A handful of weeks ago (somewhere around week 3 of testosterone), I declared in a conversation with my partner that I thought (though I conceded I may have been imagining it) that my butt was smaller. I was walking past the mirror in the men’s room at work, and I looked over, and noticed that my (not insubstantial) backside seemed a little less, well, substantial. It may have been a trick of the light, or wishful thinking, or some combination of factors. But I was pretty sure I was right.

It’s turned into a bit of a running joke. My partner likes to tell this story to friends, who generally act amused and then try not to stare at my ass.

I didn’t really have any particular evidence that there had been any true physical changes until last weekend, when I went to zip up my winter coat’s two-way zipper and realized that I didn’t need to unzip the bottom part to get the coat to fit around my hips. It was startling. One of the reasons I got that coat in the first place was the fact that men’s coats generally didn’t fit very well around my hips and butt, because I’m a curvy sort of human.

I truly knew it was no longer all in my head the next day, though, when my partner squeezed my butt, then stepped back and exclaimed, “Whoa, your butt is smaller!” At which point ze then took a good long look and added, “And it looks really good in those jeans.”