You must log in or # to comment.
Omg I have no fucking idea what I’m doing! I feel like I missed a load of school.
Is the title sarcastic? Or do some shops actually give free lessons? I have no idea what I’m doing 😭
Some do free, many charge a small fee.
Often it’s a bit of a “first hit is free” type deal where they help you find your matching colours etc, but as it’s in their companies product line you’re kinda pathed into being their customer as it’s what you know.
Girl me too and I’m a cis 43 year old. I don’t get how it’s so easy for so many people.
I love how when I’m searching tutorials on YouTube, it mostly recommends shorts in which they’re like “you just do this one flick with your hand and it’s perfect”, but then reality has different plans for inexperienced me.
Saaame! They are either way too fast or too slow and a little tangenty 😵💫 when I learn new things I tend to need to ask questions, but that’s a bit hard to do through videos. I feel very fortunate that I actually like my face without makeup, so I was okay giving up on that front!
Victoria Rose helped me a lot in this regard!
Is she helpful if you’re actually clueless or is she like everyone else and assumes you already know how to do everything?
I believe she’s helpful if you’re actually clueless, but I discovered her later in my makeup journey so I guess I can’t say for sure. She does explain a lot of concepts at a beginner level, I would say all that’s required is you know what the types of products (mascara, foundation, bronzer, etc) she’s talking about are. She has a femininity bootcamp series that’s pretty good too.
Its as hard as you want it to be. Start small, try something new. Play.
Ngl, makeup is a combination of craft and art, and it ain’t easy.
When I would have female patients back in the day, there was a marked benefit in them being able to get dressed up, do all the extra stuff and feel pretty in the chapel, or at dinner or whatever. Didn’t do as much of that in home health as in facilities what with male caregivers being less requested in that branch of care. But that’s why I put effort into tying, because the benefits were massive.
Learning to shave legs was easy enough, especially compared to faces. Armpits took some adjustments, but wasn’t something that would get screwed up by inexperience, it would just take longer. Even figuring out how to help an elderly lady get into a bra right was simple enough once I got past the awkward.
But makeup? I never got good at it. Just passable. Lipstick was simple enough, I guess, but it still had a learning curve, and I wasn’t responsible for picking the right colors, I just put on what they had. Same with stuff like mascara (the easiest for me), blush, or the dreaded eye shadow (that was where my skills were weakest).
The point being that anyone struggling should take it easy on themselves. It’s a learned skill, not something people are born knowing. Well, maybe there’s some inborn ability for color choosing, I dunno. All the little gender coded skills are similar, imo, but make-up is a much more complicated art to gain proficiency in than most, and it has a major effect on one’s self image if one wants to use it at all.
Mind you, it is a skill anyone can learn. If my goofy ass could manage to pick up the basics, someone with more coordination and attention to detail will get there way faster and more fully than I did. So, ladies, don’t beat yourself up over the learning curve. You’ll get there eventually :)
I’m pretty good at doing makeup, but that’s because I had the privilege of being able to fuck around and find out when I wore makeup as a teenager, which was a context in which being bad at doing the makeup wasn’t as high stakes as if I were learning as an adult. I only got this good by a heckton of experimentation.
Whilst that’s probably little comfort to all my trans sisters learning as adults, I’m sharing this sentiment because I consider the struggle to figure out how the hell to do one’s makeup well (and hard mode: doing it well, but also being able to use it to express one’s personality) is a potential source of feminine solidarity, because the vast majority of women who wear makeup have gone through this frustration.
Though I would also note that when I was learning as a teenager, it wasn’t just the daily makeup that gave me lots of practice, but also times where I would carve out some time to sit down and practice with more ambitious looks. Have makeup wipes on hand, because you’ll probably fuck it up a lot, but that’s part of the journey. It is emotionally intensive, because there will be so many times when you look in the mirror and hate how things turned out (that was something I struggled with a lot, and I didn’t have gender dysphoria adding to my distress), but the only way to get better is to grind that XP
Yeah I’ve gotten decent at it thanks to my attitude that I only want to wear it occasionally and never to hide flaws (so nothing like foundation). The biggest thing is to try to replicate styles that you like on nights you aren’t going out. Also eyeliner is hard, everyone knows it.
Additional tip is to learn what colors/shades look good/bad on you. For example I only really look great in darker colors and tend to look best in jewel tones, this means that less bold lip shades tend to look awful on me, while I look great in really dark reds and purples.
I regret taking so long to actually learn, I spent a few years with a more masc aesthetic than I like because I was afraid to be more feminine. Turns out I’m pretty femme, though lazy about it and with a simple style.
As a cis woman - same lol.
Whenever I’m sad that being trans means I didn’t get to learn things like that as a child I remember that even if I was cis my mom still wouldn’t have let me
really, im never used makeup but wanna do some day
but my mom also never use kheh, maybe just eyelash and lipgloss
That is a lesson for when I’m feeling like it.
When you mean? (leaves the room)
Many of us did that and only learned while recovering from bottom surgery lol
