I was driving home from our weekly Dungeons and Dragons group. I had known these guys for many years at this point, up to thirty years for some of them. On my way home I detoured to a local supermarket having thought about how to get some makeup for myself. I had decided that a supermarket was an ideal place to purchase it as it was fairly anonymous and I thought given the hour that I was unlikely to find a neighbor.
Wandering about I was feeling very skittish. I kept making passes down the makeup ailse, just a little too shy to stop ant take the good slow look that I needed to do. Not that there where many choices to be had, it was mostly Almay products, a inexpensive brand usually sold in drugstores and such. I perfectly priced item with most of the things around five dollars. After a few passes I finally settled down and selected a few items. Despite my worst fears, nobody saw me. Or at least I didn’t see them.
I ended up with a lipstick, mascara and perhaps a couple of other things I’m not remembering. I didn’t know much about makeup so I was really shooting blindfolded. I checked out using an automated register and headed home. I didn’t do more that evening. I wasn’t alone in the house so I dared not get “dressed”. So I put my spoils away and waited for an opportunity.
You can get by without a ton of makeup, when you are pursuing a medical transition. To be clear, I don’t think most of us can pass well for female before hormones are being taken and the face rounds out from them. My personal advice to crossdressers and transwomen both is to start out assuming that you are not passible. Most crossdressers can’t pass well because (I think) testosterone tends to keep your skin thin and the fat layers smaller. After three or four months on hormones this can change dramatically.
Makeup is still useful for a variety of reasons even after hormones are started. Later on, when you’re going out in public at, for example, a nightclub, you may want very different sexy cosmetics. For example, you might use a simple light sand or peach color on your eyelids in the daytime but at nighttime you might wear darker eye shadow worn with shading and a more obvious eyeliner\ to set off your eyelids.
Most importantly you may require makeup to pass in public. It follows that it does pay to be reasonably good at choosing and applying makeup.
The basic set for me was the following (note that I wore more than this to work, usually I’d add a light eyeshadow and eyeliner).
Foundation. I can still get by without it as I’m fortunate to have good skin, but to start with you’ll want it. This is used to blend away skin defects and even out the skin tone.
Concealer – basically concentrated foundation. Useful for all sorts of things
Mascara – is part of most makeup routines. It isn’t as hard to put on as you might imagine.
Lipstick – this can be used and colored to just make the lips look nicer and more rounded, or it can be used to form a real contrast with the skin and complexion.
Other cosmetics commonly used include
- Blush
- Eyebrow pencils
- Eyeliners
- Eyelashes
- Eyeshadow
Beard Cover
While you are still getting facial hair removed to the point of it not being obvious, you’ll need to hide your five o’clock shadow. This starts with a careful close shave of course, but then you need beard cover. The beard cover will hide the darker hair for a few hours.
You follow up the shave with a little bit of light pink makeup to the areas with the heavy hair growth. This “neutralizes” the dark hairs of the beard. I’m not too sure this works well with brown beards. The idea here is that black hair is really a bit blue and the pink neutralizes the blue.
The final step is layering on a good layer of heavy foundation. You’ll want to get essentially stage makeup for this. I believe the common brand most people use is Dermablend.
I was very relieved when I was able to stop with the beard cover.
Makeup Brands
Just a few words on makeup brands and such. If you look at the brands you’d think there are forty or more individual brands. In reality one brand such as D’Loreal typically owns a number of other brands. D’Loreal owns Maybelline and Nyx which are both “drugstore brands”, D’Loreal which is a sort of upscale drugstore brand and I believe some high end brands as well.
My advice is to not buy cheap or no name cosmetics. You don’t need to spend a lot of money, but buy brands you recognize. Start with a small collection, It really is true that less is more. The ideal in applying makeup is to make it look as if you haven’t used makeup at all.
My Gifted Life 