It was somewhere around 2014 when I first learned that transgender hormone therapy was a thing. Of course, it had been a thing since the late 1920s, but this was not something that was ever discussed when people talked about trans women in the public discourse. I had grown up believing that trans women looked like women because they just were naturally feminine, or had undergone significant surgeries to make them look feminine. I had no idea what HRT could do for you.

Thus, I spent the vast majority of my life believing that I was too fat and too masculine to ever look like a woman. Someone once even told me, years before I came out, that I would make an ugly woman (they have since profusely apologized for that). There were no fat transfemmes in the public eye, not in media, not in pornography, no where. I had no idea that someone as big as me could transition successfully.

Seeing timelines like this on that fateful day in 2017, of fat trans women who had male body proportions just like mine and who transitioned without weight loss and without exercise massively emboldened my believe that I could transition and be happy with my body. I am the exact same weight today that I was the day I took my first pill. I am exactly as lethargic today as I was then. I did not have to work hard and exercise hard to have this body that I now love so much, all I did was get on the right medications.

In fact, there is scientific evidence that fatter transfemmes have better chances for feminization than those with lean body mass. Adipose tissue produces aromatase, which converts androgens into estrogens. We have naturally higher estrogen levels than thinner AMABs. Obesity also decreases testosterone production, reducing how much has to be combated with drugs. We also have more tissue to move around, leading to stronger proportions, and more drastic changes in shape.

If you’re a fat girl in the closet, thinking to yourself that you have to lose weight to be able to transition, you are flat out wrong. Come, be happy. Your real life is waiting for you.