will be happy to tell you that if you ask.

And lastly, don’t forget: you are wonderful, brave, capable and beautiful. No matter what you feel in this moment, it will pass, and you will feel better. Until you do, be gentle with yourself, and know that its ok to be whoever you are in this moment.

Categories
Lists Makeup

Top 5 MtF Makeup Mistakes

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Photo by nappy on Pexels.com

Makeup is hard, especially for the trans woman who is just starting out on her journey. Cis women have the benefit of years of experience putting on makeup, and make it look easy, but turns out its not.

Unfortunately, the only thing worse than wearing no makeup is wearing bad makeup; it can emphasize all the wrong things and make you look more like a man that without any makeup at all.

These were probably the biggest mistakes I made early on; certainly not an exhaustive list, but the biggest and easiest to avoid for sure 🙄

Mistake 1: Not matching foundation shade to skin tone

When I first started buying makeup, I had no idea what shade to buy for anything, so I got what I thought would look good on my face. Unfortunately, I bought a bunch of foundation which was way, way too light.

The key to a good makeup job is to use the least amount possible while achieving the look you want. When you get a foundation that is too far from your natural skin shade, you end up having to use a ton to get a consistent color across your face. This means that you have that ‘overdone’ drag queen look, rather than the subtle accents you are going for.

Maybelline has a good online tool you can use to figure out a starting place for your foundation shade (just make sure to take the photo indoors under soft light).

Mistake 2: Not using a color corrector

Until you figure out how you want to remove your facial hair, you’ll need to figure out how to hide the discoloration that beard hairs cause on your skin. Foundation or concealer alone isn’t enough; you need a color corrector. The problem is that our eyes pick up subtle shading in skin tones amazingly well, and the darker color under the nose and on the cheeks is a super strong ‘male’ cue.

A good color corrector will make sure your skin is an even color across the bottom part of your face, and more importantly will ensure that color stays consistent throughout the day.

Mistake 3: Not applying foundation correctly

I think there are as many methods for applying foundation as there are YouTube videos on the subject. Though there is no ‘right’ way to do it, there are a bunch of wrong ways. Depending on your age or skin type foundation can either be invisible or it can highlight all the imperfections, wrinkles and big pores on your face (think bad icing on a cake).

I have the best luck using a big blending brush to rub foundation into my skin – this seems to be best at getting into the wrinkles, pores and blemishes. Avoid smearing foundation on with a sponge – that seems to only work for the small subset of women blessed with perfect skin.

Mistake 4: Too much contouring

Despite what the Instagram set says, contouring can’t magically change your facial structure. In many cases, too much contouring actually has the opposite effect, especially when trying to create fuller cheeks by drawing under the apple; this has the opposite effect of accentuating the angular cheeks most men have. Don’t forget, contouring can only highlight what’s already there, not create what doesn’t exist.

Generally, I avoid contouring on my face except for a bit at the back of the jawline to make it fade into my hair a bit more easily.

Mistake 5: Not enough lip size

This is a big one that I did for a while, with very mannish results. The trick to lips, especially for trans women, is to focus on the upper lip. This tends be thinner, especially when smiling, than on cis women, and nothing is a strong gender cue than a thin lip.

At first, I got some bad advice against overdrawing; but don’t be afraid, overdrawing can have dramatic impacts on your perceived femininity if it gives you a visible upper lip when smiling. This works best when you use a concealer or foundation on your lips to blur the color between your skin and your lip.

Just don’t go too far with the big lips, or you’ll look unrealistic.

So those are my top 5. What mistakes did you make with your makeup when first getting started?

Categories
Body Care Clothes Hygiene Lists

MtF: The Complete List of Everything You Need to Learn

notebook
Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com

When I first decided to transition from male to female, I (naively) thought that it was as easy as growing hair, getting some boobs and wearing different clothes. I’ve got a lot more coming on how (and why) I was so wrong, but today I wanted to share my rough and evolving list of everything you’ll need to learn and be able to do in order to successfully pass as a woman.

This list isn’t exhaustive, and not meant to be intimidating. But there is a lot to learn. And while you certainly don’t need to be the best at each of these things, but you’ll generally need to be as capable as a cis-woman. Realistically, you have to learn a set of skills that every genetic woman has had a lifetime to work on.

There is no timeline for how long it takes, but the more time you put in, the faster you’ll be able to successfully pass as a woman in most situations. Think years not weeks or months.

Looks

Looks are a primary, but not exclusive, way that people identify gender.

Makeup

  • How to prep your skin for makeup
  • How and what makeup to buy (there’s a ton!)
  • How to pick the right color makeup
  • How to apply color corrector
  • How to apply foundation
  • How to apply concealer
  • How to blend colors
  • How to accent/contour your face
  • How to create eyebrows
  • How to do your eyes
  • How to do your lips
  • How and when to touch up your makeup
  • How to do subtle makeup (you can’t look like you’re going out to a club all the time!)
  • How to go about your day without touching your face (this is really hard!)
  • How to eat and drink with makeup on
  • How to take your makeup off
  • The hardest part? How to make your makeup look natural, instead of a looking like a guy wearing makeup 😜

Hair

  • How to wash your hair
  • How to prep your hair
  • What tools and products you need to buy for your hair
  • How to brush your hair
  • How to blow dry your hair
  • How to curl your hair
  • How to make your hair look like you didn’t do anything to your hair
  • How to keep your hair out of your face
  • How to keep your hair out of your face but also as close as possible to your face
  • How to not tangle your hair
  • How to keep your hair looking decent throughout the day
  • How to find a hair stylist
  • How to afford a hair stylist

Jewelry

  • What jewelry to buy
  • How to wear earrings
  • How to wear necklaces
  • How to wear simple jewelry
  • How to wear fancy jewelry

Clothes

Hahaha, clothes are a baffling ordeal. Good luck to you ma’am!

Bras/Underwear/Comfy Clothes

  • What kinds of bras you need (you need many)
  • What kinds of underwear you need (you need many)
  • How to buy bras, and from where
  • How to find bras that fit
  • How to afford bras and underwear (seriously, why is this shit so expensive?)
  • What to sleep in to keep from smashing your boobs
  • What to wear around the house when no one will see you but you still want to feel cute
  • What to wear around the house when you really don’t give a fuck
  • What is the most comfy thing you can get away wearing in public

Work Clothes

  • How to wear a skirt
  • When to wear a skirt
  • How to wear a dress
  • When to wear a dress
  • What colors to wear, and when
  • How to look professional but feminine
  • How to look feminine but not slutty
  • What to wear to keep from sweating out in the summer
  • What to wear to keep from freezing in the winter

Everyday Clothes

  • What shirts to buy that don’t make you look like you have an enormous _______________ (chest, arms, neck, shoulders, wrists, stomach….)
  • What pants/shorts to buy that don’t make you look like you have an enormous _______________ (ass, waist, thighs, calves, knees, hips….)
  • What jeans to buy
  • How to afford jeans (seriously, why is this shit so expensive?)
  • What to buy when you don’t want to be noticed
  • What to buy when you do want to be noticed
  • What to buy to avoid looking like your mom and/or sister

Shoes

  • How to buy heels
  • How to buy heels that don’t make you look slutty
  • How to avoid wearing heels
  • How to walk in heels
  • How to find a ‘cute’ shoe
  • How to find shoes that don’t make your calves look enormous
  • How to find shoes that are comfortable and cute
  • How to wear shoes that don’t stay on your feet (monkey toes!)

Body

Hygiene

  • How to shave your legs
  • How to shave your armpits
  • How to shave everything else
  • How to tuck
  • How to untuck when you have to pee
  • How to moisturize
  • How to afford all the moisturizers you need

Movement/Posture

  • How to sit like a woman
  • How to walk like a woman
  • How to run like a woman
  • How to sleep with breasts
  • How to sleep ‘cute’
  • How to keep your boobs from knocking into things, or things knocking into your boobs
  • How to keep kids from always putting their elbows into your boobs
  • How to do ________ like a woman (use a computer? That looks different when women do it!)

Everything Else

Emotions

  • How to cope with sucking at everything
  • How to cope with feeling like you’ll never make any progress
  • How to cope with never having enough time to practice all the absolutely necessary things
  • How to cope with being clocked
  • How to cope with looking ugly
  • How to cope with assholes
  • How to cope with hopelessness
  • How to cope with exhaustion from coping all the damn time
  • How to make the feeling last when you finally catch a glimpse of the person you knew you could be

People

  • How to respond to the person who is trying to figure out if you’re trans in not-so subtle ways
  • How to avoid getting raped/killed
  • How to avoid getting hit on
  • How to get hit on by the person you want to hit on you
  • How to tell your friends
  • How to tell your family
  • How to find a therapist
  • How to find a doctor
  • How to find a career coach
  • How to find new friends

I’m sure I’m missing obvious things, so let me know what things you had to learn in the comments!