A 21-year-old transgender documented his gender transition from woman to man through selfies taken every day for three years.
Jamie Raines, studying psychology at the University of Essex, began taking testosterone when he was 17 years old to assist his female-to-male transition, which he tracked through a daily selfie. He has racked up more than 1,400 self-portraits that show his facial hair growth, change in bone structure and other developments.
Raines also maintains a YouTube channel – now exceeding 800,000 views and 11,000 subscribers – showing his journey.
Raines shared that he wanted to document his transition and practice photography at the same time.
“I didn’t imagine 4 years ago that I would be in the position I am now and it’s an amazing feeling,” he said of his transformation.
He recalled feeling that he shouldn’t have been born a female as early as age four and felt “a lot of discomfort, [was] upset and had very low confidence.”
When Raines came out, he said, his parents had been “really great and supportive.”
Six months after his 18th birthday, Raines began taking testosterone and underwent a mastectomy and chest remodeling procedure. At the time, he started the photo series, also documented on his Tumblr page.
According to Raines, the first few months on the male hormone had been very exciting, yet slightly frustrating. He first felt a leap in confidence when he heard his voice drop for the first time, and in the last six to eight months of the journey, he said he began looking older and having facial hair.
Raines currently has a girlfriend, Shaaba, now also 21 years old and a postgraduate student at the same university. They met in college when they were 16 and were best friends for around one year before Raines came out as transgender.
He recently graduated from his undergraduate course, is now working on a masters in psychology and is set to appear in a Channel 4 documentary called Girls to Men.
Last week, Gabrielle Diana Gladu, 16 years old from Ontario, was caught emotional in a video when she found out her name had been legally changed after months of waiting. The mother of the “transgender activist” – as she calls herself on Twitter – threw a gathering among family and friends, with the big reveal shown on a chocolate cake.
