Passing vs Attractive
You probably want to both look good and to pass, but it's worth noting these are separate.
Inkhaven day 5/30. Writing to get all my thoughts out, perhaps at the cost of some polish.
One common mistake I see people fall pray to, is they want to look a certain way, and conflate “passing” with “attractive”.
Many people think they are trying to pass better, when in fact they are in large part trying to become attractive according to a specific aesthetic ideal. Those are related goals, but they produce different decisions. It’s worth noting this explicitly.
When it comes to wanting to look a certain way, it’s also worth considering how much do you want to explicitly trying to choose between:
Looking attractive to myself
Looking attractive to the average person
Looking attractive to some specific subset of people
If you’re like me, you probably don’t have a single-minded goal to only look a single certain way. You might have phases where you are more conscious about passing, and other times where you are more conscious about looking cute, and perhaps even a rare few moments where you aren’t thinking that much about your looks at all.
And you may have different tradeoffs for different traits that you have. You may have a trait that is “conventionally attractive” that people complement you on, but that is too far in the direction of the gender you don’t want to be. You may have some options for this.
The most obvious case of [passing] vs [looks] is if someone is originally considered attractive by the standards of the gender you were forced to grow up as. One can be an attractive woman but not pass as a man, then transition to passing as a man but not being that attractive as a man. Or one can transition to being attractive but not-quite-passing. Or one can be pretty attractive and passing as the desired gender, but not by a specific subset of aesthetics of the gender you want to look like.
I think the easiest way to hone this point is to look at the list of traits we considered in our previous post “Aspects of Passing: Analysis of the Main Traits”. I try to be neutral and objective, but this is off my personal vibes rather than data, and I do have a feminine-attraction bias.
So here is my analysis on a few of the main traits, and try to categories them based on [important for both passing and aesthetics] that are correlated, vs [ones that trade-off].
By “correlated,” I moving it in that direction usually helps both passing and aesthetics on the margin. It does not always mean that changing that trait indefinitely in one direction is ideal.
passing and aesthetics correlated
for women
Lack of facial hair/shadow is also always good for women, matters for both passing and aesthetics a lot
Softer upper-face features, such as having less pronounces browbone, nose-bridge, orbitals, face planes, is basically always cuter and helps you pass better as a woman
For voice, I think it’s moreso for passing than for aesthetics. I think basically [higher pitch + lower resonance = more feminine], and it is aesthetically true on the margin for basically everyone, but it’s pretty up to personal taste too.
Hairline recession for women makes you pass less and less aesthetic.
Smoother facial skin also is good for both passing and aesthetics.
For head-size, having a smaller head is mostly more towards aesthetics than for passing, but these are correlated. but the effect is not huge.
Chest projection/shape helps you pass better too, and is mostly correlated with aesthetics, though some people do have differing tastes here.
for men
height for men is more attractive and helps pass better ~always.
having a larger upper body is also basically always good for men. It makes them pass better and more attractive, but it’s not as strong as with height.
Same is true for a lower-face features such as a longer-midface, stronger more angular jawline. It can be too extreme but is typically desirable.
Having a deeper voice is usually better for both too i would say, though having a soft but deep voice can be desirable sometimes too.
Passing and aesthetics tradeoff
for women
For women, height is kinda complicated. Being shorter helps you pass better, but doesn’t make you more attractive necessarily. It’s a trait that is correlated in general with being more attractive, but it does make it more difficult to date if you are a particularly tall woman.
Lower-face softness is also mixed. Making your jawline weaker indefinitely would make you pass better, but not necessarily more attractive.
For hip-waist-chest size, has some tradeoffs for women. Getting slimmer has only so much ability to help and is limited by rib-cage skeletal structure. Bone structure can be somewhat modified through surgery and such, but excluding that, the only real option a layer of fat an muscle on top of your skeleton to make a larger silhouette that passes better. (see weight cycling on the wiki or potentially a future posts). Thus you could be “more passing and fat” or “less-passing and slim”.
There are also some procedures like clavicle reduction that can make your shoulders look smaller, but also roll your shoulders forward and make you look more hunched. It does help pass, but it doesn’t always improve looks per-se.
for men
For Facial hair/shadow, I guess I find that it is quite variable. It’s kinda ambiguous, some people like it, some people don’t, but it does make you pass better.
For Hairline recession, generally no recession is seen as more attractive, but for men it does make one pass better if one has hairline recession.
For facial surface roughness, generally smoother skin is seen as more attractive for both men, but rougher skin as a man does help you pass better and be more masculine. People do have differing preferences here.
For upper-face heaviness/hardness, in general I think most people find softer/more-feminine browbone and smaller nose bridge more attractive, even for men up to some point. Heavier upper face features are more masculine, but not necessarily more attractive.
Another consideration I mentioned in a previous post, having a mismatch between how feminine different aspects can also be quite jarring.
Overall, It’s worth somewhat separating out how you care about traits. You may have a perfect body that you want, but basically nobody gets the perfect body that they want. You can have aesthetic preferences, but you should recognize that marginal things that you do might can trade off [passing] vs [personal looks preferences] vs [looks preferences of others] are slightly separate.