Butt Hair

Transition Updates at Six Months

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Everyone laughed when I said I was really excited about growing butt hair. In the month or so between my first appointment and starting testosterone, it was the joke I told every single cis person who asked. They must have thought it was a diversion from my actual transition goals, a way to avoid the topic and move on to greener pastures. To a certain extent it was. After all, who really wants to talk to cis people about weight distribution and bottom growth? It was also far more honest than they thought. I love my butt hair, and I don’t care who knows it.

It’s funny looking back on my first attempt at talking to a doctor about HRT now, six months of testosterone and with a constellation of gender euphoria sprouting up on my legs. There were so many effects I was uncertain about. I wasn’t sure how much I’d like facial or body hair. I wasn’t sure how I felt about bottom growth. I was terrified of male pattern baldness. What I did know was that the weight redistribution and the vocal changes would alleviate my dysphoria, so I made an appointment.

And then I cancelled it. The problem with that first attempt was that I made it before I cut contact with my parents. I was so afraid of their reaction and of the inevitability of coming out to them that I couldn’t go through with even that first conversation. I knew that my parents viewed my body as property, as a project, as a house they were trying to flip. Telling them that I was taking charge of it and changing it in such an enormous way felt impossible. Even from six hours away they had a strangle hold on how I viewed myself. I knew I couldn’t both transition and try to be a child they could love.

A few years changed the landscape of my need to transition more than I could ever have dreamed. By the time I reached out to Folx last year, I’d cut contact with my parents and was no longer unsure about any of the changes I knew would come with starting T. I was excited about bottom growth. I was curious about what I’d look like with a beard. And I was really excited about butt hair.
I’m now six months on HRT and it wasn’t a joke, even though I played it off as one. The butt hair is freaking amazing.

I never expected body hair to be the part of transitioning that consistently gives me gender euphoria but running my hand down my legs is one of the best sensations I have in a day. Where once there were fine downy hairs almost invisible except in errant patches of sunlight, there’s now a fresh crop of dark, thick hairs sprouting up on my thighs. My calves and shins are covered in a way never before possible. I also have hair on my belly coming in thick, dark, and lovely. Looking down at it when I’m in the shower makes me happy every single day, without exception. I love the way the hair on my stomach meets my pubic hair, and then meets the hair on my thighs. I love that where once there were only random patches, there’s now a continuity that becomes more pronounced every day.

And yes, I have butt hair. I can’t see it, thanks to a dysphoria avoidance mirror situation in my apartment, but I can feel it, and I love it more than anything. My butt is fuzzy now, and while petting one’s own ass is probably weird as hell, I have to admit, I am guilty of it. There’s just something comforting about feeling that patch of hair and knowing that my body is changing in a way that feels welcoming and warm.

I also really love my bottom growth. So often I hear about people trying to dose their HRT just right to avoid it, and while I certainly think those people are valid and more than allowed to take whatever steps necessary to get the results they want, I love mine. The first time I got out of the shower and felt the towel rub against a newly enlarged clitoris I had a rush of gender euphoria that I’d never experienced before. It’s helped alleviate my bottom dysphoria and made sex more enjoyable for me. I didn’t expect any of that going in, but now that it’s here I’m delighted. If anything, I hope I see more bottom growth over the next year. I would love nothing more than for my clit to be freaking enormous by the time I get to the end of the expected changes and enter maintenance mode. The growth I’ve seen so far has already helped so much, and I can’t wait to see where I end up with it.

Then there are the changes I was absolutely praying for but always felt like speaking aloud would somehow jinx. I had my last period in August of 2021. It has not recurred since. There is so much about having a period that was dysphoria inducing that’s just vanished since starting HRT. The cramping and constant cleanup sent me into a state of mental distress so severe that I often couldn’t bear to be touched by my watchband much less another person. The hormonal fluctuations always triggered my eating disorder, usually ending in a bout of starvation that I did well to keep to a day or two. The dizziness and nausea combined with not being able to eat and being dysphoric to boot usually made the first few days of my period unlivable.

Now it’s all just gone. It’s vanished, and suddenly I can trust my body for the first time since grade school. When I have cramps, I know that they’re just gas and not a flashflood warning. If I feel sick, I can trust that checking in with myself to see if I need water, food, caffeine, or medication is a safe bet and that I’m not wasting my energy trying to fight the semi-monthly gastrointestinal distress. I don’t have to pretend that my hatred of having a period is just the normal response to being shanghaied by my reproductive system anymore. I don’t have to listen to cis women commiserating with me about it without understanding that we are not having the same experience. I’m free of the whole process, and it’s such an enormous relief.

While my period was one of the first changes I saw, my voice followed soon after. That was unexpected. I’d thought I’d be waiting months for my voice to start shifting, but it happened within the first month and is still dropping. I’ve gone from a first soprano to not being able to match pitch with most pop stars, and I’m ecstatic. I love the way I sound when I sing and when I speak. I love dropping into low notes and the way it vibrates in my throat and in my chest. I love my laugh. When I call my friends, even if it’s only been a few weeks, they’re always surprised at how much my voice has changed, and it makes me so euphoric every time.

So does growing more eyebrows. Look, I know it sounds stupid, but I did not make it out of the 90’s sperm eyebrow craze unscathed, and finally getting my brows back after years of leaving them the hell alone and trying to tease growth out of them is a freaking god send. It’s the only change I’ve seen to my face so far, and I could not be more delighted.

The weight redistribution has also started, and I never expected to love my belly so much. I thought for sure that once I started seeing my chest shrink and my stomach grow, I’d launch immediately into eating disordered hell, but that hasn’t been the case. My belly is cute. It’s adorable. I’m starting to look like the professors I loved so much in college, and I wouldn’t change that for the world. I love the way my body is changing and shifting. I feel more attractive in it every day.

The hair on my head is thicker and darker, too. Running my hands through it now feels so different than it did six months ago, and I love that every part of me is changing, even the things I never considered.

I’m in a different body now than I was six months ago and I’m so grateful and relieved for every inch of it, from the rat moustache that I shave every morning to the hair on my ass. Now that I’m here, the changes I feared when initially considering HRT have become the things I love most about myself. I feel like I’m becoming the person I was meant to be, little by little, one shot at a time. I still have bad days where I feel trapped in my body, but for the most part, I feel like I belong in it, like my body and I are part of the same being.

I knew that transitioning was supposed to make me feel better, was supposed to do more than just shift my body away from something I couldn’t tolerate. I never expected to feel so whole as I do now. I never thought a little butt hair could do so much.

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