Coathooks, Muffins and Bristols

You could use those as coathooks (Wikimedia)

    She was a very neatly turned-out middle-aged lady, standing with a glass in one hand and chatting to the other t-girls in a restaurant somewhere in the South of England. Fortunate in her facial proportions and not too tall, wearing a sensible tweed skirt, white sweater and cardigan I wouldn't have given her a second look had I passed her in the street.
    Unfortunately she had ruined the presentable impression by selecting a set of breastforms with erect nipples the size of acorns. Clearly visible despite her sweater, they became objects of fascination like a bald man's comb-over on a windy day, so awful you had difficulty not looking at them. You really could have used them as coathooks, they were that big.

A muffin. With a top. (NCI)

      I was reminded again of the lady with the eye-catching breastforms recently when I saw another t-girl acquaintance of advancing years wearing a skirt that was far too short for her. Showing off your legs is a good thing. Showing off your legs while wearing a nice set of stockings can also be a good thing. Doing the above in such a way that the tops of your stockings and too much of what goes on above them is sometimes visible is definitely not a good thing. You might just get away with that in public if you are a teenage Japanese girl in a Gothic Lolita outfit but even then as I've quoted my friend Dawn here before: "You wouldn't wear it to Tesco, would you!".

A nice pair of Bristols (Wikipedia)

      Fortunately for us getting it wrong is not restricted to t-girls, but the same rules apply to us as to anyone. My female-at-birth colleague from the early years of the last decade had a breast augmentation. From where I was sitting those she grew naturally seemed perfectly acceptable, but she evidently felt they weren't enough and gained a set of implants that left her impressively well endowed. All very well, but mere possession of an imposing new cleavage does not behove you to thrust them at your colleagues like a soap opera barmaid. There really is such a thing as Too Much Information!
    How do you tell someone that they've got it so wrong? You simply can't. I'm sure both the t-girls above would have been crushed by a "quiet word", and when such a thing can re-open the closet for its recipient that's no joke. Yet the effects of not doing so can be just as damaging, I recently saw a forum discussion of just this subject prompted by the unfortunate tale of someone whose transition is going badly off the rails, "why didn't anyone tell her" was the question asked. You first, dear.
     I like to think I've avoided such things through listening to the criticism offered by my wife. If others are noticing things and keeping me in the dark, it's not without a lot of effort on my part to avoid that situation. But if I did commit some awful faux pas and by some unholy miracle my wife didn't notice, how would I want to be made aware of it? I'd hope my more trusted friends would feel able to tell me, but the question is, would they appreciate it if I did the same for them?