So What is an FFS

An FFS doesn't stand for some very rude swear words, it actually (in this case) stands for Facial Feminization Surgery - which is a group of procedures which alter the bone structure of the face to appear softer and more feminine.

This group of procedures started to appear about 15 to 20 years ago due to some radical work carried out by Dr. Douglas Ousterhout in helping transgendered women achieve more social acceptability by doing a mixture of procedures to feminize the facial features.

During a male puberty, many things happen to masculinize the male facial structure - the eye-ridges become  a lot more pronounced because the bone thickens considerably in that area, the chin and jawline become stronger and more angular, the shape of the nose changes, the nose to lip distance increases, the top lip becomes thinner, the Adam's Apple becomes more pronounced and the angles of various features of the face are altered.

What Facial Feminization Surgery does is to attempt to reverse as many of these changes as possible and alter them in such a way as to echo what happens when a young woman goes through a female puberty - in effect de-masculinizing the trans woman's face and putting it though a more typical female puberty.  Sometimes it is not possible to fully reverse the effects, but generally the face becomes softer with more gentle lines and angles.  It doesn't attempt to make a completely different face - it can be dramatically different, but still very recognizable as the person you were - so if you had a twin sister, you would become more like her.

For those of you who are reading this because you yourself are considering an FFS procedure, be guided by what your chosen surgeon is telling you, he or she will have had many years experience in  craniofacial and maxillofacial surgery to get to the position they are in now and know just what is possible with your face and the best way to achieve the best result for you.  Yes, we would all like to end up with a bone structure like Cheryl Cole for instance, but sadly this is not possible, just as it would not be possible for many genetic females out there.

As more and more children are coming forward pre-puberty and saying that they have a gender identity disorder, the work being carried out at the Boston Children's Hospital and other children's hospitals throughout America and Europe, in giving these young children puberty blockers to prevent them going through the agony of a male (or female for F2M transsexuals) puberty and then as they reach an age where they fully understand where they want to be, then they can be prescribed the correct hormones to allow them to go through the puberty of their choice.  Until the time arises that this happens to all young children who are transgendered, there will always be a need for the FFS procedures to be carried out at a later stage of their lives.  See Hailey's video in the video pages here