Texting with a friend who just got facial feminization surgery

Including: new noses, the mental game of it all, getting fat from your knees put into your face, meeting a new guy the night before, extremely supportive moms, hairlines, and how much it costs

My friend Mathilde and I were talking about a bag I wanted to buy and she mentioned she was getting FFS. Facial feminization surgery is the term for a combination of procedures usually done on trans women. It could be a nose job, shaving the brow, softening the jaw, filling the cheeks for a more traditionally feminine appearance. Mathilde is an American who has lived in Paris for many years so we kept in touch about it the jet-setting way: via WhatsApp. She loves me for who I am—extremely nosy—and really wanted to talk about how she decided, how much it cost, who the doctor was, the crying fits, the whole thing, and was happy to have me post an edited version of our radically honest texts and photos here.

How did you decide to get FFS?

A friend of a friend did it and it was just so beautiful and naturally done and recommended the doctor. I really wanted my Adam’s apple gone but I hadn’t really thought about it a lot beyond that. I thought, yeah why not? I’ll see what the doctor had to say—