Childhood photos that give a clue to your TG future?

[KaraChristine]

Not sure if anyone else has done this - but I went through my childhood photos looking for specific pictures and memories that seemed to be indications of my early gender dysphoria. I found this one - this little red plastic vacuum cleaner was my absolute favorite toy. I'd follow my mother around pushing this little vacuum all over the house while she was doing housework. hmmmm.... :heehee:

http://i406.photobucket.com/albums/pp146/karachristine/toyvacuumsmall.jpg

[Jessicaparkson]

I absolutely hated pictures. Hated, hated them. So I don't have really any pictures :(

A memory is going shopping with my mother and asking for a doll when I was younger......oh the fun my friend had in mocking me.....

[avril findlay]

I know my Mother used to have some old B&W pics of me in skirts and dresses that I think showed very clearly I preferred being a girl. I remember one in particular taken at my sisters ninth birthday party of the two of us in a group of about eight girls with everyone in satin party frocks.

[michelle2b]

Kara, I had not tried to locate such pieces of evidence through pictures before, but it is an interesting exercise. I have tried to do that after I read your message.

I have hated my pictures (as a boy) after age 5 or 6. However, I absolutely love my baby pictures! I think I was the cutest baby ever. :battingeyelashes: I notice that my pictures from about 6 months old to about 5 years show me with a lot of hair, long, straight and shoulder-length. I looked too cute and like a girl! I still look like that when I present as a girl. Most people I hang out with do not know I am trans. I had long hair for 6 years as an adult also, between 22 and 27 and I totally loved being a girl in stealth all those years.

However, in terms of childhood toys and behavior, I don't think I was gender specific. I was equally at ease with playing boyish sports and beating up any boys whom I did not like who touched anything that belonged to me :heehee:, to wearing nail-polish and playing with the girls. Because I was not disruptive or destructive, everyone let me explore everything I wanted to feed my curiosity. I don't remember feeling shy about anything until I was about 8 years old and participated in a school play, as a girl, with lots of boys from school watching me. A few of them teased me about my role as a girl over the following few months and they got beaten up quite badly. I still do not enjoy attention from men, except from the guys I know and like (as friends), and I hate any kind of objectification. I never enjoyed cleaning the home or washing dishes (or repairing the car or fixing the plumbing or drinking beer). I don't think anyone could have taken a picture of me doing anything of that kind. I think I had my own interests, though. I love to cook, although I let someone else clean up afterwards. :) I used to help my mom and her siblings with their hair and makeup. I would also take apart and reassemble almost everything around me, just to find out how it worked. I hated noisy toys, loved role-playing and imagining up stuff, enjoyed reading books, and totally loved to talk and ask questions. I enjoyed shopping with both my parents, and fishing with my dad (we never caught a single fish, and we always bought fish from the fishermen before we returned home, but it was always fun to sit and talk with my dad about nature, the birds and animals, the stars, the universe, etc). I could also detect emotions and feelings of people I saw around me. I knew exactly how they were feeling, what they were going to say in the second half of their sentences, what they needed me to do, etc by just being around them for a little while. I think my surroundings did not influence me in any gender specific way and I was able to be my own person, which was quite a mixture of the traditional male and female gender roles, plus some that are not considered male or female.

I find that most of my early childhood pictures show me doing mostly gender neutral activities and looking very cute with long hair. In the rest of my pictures, I am just smiling.

It's been nice to reminesce about the past :daydreaming:

[helenr]

very interesting. I will try to figure out how to post an image I have when I was about 5-6. It was then that I first recall donning women's clothes-my big sister's pink nylon panties, etc-and not feeling like a boy. girls were my only friends and I felt most comfortable with them. Maybe one of you kind people can tell me how to transfer an image from a folder on my desktop to this page,etc. thanks, Helenr

[Jennifer in CO]

None that I know of that reflected a TG future. I did see a photo several years ago (lost in a recent house fire) that rekindled a memory tho and I wrote a memory story from it. I was well past just knowing I was different and needing to be a girl. My grandfather had died and we made a trip home to the funeral. In the photo I was wearing my cousins blue pucker top, rear zip pants and sandles (long story) but at the funeral I was wearing a mid-thigh length lace dress and heels (also a part of the story). Life is so crazy...

Jenn

[Elizabeth]

I think this was a pretty good clue.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v719/elizabeth90125/wreckdress2.jpg

Elizabeth