So I'm sure by now you've seen the videos.. girl asks the boyfriend to do her makeup. Perhaps because it's silly, perhaps it's so the boyfriend can see just how difficult it is for women to look good:
Of course Jenna Marbles (famed youtuber) does one, which is really funny to watch
And apparently, there's also the opposite, "I do do my boyfriend's makeup":
It even talks about how this could one day be used for world of warcraft or second life. I can only imagine how cool it would be if your second life avatar could mimic your facial expressions, especially having one of the opposite gender. I find it especially interesting that in his demo, he does briefly use a female avatar
"This discovery is a breakthrough for genetic researchers and may have implications for transgender and intersex individuals.
This work shows that sex determination in mammals can be
surprisingly prone to change and must be actively maintained throughout
an organism's lifetime,"
However, not only is this still early research on rats, gene therapy in general is not without it's drawbacks, as discussed on the wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy
Short-lived nature of gene therapy – Before gene therapy can become a
permanent cure for any condition, the therapeutic DNA introduced into
target cells must remain functional and the cells containing the
therapeutic DNA must be long-lived and stable. Problems with integrating
therapeutic DNA into the genome
and the rapidly dividing nature of many cells prevent gene therapy from
achieving any long-term benefits. Patients will have to undergo
multiple rounds of gene therapy.
Immune response – Anytime a foreign object is introduced into human
tissues, the immune system has evolved to attack the invader. The risk
of stimulating the immune system in a way that reduces gene therapy
effectiveness is always a possibility. Furthermore, the immune system's enhanced response to invaders that it has seen before makes it difficult for gene therapy to be repeated in patients.
Problems with viral vectors – Viruses, the carrier of choice in most
gene therapy studies, present a variety of potential problems to the
patient: toxicity, immune and inflammatory responses, and gene control
and targeting issues. In addition, there is always the fear that the
viral vector, once inside the patient, may recover its ability to cause
disease.
Multigene disorders – Conditions or disorders that arise from mutations
in a single gene are the best candidates for gene therapy.
Unfortunately, some of the most commonly occurring disorders, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, and diabetes,
are caused by the combined effects of variations in many genes.
Multigene or multifactorial disorders such as these would be especially
difficult to treat effectively using gene therapy.
Chance of inducing a tumor (insertional mutagenesis) - If the DNA is integrated in the wrong place in the genome, for example in a tumor suppressor gene,
it could induce a tumor. This has occurred in clinical trials for
X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (X-SCID) patients, in which
hematopoietic stem cells were transduced with a corrective transgene
using a retrovirus, and this led to the development of T cell leukemia
in 3 of 20 patients.[52]
One possible solution for this is to add a functional tumor suppressor
gene onto the DNA to be integrated; however, this poses its own
problems, since the longer the DNA is, the harder it is to integrate it
efficiently into cell genomes.
In other words, unless your issue is life threatening (like cancer, or possibly parkinsons), you can probably forget about a sex change pill in your near future
Not sure how many of you watch this on comedy central. These are the two guys from MadTv, and they have their own sketch comedy show now. Two of the re-occurring characters they play are meegan and Kimmy. Jordan Peele makes a pretty passable woman, both in looks and mannerisms (and valley girl voice). Enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eirBtt7wIDU
What I especially like is that in the video, not only do they show you the before person's face, it's also a boy putting on the female mask (which is one concern I always had with these, how well is the mask going to follow along a male face).
Well, I certainly can't tell the difference, and although it's still going to look like a mask, it sure looks better than anything I've ever seen. Plus you would think a female mask would almost be easier to get away with. I mean women wear makeup, many already look un-natural, so maybe a mask wouldn't be a big deal (at least from 10 feet away anyway).
I honestly think it looks pretty damned good for $650 (hair not included)
So I watched this video on genderfun's website this morning:
The part that intrigued me the most (besides seeing a boy transformed into a drag queen) was the airbrush foundation.
A. I had never heard of such a product (probably used by drag queens for years, probably used by professional makeup artists for even longer)
B. Holy crap that does an amazing job of evenly filling in a face to make it smooth and unshiny
Then I looked up pricing on that shit, $50 a can! Then I thought "hmm.. that stuff can't be THAT magical, I bet it's foundation mixed with some type of liquid, toss in some aerosol, rape your customers. I bet I could make my own stuff up, pop it into an airbrush (hobby ones can be bought for $20 and would last much longer)." Well, turns out I'm right. There's multiple videos on youtube on how to do exactly that. There's one with a girl I watched, but it didn't look so promising (her face ended up looking greasy, like she just dunked her head in baby oil). Then I found a video by a guy that performs on stage, and his results are not only more convincing, it's much more dramatic when he uses it to cover a birth mark on his leg:
I totally want to try this out, I think I would get back into crossdressing if I could make my face look decent.