The man in the mirror.

One of the things in my past that set me to questioning was something that happened in college. I had crossdressed for an event with the LGBT group I'd helped set up on campus, and had just returned to my apartment. I looked at myself in the mirror there, and then it happened.

I was not looking at a guy who was awkwardly trying to look like a girl. Instead I saw this cute androgynous girl looking back at me. I kind of just stared back at her, wondering what I was looking at and what was happening. I hadn't really done a good enough job on my appearance that anybody would see me as female, so why I was perceiving my reflection that way was a mystery to me.

A mystery that I may be solving now, mind you. I see myself as female more and more now as I've been dressing up more, even if nobody else does. Maybe I was seeing my true self for the first time that night, maybe not. Time will tell.

 

I'm still trying to figure that out myself! I've been shaving my face much more regularly since I came out to myself and have been thinking frequently what I would look like after hormones, etc and am having trouble too! But honestly, the me I see in my head is like 5'4" and I'm 6'4" so not sure what to do about that! Haha!

 

Brienne of Tarth is 6.3, learn sword fencing and join the Starks!

Seriously though...

I have the advantage of having used to grow my hair out in high school, because I was into heavy metal a lot back then. So, when I try to imagine myself as a woman, what I basically see is my high school self, just in tighter jeans and female style t shirt. So my self image is a guy in girls clothing, simply myself from a few years ago. With my large nose, too . My self image in general seems to date a few years back, like, until recently I tried boosting my masculinity with facial hair, and even though I've done so for a couple of years, my default self image is shaved (I didn't have enough facial hair to make it look good before 20s). And in my head I feel smaller (In 5.9 and yet I feel smaller than others of my height or even a bit less) and weaker than I really am... self image is a weird thing. A mix of habits, insecurities, and wishful thinking.

I'm not sure what the OP asks for, so I just put what I think makes vague sense ^^.
As for feeling as the other gender... I think this is a misused term. I think it's more of a difference between how you feel and how others perceive you, a misalignment, as LJ Grace of Against me! put it.Her description of dysphoria is more relatable than any other I've heard/read. This whole "feeling a woman" is a way to simplify it (although that's me - I can't speak for others).

 

Great, another cosplay for me to consider... Haha!

 

A female coworker of mine last summer was 6'3" and towered over everyone else. Nobody considered her less of a woman for it.

...granted, I actually had a few thoughts, like I noticed her voice was unusually deep and sounded like she was actively straining it when she spoke, which was rare, and she seemed to isolate herself from the rest of us. Of course, if she was trans that still wouldn't make her any less of a woman. I never asked her about it and I never mentioned my suspicions to anyone else there, as I didn't want to spread rumors and I didn't want to seem rude.

 

I've always hated looking in the mirror myself.

 

I don't want to get too off topic, but want to clarify that I have no problem with my height, just not how I see myself in my head. Being tall is awesome. I can always reach everything! The shift between my head space and reality can be pretty weird, though.

 

I hate looking in the mirror, because I always see a female. Though something happened to me the other day. In fact, I wrote it down.

 

Can you try makeup? its not exactly the same but I would say about 70% of the changes you get on HRT can be simulated with grooming + makeup.

Personally I do have an ideal image of myself.. I think I always did but it's not exactly like my real appearance. I usually felt pretty comfortable with my real appearance except some things I would change if possible (some gender related some not)

 

I do have moments like WhereWeWere described, when I see "him" in the mirror. He's looking at me with his sad eyes, the last time I felt like he wants me to help him. The interesting thing is that his hair seem to be a little darker than mine normally is. In general I hold an image of myself that looks kind of like Tomas Berdych, the Czech tennis player. We're not exactly alike but I view myself as this kind of a guy.

 

Mine seems to resemble Katee Sackhoff or a young Denise Crosby.

...why yes, I have experience watching geeky sci-fi stuff, why do you ask?

 

I usually look in the mirror any chance I can get because I see him a lot more than I use to. He/Me are always rather excited to see each other.
But lately its been a pretty feminine face, which is kind of upsetting. I blame weight gain and that time of the month where my body wages war and much blood is shed

 

I kind of see them as twins, a girl and a boy. When I see her my feelings are rather neutral, she's just there, and I have no special attachment towards her to be honest, but when I see him it's like a dear friend of mine I haven't seen in ages comes to visit and I'm super excited about it.

 

I was walking through town and I had just bought a new jacket. I was feeling really good about myself and thought I was passing... And then one boy turned around, looked at me and said to his dad "That's a girl."
So yeah.. Sometimes I think others see me as male and when I hit reality, it turns out they really don't and I don't look that manly afterall.

 

Well, I guess I see myself closer to looking like my true self than I actually am.. I don't see a boy through and through. I still have a baby face and stuff like that but I sometimes think it's not as obvious as it actually is

 

This thread is so interesting and I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling a detachment from reality. At this moment I'm not exactly sure about my gender, but I have never been able to recognise myself in the mirror. Tbh I never really thought until recently that that could be to do with gender.

I totally get what you are saying OP when you walk down the street and feel like you look a certain way, but then I catch myself in a shop window or see through someone's reaction that that isn't necessarily how they see me. I also have the opposite problem to breq, where I am around 5'5 but I feel like I'm tall, as though I am a tall person, and should be 6'0.

I've always thought these identity problems were due to mental health issues I have, and dissociating completely from how I look. I don't really recognise my face, I have no idea whose body this is, and my voice sounds nothing like I imagine. But I don't know what it is I think I look like. Sometimes I get confused because I think I'm attracted to someone, then I later have a tiny voice which is like 'no you think that they look like you'. I think some of this body stuff has been brushed aside by people around me because I am in long-term recovery from an ED, but I think that the ED itself might only be masking more gender issues, as it started around puberty and prevented me developing female secondary sex characteristics and having periods (which now they are there I HATE).

I haven't had the experience of transitioning to comment on that, but it certainly isn't surprising to me that after transitioning it can still be hard to find a true representation of yourself visually, as you still have memories of how you once looked and felt swirling around with your current feelings.

 

I've had struggles with ED as well. My parents interfered before it got too bad but I lost about 10 kilos. (Which is quite a lot for a 14 year old girl that had a normal weight before)
I never really liked my curves and my thighs.. I haven't really thought about if my ED had anything to do with my gender issues.. It might have been.
Sometimes now (being at normal weight) I think about loosing waight again because it will get rid of my chest and my curves in general and then I have to remind myself that that was not a time I want to go back to. (although I liked my body better how it was then)