On loose hairs

    One of my perpetual annoyances when I was much younger, still living at home with my parents and my sisters, was finding my eldest sister's hair.She has enviable hair and she wore it long at the time, so long reddish hairs would attach themselves to furniture, clothing and a multitude of other surfaces. Because I was a teenage spotty young oik at the time and very deep in the closet, I decided that this was icky, pertaining as it did to girls.

    Teenagers ain't the sharpest tools in the box, are they.

    I guess it's my sister's turn for a laugh at my expense now, because as my hair has grown out to a rather unambiguously female style, I'm finding my hairs everywhere. In fact, it's my wife who seems to find them more than me, and she's not entirely happy about them. Oops.
    When I say my hair is unambiguously female now, I'm not joking. My hairdresser has done an amazing job. I get away with it when presenting as the scruffy bloke by letting it air dry so it looks a bit lank and tousled, and because those not in the know see what they expect to see. But even in that lank bloke look it's got body and a wave that some women would kill for. If I blow dry it I get that curl at the bottom that would have made me very fashionable in the 1960s, shame I can't see the Mad Men look working on me.
    So with long hair, and beard in remission, I'm starting to blur the edges of gender presentation. If I look in the mirror when being the scruffy bloke, I can make the girl appear simply by changing my expression. And if I present as female it doesn't take much makeup for the bloke to go away completely.

    I never expected to reach this position. Especially not while still living most of my life as a scruffy bloke.

    A few years ago one of the biggest walls keeping me in the closet was the thought that I would never be able to present as female with any pretence of looking female. There is nothing more depressing than putting on female clothing and seeing a man wearing a dress in the mirror. I have a feeling one or two of my more whiny and depressive early posts on this blog explored that theme.
    The trouble is, with this evolving female presentation comes fresh stress. As if I needed that. It's better by far than the crushing depression I had in the closet, but it's a fresh reminder that this is a downward slope.
    With the stress of seeing the downward slope I have a lot to talk about in my counselling sessions. They are uncomfortable in themselves, forcing me as they do to confront things I might wish to ignore.
    It's funny, I have a sense I've never had before, that of leaving the bloke behind. I used to be a bloke who had rather a lot of the girl about him, now I have this feeling of having to make something of an effort to be the bloke. How on earth did that happen!
    Still, even if I ain't exactly winning I have to keep trying.
    Keen followers will have noticed that I've been away from here for a while. Work has been busy and I've been burying myself in some other things to try to keep my mind occupied and away from annoying thoughts. You know you're spending too much time with your Wreck when you start double-declutching your modern car.

Asset review

    When MtF trans people of whatever hue get together,  they will often talk about the same stuff. Body hair removal, for instance. A common response I elicit at this point is one of envy from those who are undergoing painful full body laser treatment, because I am fortunate enough to naturally not have much to laser. A patch of hair on the chest, that's it.
    I'll usually respond with a jokey "Well you've got petite size 9 feet you B**ch!", because the chances are they'll be sporting a to-die-for pair of boots that will simply never be seen in a size 15.
    It's something to consider, isn't it. We all dwell on our worst points, how about our best points? I have almost defined myself by my size, but here I am with an enviable lack of body hair.
    I should remind myself, I'm lucky enough to have a slim figure, great legs, and thick slightly curly hair that I've had natal women envy since I've grown it out.
    You should do the same, list your assets first. It don't 'arf make you feel better!

Beetling

    Everywhere you look, it seems you can find all sorts of interesting treatments for reducing or shaping your eyebrows. The beauty therapists will pluck, wax, or thread, the hair removal people will give you electrolysis and the more extreme beauty people will permanently tattoo you a new set of eyebrows.
    All this is of consuming interest to me of course, for left to their own devices my eyebrows will do a passable job of a full-on Denis Healey, a man not known for moderation in the eyebrow department.
    My mother claims that plucking eyebrow hairs causes them to stop growing. It's one of those infallible pieces of Parental Wisdom that simply doesn't stand up to real-world experience, yet she'll regale you with the tale of one of her pupils back in the late 1950s who plucked her eyebrows entirely and was left with nothing.
    If I pluck my eyebrows, they seem to grow back ever more vigorously. So I'm constantly trimming them and having them plucked, something other people seem to see as of no consequence but I have to admit to finding rather painful.
    Yelping at laser treatment, now wincing at eyebrow shaping. No pain no gain and all that, but I ain't taking to this very well, am I.

Without enhancement

    This week has featured a couple of significant landmarks for me as I navigate the choppy waters of alternate gender presentation. One was expected, the other wasn't, but they were both very welcome.
    Last week I wrote about my hair having finally reached a length at which it can be presented in a female style. As I wrote then, last night I went out for the first time wigless presenting as female, to this month's Swindon TG Group meeting.
    Fantastic, not having to worry about a wig.
    I flatter myself that I don't look too bad in my wig, but I have never felt secure in it. Aside from a comedy moment in which it became hooked in a climbing rose at a friend's barbecue it has never parted company with my head, but it is the feeling that it could do so which has has haunted me. Maybe my head isn't a good shape or something, but I have always felt that the wig is trying to work its way upwards. A keen observer would probably notice my hairline oscillating over the course of an evening, hardly a good look.
    So I was very happy indeed to spend the evening at the support group and join the usual meal at an Italian restaurant, all without a thought to the security of my coiffure. Nobody noticed me in the car park as we mixed with the Swindon late-night revellers, and my confidence knew no bounds.
    That was the expected landmark, what about the unexpected one? An aspect of my medication that has rather crept up on me in the last month or two is that I seem to have experienced one of the side-effects of Finasteride. The thought of gynaecomastia triggers the imagination towards hoping for the kind of breast growth that might come to someone given a hormone prescription, so since I have resolutely failed to sport a chest that might make Dolly Parton proud I had always concluded that I had missed out on that one. But over the past month or so I've begun to realise that I've very slowly gained a little more there than I had before. Nothing you'd notice in my scruffy male guise, but let's say my man-boobs are a lot more wobbly than they used to be. In fact, if they are marshaled into place, they even start to resemble something that might have a cleavage, and without involving the yards of surgical tape employed to that effect by some people of my acquaintance. Could a bust, however small, have crept up on me? Time to find out.
    Small bras in larger band sizes can be hard to come by. I'm fortunate in that my 38 inch band size places me within the normal female range, but it seems few women with my ribcage size are under-endowed. Fortunately the British standby on matters of female underwear, Marks and Spencer, do cover 38A in their range, so this afternoon when my wife and I found ourselves in time we paid M&S a visit.
    I settled on their "2 sizes bigger" push-up bra. I've heard others praising this product so it was time to see whether it could work its magic on me. Sadly I didn't have the chutzpah to have a bra fitting in a crowded store while presenting as my scruffy bloke persona, so I had to make my purchase and try it on at home.
   The result is rather pleasing. This bra is one of the more padded bras on the market, it seems to be more padding than bra. However when my meagre endowment is scooped up behind the padding it does give a pleasing curve above the cup and a definite, though small, cleavage. And it's comfortable to wear, something you can't always say for breastforms.
   I have replaced breastforms with a bra that all but contains breastforms, but the key result here is like that of going wigless. Just as having my own hair puts me on the same footing as any other woman, so too does presenting a credible female bustline to the world using only enhancements made for natal women.
    And those two coming together in the same weekend is nothing short of priceless.

Dual-purpose

    It is now nearly nine months since I last had my hair cut in a male buzz-cut and just over seven months since I had the Long Chat with my hairdresser and started having my hair cut with a view to growing it out into a style suitable for both male and female presentation. In that time I've had it thinned and trimmed on alternate visits to my hairdresser, and though it has only gained a few inches in overall length I now have enough hair to cover my ears and reach down my neck, and I have the beginnings of the same wave that both my sister and mother have in their hair. Over a year on Finasteride has also in a small way reversed some of my hair loss, so fortunately I have little to worry about in the hairline department.

    In short, I think after today's very light trim I'm almost at the point of having a dual-purpose haircut.

    Being a bloke is an easy look to cultivate. You don't bother to dry your hair properly, you tuck it behind your ears and use a little bit of styling wax on top to give it a bit of body if it looks too slicked down. You're expected to look a bit scruffy, so as long as you do just that nobody bothers to look at how your hair is cut behind the facade.
    If I brush it out from behind my ears from this blokish start I can see where I'm going with it but something isn't right. Too flat, I just look like a bloke with a really bad haircut.
    So what's to be done? Wait for more length? Not a bit of it! I am now at the point at which if I blow-dry my hair, instead of looking uncontrolled as it would have in months past it settles in that pleasingly fluffy texture and stays where I put it. Five minutes with the hairdryer and when I look in the mirror I suddenly have a female hairstyle. The sides cover my ears and curl in towards my eyes, while behind my ears and on my neck the wave gives it an outwards curl. And the body given by the blow-drying gives it substance, bounce even.

    Pleased? I should say so!

    My most important critic, my wife, also rates it as a success. And she would not deliver such a verdict lightly. It's a short female haircut and there is room for improvement (the word she used for it was "retro"), but she voted it acceptable to wear to my support group meeting later in the month.
    I am like a teenage girl who has just discovered a grown-up look.

Mop-top

    It is now about six months since I last had a male haircut before coming out to my hairdresser and abandoning the buzz-cut I sported for most of my adult life. It is also about a year since I asked my doctor for Finasteride as a move towards preserving my hair should I find myself unable to stay as a bloke at some time in the future.
    On one hand, my hair has grown well. I've had several haircuts this year, to trim the edges and thin out the layers and even though it has grown longer my hairdresser's expert ministering to it has meant I have avoided the result looking too bad as it has become longer.
    On the other hand, it's at the frustrating stage at which I can start to see where it is going, but it is not long enough for my purposes. I can blow-dry it and tease as much life into it as I want, but it still doesn't quite look female enough. I'll be wearing the wig for a little longer I think. Sigh.
    Still, there is good news. Last year when I wrote about Finasteride I was pleased that I was seeing less loose hairs on my desk but I hadn't seen any evidence of returning hair where it had receded. I am pleased to report that sometime after Christmas, my wife noticed that a small mole that used to be outside the hairline now has hairs growing round it. Only a few millimetres advancement, but it is there, proof that something is working.
    No luck on the side-effects though. If I jump up and down I can imagine I have minor man-boobs but gynaecomastia it ain't. And to think, my doctor felt he had to warn me about that side-effect!

Go into the salon a bloke, come out slightly less of a bloke

    Last month I lamented that while on a visit to my hairdresser I was not presented with the chance to talk to her about growing out my hair into a more gender-neutral style.
    Yesterday I had the Long Chat with her and her colleague. I had my hair cut on Saturday so I had already talked about growing it out, but since she had other customers in the salon back then I needed to tell her why so that she could manage its growth. On Saturday she tidied it at the edges but left the main growth intact, it seems next time she'll thin the ends of the longer growth, something that will make growing the layers out more easy.
    So my wife and I went down the road in our lunch hour and had the Long Chat. And it went perfectly. There were the inevitable questions but they were both understanding and seemed to be relishing the prospect of creating a dual-purpose hairstyle.
    The next eighteen months will see me sporting a succession of annoying hairstyles as it grows out enough volume. At least under the care of an expert hairdresser I should avoid their also being embarrassing hairstyles.

Go into the salon a bloke, come out a bloke

    My city is blanketed with snow today. The main roads are full of nose-to-tail stationary traffic as our transport system has ground to a halt, and the town is half-empty. Very convenient if you need to do your Christmas shopping.
    This morning I wasn't in the car, nor was I at the shops, for today was haircut day. It was going to be a special haircut day too, if the chance had arisen I was going to have the Long Chat with L, my hairdresser, with a view to planning a move from my buzz-cut towards something more dual-mode. As long as what I end up with is acceptable in male mode and I keep it well-maintained under L's expert care, my wife was happy for me to do this.
    I like having a haircut. It's a chance for a trip into a female environment, and I like L. She's about my age and though I never knew her at the time she grew up not to far from me, so we have a lot of experiences in common. Sadly in the last few months I've found myself not looking forward to the experience as much as I might, the thought of never losing the buzz-cut has started to weigh upon me.
    Unfortunately though today L was not at work. Her road is impassable due to the snow, so she was at home ringing around her appointments to reschedule them. She must have tried to ring me but by then I was walking along a snowbound road to her salon, where I found her equally charming colleague S, having been ferried in through the snow by her husband who was gloomily looking through the window at the traffic.
    Damn. I wanted to have the Long Chat with L, I wouldn't have minded S listening in but not with S's husband in attendance. It's not his fault, he's not an unpleasant bloke or anything, it's just that he's a bloke. If that doesn't sound very odd, coming from someone who looks like me. All this can get a bit mixed up at times.
    So S gave me a haircut, and she did a very good job, she is after all an expert hairdresser. And I left the salon with a fresh buzz-cut rather than the trimmed-at-the-edges former buzz-cut starting the process of growing out that I'd hoped for.
    I don't know when the opportunity will present itself for the Long Chat with L. It depends on the circumstances next time I see her, or the time after that. And it also depends on how happy my wife is at the time, I don't want to increase her stress. But at least I feel as if I've achieved something. I may still have a buzz-cut, but something has changed. I have the chance of losing it for something better at some time, and that's more than I had a few months ago. I think that's a result.

Three months on finasteride

    It's about three months ago that I asked my doctor for a finasteride prescription to help me hang on to my hair. Not for reasons of vanity, purely because it occurred to me that someone in my position would be well advised to hang on to what they have. This post is simply to record my experience in case any readers are considering the same, both in terms of whether the drug has had any effect and how any side-effects have manifested themselves. Nothing to see here unless you're in to the boring minutiae of hair loss medication.
    Finasteride comes in two doses, 5mg and 1mg. The 5mg dose is given to patients with prostate problems while the 1mg dose is for treating hair loss. My NHS doctor is unable to prescribe the 1mg dose as it is too expensive for NHS budgets, so he gave me a prescription for the 5mg tablets and instructed me to buy a pill cutter. I cut each pill into quarters and take a quarter each day for four days before taking nothing on the fifth day and then repeating the cycle. I have to be very careful to keep any particles of the broken pills from getting anywhere near my wife, as were she to become pregnant there is a risk it can cause birth defects in male children.
    Finasteride has several side-effects, as this quick cut-and-paste from Wikipedia describes:

Side effects of finasteride include impotence (1.1% to 18.5%), abnormal ejaculation (7.2%), decreased ejaculatory volume (0.9% to 2.8%), abnormal sexual function (2.5%), gynecomastia (2.2%), erectile dysfunction (1.3%), ejaculation disorder (1.2%) and testicular pain.

    So which of those have I had? To be honest, I'd have to say none of them, at least not as described there. I have noticed a reduction in unwanted arousal, that's about it. As someone with a brain from the girl parts bin I find that particular side-effect to be welcome, lessening as it does the intrusion of blokedom when I don't want it. And no gynaecomastia. How sad, to think there will be patients seeing that effect who are all bloke and hate it, while I who wouldn't mind it am steadfastly flat-chested.
    How about the hair? I should have had a tattooist inscribe a ruler on my scalp so I could chart any hairline movement. Sadly though I didn't, so I have no idea whether I've advanced, receded or stayed still. But that's not really the point. I asked for finasteride because I could see hairs every day on my desk at work. Not huge numbers of them, but more than I used to see when I was younger and their numbers were increasing. In the last few months I am pleased to say this is no longer happening. I no longer have to worry whether my desk is covered in hairs before someone comes over for me to show them something.
     In conclusion, I think it was worth asking my doctor for this prescription. It won't give me significantly more hair and anyway having a bloke life to maintain I'm  keeping it to a buzz-cut, but I'm seeing evidence that it's reversed any decline I had. The funny thing is that as a bloke I have no problem with hair loss - after all, look at Patrick Stewart! - but as a girl I recognise that it's possible I could find myself very glad at some point in the future that I took some steps now to hang on to my hair. If I reach that position I'd imagine I'll be in one hell of a state, no point in making it any worse needlessly.

I have a big head, it's official

    This morning I paid a visit to the excellent John Samuel to pick up my perfect wig after a lengthy choosing process. Well worth the effort to go to a specialist and I'm pleased with the result, far better than bad hair.
    Trouble is, I'm still wigless. We determined that my head is just beyond the parameters of normal wigmaking and it's had to go back to the manufacturer to be enlarged slightly. So near and yet so far.
    Bloke mode again for the support group then. Ah well, at least I'm good at it.

Hair removal the redneck way

    As a follower of trans blogs I frequently read other people's hair removal stories. Permanent hair removal is sadly a topic of only peripheral interest to me, staying as I am both within my wife's comfort zone and with a day-to-day male-impersonation act to maintain. I'd love to lose my stubble as I consider it to be a major PITA, but in the main my hair control is limited to the strictly impermanent. At least I'm blessed with genes that haven't left me with too much fuzz.

    There is one semi-permanent procedure I do use though, and it's that I'd like to share with you now. It's not for the faint-hearted, but it has the multiple advantages of being very cheap, surprisingly quick, and after a moment of jumping up and down swearing, relatively painless. And you get something to eat, too. Interested? Read on!

    At this time of year my arms are starting to edge out into the light. As you might expect I'd like to show them off when en femme, yet while I can just about get away with it I'm still a bit self-conscious about their light covering of bloke-ish body hair. Time for a visit to my specialist. My baker, that is.
    One of my geekier passions for years has been clay oven construction and baking. A clay oven is simply an enclosed, usually domed, space made from fired clay or bricks in which a fire is set so the stored and reflected heat can be used to bake bread, cook kebabs, pizzas and myriad other mouthwatering delicacies.
    This weekend, if all goes well, I'll be firing up an oven. When ready its internal temperature will exceed 400 Celcius, and to use it I'll have to reach inside it as quickly as I can to place and retrieve my baking. After the ritual jumping up and down swearing, and sluicing off the singed matter with cold water, I'll then be blessed with arms as smooth and hairless as the proverbial baby's bottom. A state that will persist for a couple of months if I'm lucky, and before then I'm bound to want some more bread of some kind!
    I just have to be careful not to touch the red hot clay round the oven entrance. 400 degree burns hurt!

Inadvertent tinkering

    A chance observation on Cynthia Lee's blog recently gave me cause for concern. Spearmint tea, it seems, has anti-androgenic properties. It's taken by women with polycystic ovaries to counteract the hirsuitism caused by that condition, and by all accounts it's pretty successful.
     Tea made from spearmint, and also its hybrid with some of the same properties peppermint has been my drink of choice in the afternoons at work for many years now as an alternative to the strong coffee that's always on-tap in my industry. I have enough problems sleeping as it is, without too much caffeine. I picked up this mint habit from my grandmother, it takes me back to summer evenings in the late 1970s learning the finer points of the card games considered respectable in her youth.
    So I've spent over a decade knocking back several mugs most working days of a mild anti-androgen without realising it. I've always considered myself rather fortunate not to have too much body hair, maybe now I know why. Not something I might have done, had I known.
    My poor doctor. I'm sure he hates questions that start "I read on the Internet that..."

Gender neutral hair

I once tried growing my hair long. Back in my generation's summer of love, listening to the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets as played by John Peel, I let it grow and grow.
In the end, it reached my shoulders. Long, straight brown hair. I ended up going to a hairdresser in the small town I grew up in and asking for the buzz-cut I've had ever since.
Why would I do such a damn stupid thing? Simple. Long hair turned out to be a pain in the arse. No matter what I tried to do to it, it wouldn't go backwards.
I looked like a very large Old English sheepdog. The folly of youth eh!
I like having a buzz-cut. It's zero maintenance. It is however, very blokey. Time for a change in a more transgendered direction? Since I present as male to the world at large, if I change my hair it has to be believable in that gender role. It also has to be presentable in a business setting, for example my work puts me from time to time in front of people with big chequebooks and a long haired style like my teenaged sheepdog look wouldn't necessarily go down well.
Searching the web, there's frustratingly little on gender-neutral TG hairstyles. Either that, or insomnia has temporarily wrecked my Google-fu. So I'm left wondering whether the first person other than my wife I come out to will be my hairdresser, who also cuts my wife's hair.
I like my hairdresser. She's about the same age as me and though we never knew each other at the time she grew up about ten miles from me. On top of that she's a lovely person and I think I would trust her in this matter. Having observed her at work, isn't turning up early for appointments at female-centric places great, she's a hairdresser of great skill so I am sure she could advise me well.
The trouble is, I don't know how to catch her alone, i.e. without her colleague, and what her reaction would be. Our relationship isn't such that I can take her out for a coffee so I'd have to walk into the salon and just ask her. I don't think she'd be transphobic, you get a vibe about people's tolerance levels, but it's still rather daunting. It would be much easier if I could walk in with a picture and just say "I want that style, how long will it take to grow and how many transitional stages will there be?", and let her figure it out for herself.
There's also my wife's comfort zone to consider. I guess all I can do there is ask her. At least I don't have to worry about coming out to her.
Why don't you just get a wig in the female style that suits!, I hear you cry? True, I could do that. I've located a TG-friendly wig fitting specialist not too far away. But it's one of those things that comes down to crossdressing vs. transgender. If I can present some part of the female me full-time, however subtly, I think it will be a lot more satisfying than being able to turn on the full-on glam look only when circumstances allow it.
It could be worse. Lots of blokes my age have started thinning, at least I don't stare down at a plugged-up shower every morning.