You might know this feeling. You’re in a bar with friends, having fun, and a little drunk. You get up to make your way towards the toilets. As you open the door, you look up at the mirror, and catch sight of a refracted, blurry image of yourself, and for a moment, you wonder: who is that guy?
Only it’s you, of course it’s you, you know that grin, you know those eyes. The room is spinning slightly, you feel a bit uneasy as you piece the puzzle of your reflection back together into a solid image.
This is how it felt for me, for about a year or so, as the changes from testosterone slowly began to settle in my body, and the face that I had known reshaped itself into a different form.
I started testosterone in January 2020. Eight weeks later, we went into lockdown and I moved in with a group of friends at home in Limerick, a city in the southwest of Ireland.
I had shared houses before, but never with friends. The timing was perfect; it just so happened that we all needed to find a place to live. It took us a while, and after a few letdowns, Eloise and I went to view a house on the edge of town. It was old, with threadbare carpets and poor insulation, but it was exactly what we were looking for. A place we could put our stamp on. Each of us had claimed the bedroom we wanted before we’d even signed the lease.
We moved in. Together, we did the usual lockdown activities. We baked bread, planted herbs and vegetables, rearranged the furniture in every room. Our 78-year-old neighbour came knocking with a box of chocolates and a bag of home-grown strawberries. A black-and-white cat soon claimed our house as theirs.
We settled in and made it a home. Someone in the house had a Polaroid camera, so we took photographs of each other, and tacked them up on our kitchen wall; group photos, portraits, snapshots from the day we moved in, the string of birthday parties over the summer, our first Halloween as a household, all of us in costume.
At times, now, when we’re sitting together at the table having dinner, we will look at them and someone will say how much we have all changed. The past two years have been difficult.
We have lost family; others have got sick. We are, and we seem to be, older. My housemate Brendan shaved his head when we first moved in together, but two years on, his hair long and thick again, he has grown a moustache, too. Eloise’s hair was waist-length at the start. Now, it reaches just past her shoulders. One summer night, Annie and Emily both had undercuts at the kitchen table, our makeshift barbershop. At this point, most of us are quite handy with the hair clippers.
We all look different, but my face has undoubtedly changed the most. The changes caused by hormone therapy vary from person to person. So in many ways, hormones are a guessing game. You can never be sure what will happen, what won’t, what you’ll end up looking like. I was nervous about this, of course. I wanted to look different, more masculine. But I didn’t want to look like a stranger to myself.
There were changes I anticipated. At 21, I was essentially going through puberty all over again, so I had some trouble with my skin, spots and oiliness. My face grew wider and rounder. It took a while before it settled into something familiar. For the better part of a year, every time I looked in a mirror, I didn’t feel like I was looking at my own face. I was quite slight, so the clinic put me on a low dose of testosterone to start with. My nurse told me that testosterone often leads to weight gain, with an increase in both muscle mass and body fat. Even though I was prepared and informed, I didn’t anticipate how much my body composition would change. In the middle of lockdown, I was getting broader, and bigger, and I was relieved that these changes were finally happening, but I didn’t have any shirts or trousers that fitted me properly. With shops closed, there was no way to try on clothes and I didn’t know my size because it kept changing.
I was sitting in the living room one evening when Brendan came in. “I have some old clothes I was going to drop into a charity shop in town,” he said. “Do you want to have a look and see if there’s anything that would fit you?”
I took some of the clothes he was planning to donate. I still wear them now, even though I know what size I am, and I can easily try clothes on in stores. The pair of faded black denim jeans with a small bleach stain near the pocket. The thin, grey, long-sleeved shirt from River Island. They are some of my favourite things to wear, because they were so necessary at the time, and because they were a gift.
All the men in my family – my dad, my uncle, my cousin – have beards, so I hoped that I would be able to grow one too, but like everything else, there was no way of knowing if or when it would happen. It came in slowly, and then, one October, arrived all at once, as if my face was preparing to keep warm for the winter.
I taught myself how to shave the coarse hairs that were growing on my chin, my neck, and above my lips – I wasn’t sure, at this point, if I could ask my friends for advice, to show me how to do it, if asking for help would make me less of a man in their eyes – so I watched a video on YouTube. I was instructed to trim my neckline by finding my Adam’s apple, positioning my finger atop the ridge, and shaving the space below.
After a year or so, my voice had fully dropped, but an Adam’s apple wasn’t something I was expecting or watching out for. A friend noticed it, she took a photograph so I could see it, and there it was; my neck in shadow, and midway down, a little bulb of light. Because I never thought that it would happen, it’s one of the changes I love the most. I can see it in the mirror, I can feel for it; I swallow and it moves beneath my thumb. Touch reminds me it is real, I haven’t made it up. It’s like the seed of something growing. It blooms anew each time I eat, or drink, or speak.
Of course, not all men will have a pronounced Adam’s apple, or a strong jawline. Not everyone will be able to grow a full beard. Some men do have softer features. Before starting testosterone I was constantly anxious about how I was being perceived, but whenever I saw other men with features similar to my own, I never thought they looked excessively feminine. All my scrutiny was self-directed. Looking at myself in the mirror, I would wonder: what is it about me that isn’t masculine enough, and how can I conceal it?
As a teenager I had my nose pierced – it was my first small act of rebellion (we weren’t allowed piercings at secondary school). The lead singer of my favourite band, Daughter, had a nose piercing, and when I first heard their song “Landfill” at the age of 16, it was instant adoration. I saw them in concert four times. The album they signed for me is framed and hanging above the dresser in my bedroom, even now. It is an enduring love.
One night, a few years later, while I was brushing my teeth, I decided that I had to take the ring out. It was worried that a small piece of jewellery might mean the difference between being read correctly as a man or being misgendered. Back then, I changed a lot about myself, as much as I could. I kept my hair as short as possible. I kept my head down. When I spoke, I forced my voice into a lower, deeper register. I wore a binder every day. Just as Brendan gave me his old clothes, after I had top surgery I was able to give my binders to another trans man I knew in Limerick, who was also waiting and saving up to have surgery abroad.
It has taken me a long time to be seen in the world as a man. I worried that if I talk about aesthetics, or beauty, it would feminise me, and I wouldn’t be legitimate anymore. My guy friends didn’t talk about their appearance that much. They rarely, if ever, took pictures of themselves. Before nights out, when the girls aired their insecurities (Does this look okay? Should I change?) the others would hype them up and help while the guys would stand at the front door with their hands in their pockets. Men seemed to deal with issues around their appearance privately.
As I grew more comfortable in myself, I started to open up with my guy friends, and noticed changes in them, too. When my beard started to appear, I was nervous that it would be forever patchy. So I asked my friends for tips (How do you take care of your beard? How long did it take for it to fully grow in?) and they brought up their own insecurities. They worried about the gaps in their beard, or their hairlines, and all of them said they were afraid of going bald.
The more I spoke to my friends about the issues around self-image that I was dealing with, the more they opened up. One of my friends is anxious about the redness in his skin. Another worries about the visibility of his acne scars. What I’ve learned from the men I know is that they feel many different ways about their bodies, but often struggle for the language, or the invitation to speak openly about the aspects of their appearance they are uncomfortable with, and what they like about themselves and how they look.
Growing up, I hated having curly hair, and when I couldn’t cut it short, I tried to keep it hidden by tying it up. It’s something I embrace now; I have my mum to thank for my soft, sometimes unruly, curls.
I like a lot of things about my face. I like how much I resemble my father. We looked alike before, but now it’s uncanny. From old photographs, I can see that my beard is the same colour and shape as his when he was my age.
When restrictions were lifted, I went home to visit my parents without shaving for the first time. My dad was cutting the grass, so I went round to the side gate and he saw me, stalled the mower, and said: “Well, you’ve gone awful scruffy.’
But he told me he liked it, that it suited me, and that he might even be a bit jealous, since his own beard was now fully white. Ageing is just another change that we learn to live with. I like that I can see my future in his face. Now, I can look at my father and see a version of what lies ahead, and it’s something I look forward to.
It’s not just a resemblance with my dad. I’m told how much I look like other men. Recently, at a bar, a woman I had just met told me I looked like Paul Mescal from Normal People, and I’ve thought about it, oh, every day since. It wasn’t meant as a chat-up line, but it certainly would have worked as one. It’s a flattering comparison; the actor and that gold chain have become sex symbols. Her comment was meaningful in another way, too. Paul Mescal looks like a typical Irish guy, and this wasn’t something I thought I’d ever be able to achieve. I am references of other people, not quite myself yet, but I don’t mind this. I am still settling in.
My face is different to how it used to be, but it still bears a resemblance. Earlier this year I was at a Galway literary festival. On the Friday night I went to a bar after a reading by Shon Faye, a transgender author I deeply admire. Inside, I recognised a girl I had gone to school with. We hadn’t spoken in eight years. A lot had changed. I wasn’t sure if she knew. For a while, after I became broader, bearded and wearing mostly Brendan’s clothes, I felt a bit like a ghost in my hometown.
I would see people around that I knew, but they wouldn’t see me. It was a sort of invisibility. If no one recognised me, I could walk right past them. I wouldn’t have to explain myself. I wouldn’t have to wait for their reaction.
Now, I could see that she was trying to place me, looking towards me, then away. Something felt different about this night. Enough time had passed, I figured I could handle her response and I knew there were other trans people around that I could speak to if things didn’t go so well. I decided to wave at her, and I started walking over. Everything clicked as I moved in her direction, and her face broke into a smile. “William!” she said.
“How have you been?” I asked her, taken aback by her calling me by my name. We talked about Galway, she lived there now, I explained why I was visiting. She never knew me as William at school, but news travels.
Whatever conversations were had about me, I’m glad that someone let her know. And I am glad that my face is still, in ways, recognisable. That it holds the blueprint of my past.
I hoped that by starting testosterone, my life would get easier, more liveable. It has. I’m no longer afraid to enter men’s toilets. I have managed to blend well. I pass. That is, people perceive me, correctly, as a man. I run a support group for trans people in Limerick. When we go out, we stick together so that one of us isn’t singled out by a bouncer. When someone goes to the toilet, we will wait for them outside the cubicles. Not all trans people want to pass – some intentionally present their gender in ways that don’t conform to masculine and feminine norms – but it is often necessary for survival.
I am lucky that I don’t have to worry as much anymore. Recently, I had my nose pierced again. This isn’t a big, or important, feature of my face. But it’s a sign that I’m less afraid now, I feel like I am able to present myself how I want to, not how I feel that I should.
I’m still not fully used to how I look. I’ve made it through the awkwardness of puberty, for the second time.
Like most men, my hairline is receding, a less favourable side effect of testosterone. I feel like there’s an expectation for me to say I’m on testosterone, and it solved everything. I love the way I look. But who among us can say that?
And I want to tell you how I feel about my face, but it’s something I’m still learning, so I find myself searching for metaphors.
My face is a paragraph I have edited, one that I don’t remember writing.
I re-read it in the mirror daily and it changes in meaning. It will keep changing; my relationship with my face, like everyone else’s, is something that will evolve.
And if I say my face feels like a piece of writing, then I’ll probably look back and think it’s a bit embarrassing. Or maybe I’ll look back and think, it was quite good, for what it was, at the time.
When I speak about transition, I can only speak to my own experience, and I cannot separate my face from the rest of my body, which has also changed a lot since I started testosterone.
For me, transition was always about a feeling. For a long time, my body felt like a flat I was renting. It was never quite right. But it’s a home, now. One I have refurbished and I feel I can decorate. It doesn’t matter so much what it looks like. What matters is if it’s comfortable and safe. There are still a few, small, troublesome things, but they’re no big deal, they are okay. The walls are chipped a bit, I need to sweep the floors.
It’s fine. I like it here. This is where I am supposed to live.
