Did you get a lot of misinformation or weird advice starting out?

YouTube is a godsend, it taught me makeup. But even today, I'm still refining it and women often tell me that they wish they could do a smokey eye like I do. But I did go through the pansticks, etc stage - fine for camera and stage, not for mingling in real life. Make friends at your favourite makeup store, it pays off.

Clothes took longer. I knew what style I wanted to wear (updated 50s I call it) but it took forever to track down a decent wardrobe. Before that, I had bought some not-so-great clothes (top tip: clothes produced today are cheap and nasty, buy at thrift and consignment for quality).

The thing that threw me off the most was shoes. I think most of us start with Pleaser garbage, they are so uncomfortable that you buy big sizes and then when you buy 'real shoes' it messes you up and you get something 2 sizes too big. A 12 in Pleasers, a 10 or 11 otherwise.

There's bad advice at the beginning and there is the honing stage where you refine everything. I'm not sure it ever ends!

I learned through the school of hard knocks Makeup, wow took quite a lot of practice for the simple process of makeup. Books did not provide any information. But when I was working as a male I would pretend to be female and observed my GF's and got better at it fairly quickly. Had a a makeover about fifteen years ago and it taught me some things also. But then did not have a chance to dress over about five years and after a purge was amazed to find a lot of my stuff in storage. Dated a few men and that was fun. But men typically want sex and nothing else from a CD. So back to women. Found one that loves me and she helped me put together my latest makeup by getting foundation that matches and how to do that and other pertinent data that only a woman knows. I would agree that confidence is a big part of who we are. Attitude is also something we learned.

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Originally Posted by Tracii G

This site helped me more than any book I read on the subject. My Husband Betty sucked so hard I never got thru the entire book.

I remember people telling me I had to do this and that to get a look and when I would try I looked like a clown hooker.
Anyway I was told I had to do this before I could do that and if I didn't have a June Cleaver outfit there was no way I could be a serious CDer.
Member Karren Hutton sent me a PM saying screw those bitches do it whatever way you want.
She opened my eyes to the fact there is no right or wrong way to do it just what works for you is whats important.

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My husband betty must have had some serious jaw aching going on later...

June Cleaver dress needed to be serious CD'er - who the hell told you THAT?
About karren - yeah, sounds like a typical response she would give.

Yes, there's a lot of weird, silly, and just plain incorrect advice out there. Especially about applying makeup, but there's a lot of incorrect information about finding correct sizes too. You need to have your BS detector on full blast. If something seems weird or overly complicated, it's probably wrong. For example, I remember one YouTube video about applying makeup where the demonstrator spent about 15 minutes doing nothing but brushing his face (without any noticeable change in appearance).

If you're curious about how to detect BS, remember that dressing en femme is just getting dressed. It shouldn't take much longer than putting on male clothing. Add about 10-15 minutes for applying makeup. Otherwise it should take about the same amount of time, or less. You don't need any clothing that you can't buy at Ross Dress For Less, Walmart, or some other ubiquitous chain store. When finding your sizes, go to some place like fullbeauty.com and read the sizing charts and other instructions on how to find your sizes. Do what these sites tell you, and ignore anything else. And remember: crossdressing is easy. If it seems hard, you're almost certainly following bad advice.