This week marks five years because the launch of Dazed Beauty! Over the subsequent five days we will likely be celebrating this anniversary by bringing you big celebrity interviews, cultural deep dives into the extraordinary trends of today, and going back through the archives to resurface a few of our favourite pieces.

To cite our co-founder Bunny Kinney in his original editor’s letter, Dazed Beauty is: “an area for us to document, deconstruct and experiment with beauty in all its forms, in every dimension, and tell the stories of the lived experience each one in every of us has in our own individual bodies as we navigate the world, each online and off.” We hope we’ve remained true to our promise and can proceed to be difficult, anti-establishment, diverse and exciting. Thanks for being a part of our journey.

What’s your relationship to beauty like? If someone were to ask you that query, what would you say? Perhaps your relationship to beauty is simple: perhaps you find it irresistible and consider it as a vehicle on your self-expression and creativity. Or perhaps it’s somewhat more complicated and that coming to like beauty has been more of a journey for you.

This was true of the three trans men we spoke to for this text. While their experiences, as you’ll soon read, are different, their relationships to beauty have all been shaped by gender; each by way of roles and expectations on a social level and their very own experiences on a private level, too. Two of the fellows, for instance, said that prior to transitioning, they shirked away from beauty, seeing it as feminine, and it’s only now they’re more comfortable of their gender identity, they feel more in a position to explore and have a good time with it.

Additionally they spoke concerning the specific challenges they face as trans men in the case of beauty and grooming – whether it’s the pressure of conforming to cis-normative male beauty ideals, or coping with the skin troubles that come as the results of taking testosterone, or just finding a protected space to get your hair cut. 

Here, Tayler, Kenny and June discuss their experiences and relationships with gender and wonder. 

KENNY

“Transitioning definitely altered my relationship with beauty because I had at all times seen it as something that was feminine, which is nonsense. Once I was younger, I had absolutely no routine – I’d wash my face with soap and water and avoided trying out latest products as I didn’t wish to query my masculinity. For years I continued with this approach and it wasn’t until last yr – and I’m 25 now – that I finally began to integrate a routine.

None of my male friends had a routine. It was hard enough to get them to debate their feelings. Point being, I had no channel of data for handle self-care. My older sister is a dancer and wearing make-up is a component of her day-to-day, so I remember watching her use fancy wipes and moisturisers and considering – not me. I made an assumption, I associated easy self-care rituals with femininity. No one taught me this, but no person educated me otherwise, all of it boiled all the way down to two things – a scarcity of male representation when it got here to beauty products and a scarcity of self-confidence.

Although I had this fight with beauty, I had similar battles with clothing and general grooming. At one point in my life, I refused to line up or shave my facial hair because looking too ‘perfect’ would diminish my masculine vibe. 

Skin troubles are an inherent issue with taking testosterone; skincare is so necessary at this point. You might want to ensure you utilize the right products on your skin otherwise you possibly can trigger a breakout. Obviously, it differs from individual to individual, so you could have to make sure you do your due diligence. Amongst this the primary few changes I noticed was my skin became thicker, my voice deepened and I began to develop facial hair in addition to body hair.

I feel in a position to explore femininity now. You reach a degree in your transition where you could have this ‘who really cares’ realisation and just turn out to be at one with every little thing that you just are, you might be the proper mixture of each masculinity and femininity. In case you’d have asked the Kenny five years ago to explore any of this, he would have said no. The explanation being, I wasn’t confident in who I used to be. I felt like I needed to be more masculine to make up for the incontrovertible fact that I wasn’t born genetically male. As I got older I became exposed to the thought of more genderless concepts, particularly androgynous – playing into the narrative of each binary genders.

I got here to the realisation that not only was I hurting myself but I wasn’t practicing good self-care by not exploring who I actually was. I had to achieve a degree of self-acceptance, my well being relied on it. General beauty standards could cause you to have dysphoria and being transgender making every little thing a lot harder to navigate. 

It’s upsetting to see how products are marketed with a view to be bought by the buyer. Corporations are exploiting people’s insecurities to sell them products that they don’t need. It’s best to buy something to boost your beauty. But, most purchases nowadays are a results of manipulation or shame. I get it – we live in a capitalist society – but I don’t think it’s right. 

Make the choice to fall in love with the means of loving yourself and never the ‘ideal beauty standards’ and also you’ll spend the remainder of your life fulfilled.”

JUNE

“I feel my relationship to beauty is sort of complicated because, being a trans guy, people just don’t expect you to know anything about skincare. Before, I used to be a cis woman and was actually pretty into makeup and looking out nice. It’s taken me some time to feel like I can actually still have that a part of myself and I can still care about this stuff.

I used to make use of quite a lot of different potions and stuff and have a six-step skincare regime, and now it’s gone all the way down to 4 or five steps but I’m still doing rather a lot. I feel taking T, my skin got oiler, so it’s more salicylic acid and glycogenic acid toners and stuff like that. It’s a extremely common thing for trans guys and it’s actually I feel a bit sad that quite a lot of guys don’t have that knowledge base to attract from since it’s mostly cis women which have access to this information or what we must always be doing once we’ve got oily skin.

It’s been super necessary to me to not fall into this trap of, ‘OK, I need to pass’ and wear boat shoes and chinos. That’s not me and in addition it’s this very white form of normative version of masculinity as well and as an individual of color, that’s not going to stress my best qualities as a person of color. Going to the gym quite rather a lot and putting on muscle has been really helpful to my sense of self and what makes me feel more comfortable and what helps me alleviate my dysphoria, and I’ve kinda fallen right into a little bit of a 90s jock aesthetic which I’m really into.

As a trans guy, I find barbershops can still be really oppressive and transphobic; I’ve had quite a couple of bad experiences in barbershops, where they’re like, ‘er, are you here for a male haircut?’ and I’ll be like, ‘yes, because I’m a person’. It’s been quite tricky to search out protected spaces and particularly because I’m invested in that, it feels really good to have my hair cut – it needs to be an experience I can partake in without feeling like I actually have to misgender myself by going to a specific form of salon. I discovered this really amazing barbershop near my place in Homerton called The Alchemist Barbers – nevertheless it feels difficult and that shouldn’t be the case.”

TAYLER 

“My relationship to beauty has been difficult because, as a transmasculine-person, I discovered it triggering to think people would see me as feminine because I care about how I look. But, with time, I’ve come to simply accept that it doesn’t relate to that in any respect; it’s more about feeling a certain way. Now, I practice grooming more because I like feeling good about myself. It’s something I enjoy doing.

For me, beauty is less about telling others who I’m and more about telling myself who I’m and allowing myself to be me. So the incontrovertible fact that I can, for instance, change my hair at any time when I need, or wear make-up if I need, makes me be ok with myself which is so necessary.

(My each day beauty routine is) mainly skincare because, like most individuals who’ve hormones raging through their body, it’s an actual issue. Day by day I wash my face with water and each other day I exploit a extremely light cleanser which doesn’t have any alcohol. Then, every other time I exploit the cleanser, I’ll also use a face scrub. Then I moisturise.

Growing up, I never had any problems with my skin. It was completely clear and had absolutely no concerns with it. But then, two months into starting hormones, my skin began to get blemishes and small amounts of pimples. It’s been difficult to get accustomed to this latest skin. In fact, over time, facial hair is available in. Genetically, I don’t have the capability to grow strong facial hair, but there’s been enough of it that I actually have to take care of it so I don’t appear to be a prepubescent teen!

I need to see increasingly more people being represented (in the wonder industry). There was an improvement but we are able to’t turn out to be complacent – it’s so necessary to maintain pushing forward for change. I need to see more non-binary icons, trans icons, and just more individuals with an entire host of various looks, skin tones – the lot.”

This text was originally published 20 August 2019. Read more from Behind The Masc: Rethinking Masculinity here.