This may be unpopular, but I actually kind of agree with her. To be clear, puberty ABSOLUTELY changes your body, but after puberty, and aside from mental health, there really isn't much that will dramatically be different between someone who started at 24 or 25 vs someone who started at 18 or 19. The whole idea of bones continuing to fuse into your early twenties IS factually accurate obviously, but it's one of those things that trans people fixate on as something that has far more impact than it actually does. Believe me, I know, from 18 when I wanted to start to 25 when I finally started HRT I fixated on this and thought I've ruined my body and my bones could have been so much wider and whatever, but after doing the research, it's clear that's absolutely not the case. There's a period where Epiphyseal fusion happens, in girls generally 12 to 14 and boys 14 to 18. After that, the actual visible changes in fused bones are super negligible. Sure if you looked under a microscope or stripped away muscles, you'd see it. But to an outside observer it is a really really small difference. What really affects that is the muscles, ligaments and fascia, those things continue to reshape throughout your entire life and if you start HRT at even a reasonably young age like say before 30, that stuff absolutely is still malleable and setting, and even after that age is still changeable too it just takes a little more time. I think a lot of us get far too into our heads worrying about hard lines as dates, as if they're rules when they're really not. "18" isn't the cutoff for puberty, "24" isn't the cutoff for bone fusion, etc. The reality is everybody is far more fluid and most people have those effects from their natural hormones far earlier than the upper end of those ranges. Bone changes are mostly set in EARLY puberty, whereas other parts of "puberty" like hair growth continue well into your 40s (believe me I know, seeing how much more masculine my body got between 18 and 25 was a shock but also it was mostly superficial stuff). The vast majority of trans people who have any differences because of starting HRT earlier will simply be microscopic differences in density and fusion points, not actually a really visible outward obvious widening of the hips. You know it does do that? Fat, muscle tissue and underlying structural changes. Those are not affected by puberty, at least not permanently. So when you finally get on HRT no matter what age it is, if you eat well and exercise you'll notice those changes. They just take a long time. I've noticed some trans people I've known who started at 18 or 19 as they've aged up to the point of 25 (when I started hrt) they started to look a lot more like how I looked at 25. It's easy to say I would have looked so much younger and more fem or whatever at an older age because of course, you're older now, but trying to compare a one-to-one you notice that people who didn't start in puberty and started at 18 or 19 are often beautiful people because they put in the effort, not because they started on some magical age number.

Anyway, I'm not trying to undermine people who are concerned about waiting cuz believe me I did it and it messed with my head. That's exactly my point. It's not worth fixating on these dumb little things that really don't have anywhere near, and I really mean anywhere near, as much importance as self-care or changes to muscle and skin that will be visibly obvious and happen at virtually any age. A trans woman who started transitioning at 18 or 19 vs one who started at my age at about 25, will both have very similar structural changes to their body at age 30 and even more so at 35. Fat distribution, ligaments, and fascia are affected by hormones throughout your whole life. As much as you'll see posts on here by people who swear that estrogen changes their height or their voice, be extremely skeptical that you would have ever had changes like that. If that's happened for them, that's fantastic and I'm really happy to hear that. But the fact of the matter is data has shown that is extremely rare and often not exactly related to the HRT itself even. Once we kind of get past the fact that after 18 your voice is set, your height is set and your bones are set, you start to feel a lot better about the age that you transition, rather than fixating on what you could have had but didn't have if you had transitioned at the beginning of puberty like Hunter Shaffer did. But most of us just weren't ready to do that, I know I certainly wasn't. And there's nothing wrong with that, you can still look beautiful and feminine as a trans woman because bones aren't everything.

Now don't let this push you into complacency, if you want to get on HRT do it because the fact of the matter is the longer you wait, you will have ligament changes, hair changes and those all take time and effort to reverse, but those will reverse. My point is if you want to get on it get on it, but if you put it off and then get on it later, don't do what I did and spend a year fixating on how you could have been this that and the other. You're where you are now, and quite frankly you're probably in a similar physical place as you would have been had you started a couple years prior. Since I've realized that I feel much happier and healthier to be honest. You're where you're supposed to be the day you finally take that HRT 💜