Female to Male gender transformation

For one of my experimentations I wanted to try doing a realistic gender transformation from girl to boy using techniques more advanced than in Drag King makeup. This was imporatant as we see a lot more male to female transformations in society than we do female to male and it can be easier to transform a male to female as it's more about adding layers of makeup whereas a natural, realistic man makeup is much more stripped back. I wanted to use the prosthetic techniques I had learnt in the last unit and the beard/stubble work I had learnt in one makeup. The makeup includes shading and contouring around the eyes, browbone and cheeks to add more depth and stronger looking bone structure, a prosthetic Adams apple, laid on stubble with a mixture of human and crepe hair, hair work as the models hair is actually waist length and makeup on the eyebrows and lips.

Overall I was extremely pleased with how this experiment went. I liked the shape and size of my prosthetic a lot, however I applied it slightly too far over one side which I would need to be more careful about if I were to do it again as this could make it look obviously fake. I also found it difficult making the colouring look natural as the models neck was very pale and this was difficult to match. I need to have more practice in colouring a prosthetic natural skin colours. However I do think the prosthetic was very effective in the overall look, especially from a side view.

From my previous experimentation I decided upon using the stubble technique with lace using pros-aide as glue. However instead of just using human hair in one colour, I thought this looked a little flat so mixed a light brown crepe hair with the dark brown human hair to get the desired stubble colour. This gave a lot more of a natural hair effect and suited the models colouring better. Getting the stubble shape and thickness right took work as I wanted it to look like a natural growth of 2 days but overall I feel it worked very well and was my favourite part of the makeup. There needs to be a slight improvement on how the hair fades out around the neck as it ends in quite a sharp diagonal line but apart from this I am very pleased with the stubble.

The shading and contouring I added on the eyes, brow bone, nose and chin is very subtle but overall I think it does make a difference. I was trying to make the eyes look deeper, the brow bone look heavier and the nose look wider and although the features do still look slightly dainty I think this was effective in making the face look more masculine. I was also happy with the eyebrows as my model has a very high arch in her eyebrows which I took down with makeup and brought the brows closer together. This was effective in making the brow bone heavier and immediately adding a more masculine appearance. Lastly I also thinned and took a little colour away from the lips using concealer as men typically have thinner lips, this also helped the look a lot. Overall I was very happy with this makeup and it helped me to explore gender transformation from female to male a lot better.

Agender and Third Gender

Agender is a term for people that feel they do not align with any gender, or feel a distinct lack of gender. It's often confused with being asexual which is not a requirement of being agender as gender identity and sexuality are unrelated. Many agender people prefer singular 'they' pronouns as well as a number of other gender-neutral pronoun groupings instead of he/she eg. 'they walked to the store'. Gender nullification surgery is one surgery used almost exclusively by agender people because some desire a body that lacks sexual characteristics.

In 2010 a British citizen was the first person to be officially recognized as genderless. Norrie May-Welby was born a man but had a sex change operation in 1990 aged 28. After then being unhappy as a woman May-Welby decided to become a 'neuter'. The 48-year old is now recongnised as a person of no specific gender. Officials have altered their birth certificate to include the new no-gender classification after doctors were apparently unable to determine their sex. May-Welby says "The concepts of man or woman don't fit me. The simplest solution is not to have any sex identification"

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Looking at agender has helped my project because it again supports the idea that post-modern feminism puts forward that gender is a socially constructed concept and sex doesn't bear relation to the gender norms we should act in. For one of my experimental makeups I would like to try making someone 'gender neutral' to see if it is possible and how someone looks without normal gender markers such as hair etc.

Third gender is the concept that individuals are categorized as neither a man or a women, as well as the social category present in societies who have three or more genders. Biology does usually determine a humans biological sex as male or female at birth, the state of how the person or society identifies someone as belonging to neither male of female gender is considered relative to the individual's gender role in society, gender identity and sexual orientation. To different cultures or individuals, a third gender can represent different things such an intermediate state between a man and a woman, a state of being both (eg. spirit of a man in the body of a woman), the state of being neither and the ability to cross or swap genders.

The term third gender has been used to describe the hijras of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, the Fa'afafine of Polynesia and the Sworn Virgins of the Balkans among others.

53 - Sworn Virgin

54 - Fa'afafine

55 - Hijras

Non-Gendered Makeup

After looking at agender or people who believe they have no gender in my research I wanted to try an experiment where I take away gender markers such as hair to see what a difference this made to someones gender appearance.

I wanted to create a 'blank canvas' that doesn't have gender markers of normal makeup, facial hair etc. so I made a cap plastic bald cap and blocked out the eyebrows using the pros-aide technique. I chose the pros-aide method as this had worked better than wax in my eyebrow experimentation and I chose a cap plastic bald cap as this had worked better for me from research I did in my Dramatic Contexts unit.

I then used a orange tone to block out the dark hair colour then applied a neutral skin colour matching my models skin all over the face and head, blocking out the lips and eyelashes and taking any colour or unevenness away from the skin.

Overall I was very happy with this makeup. The bald cap was a very good thickness and the edges blended away very well meaning they weren't detectable at the front which I was extremely pleased with. There was one wrinkle at the ear of the bald cap where it could have been stretched tighter or cut differently around the ear so next time I need to concentrate on smaller details such as this. To save time I also did a low ponytail not a hair wrap and as Melissa's hair is very thick you can see a slight ridge in the bald cap where her hair is so next time I need to pull the hair a lot tighter. The eyebrow covering is not seamless but the pros-aide method did work well and blends the brows into the skin, however the hair is still detectable. I could have possibly tried a prosthetic brow piece to make sure the brows were completely covered as it's very hard to cancel brows out totally.

From this makeup I feel that it did cancel out some obvious gender markers and makes it a lot harder to determine gender, however I know from my research that men and women have different bone structures facially and I think that this is made obvious by this makeup. Melissa still looks feminine because of her jawline and brow bone not being prominent or bigger. This means although people may identify male and female adults by hairstyles, facial hair and makeup, sex differences are actually deeper than this and gender cannot just be taken away so easily.