To Be Real

At New York City’s Trans Beauty Clinic, transgender women and men learn the art of grooming—and become their truest selves.

- Amy Maclin

TIFFANY MILES SITS in the makeup artist’s chair, her nerves ajitter. When her friend Abigail asked her to come along to the Trans Beauty Clinic, which runs workshops that teach transgender people about makeup, skincare, and haircare, at first she said no thank you. Sure, she appreciates cosmetics, but Miles wasn’t sure she wanted anyone to get all up in her business. Besides, it’s been four months since she arrived in New York City, stepping off the bus from Alabama with everything she owned in a few suitcases, and she needs to find work. She doesn’t have time to play around with powder.

But now here she is in the Church of the Village on West 13th Street, sitting in front of a roomful of people in folding chairs, and the makeup artist and skincare expert, Todd Harris, is asking, “What questions do you have?”

Lordy , Miles thinks. What questions don’t I have?

“Well, I’m not on hormones yet, so my skin’s not so smooth,” she says. “I have to use a lot of foundation to cover it up.” In the years before she moved out of her grandparents’ house, Miles covered up so many things, hiding girly camisoles beneath polo shirts, wearing leggings under pajama pants, shoving her first wig—jet black, $20—behind a calculus textbook in the bag she took to college.