How would you portray a pre-op trans person in a story?

As the title says.
I have a character who’s a trans dude, and there’s a scene of him when he was younger. Before he really figured out his gender identity.

… How might I go about this? It feels awkward to put a female character model there, since they’re so - you know… feminine. But then again, the male character models on this app are also very masculine. Hopefully this body problem is something that will be solved eventually, but, for the time being -

What do you guys think?
… And by the way, the scene isn’t just to show that he’s trans, it’s actually plot relevant and I can’t exactly do without it. I mean, I could, but I don’t think the story would flow nearly as well. Just a disclaimer-

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Hmmm. Is it LL or Ink?

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I had a pre-op trans character in my story, who was transitioning from female to male. I asked the instagram community what I should do when creating the character, the majority said to use a female body with a male name. Do what you think you should do, you aren’t setting out to offend anyone, it’s just the limited episode bodies can’t really do characters justice.

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Regardless of medical treatments, I use the body associated with the character’s gender as long as they’re out, especially since there is no set moment for “pre” or “post” transition or any single surgery. It’s all an ongoing process anyway. Even the one time I included a flashback of when a character came out as a trans woman, I used the feminine body type with more “masculine” features and clothing, to reflect the fact that she is a woman who can’t keep pretending to be a man, not a man becoming a woman (which is, unfortunately, the dominant trans narrative in fiction because people don’t often listen when we tell our own stories).

I don’t like to include flashbacks to before the character’s realized their identity in Episode stories because neither body type option would be accurate. But since it isn’t avoidable in your case, no option is perfect. You could probably keep using the male body type but have other characters misgender him. The visual aspect of the story doesn’t always have to reflect reality in an objective way, or even according to body image; instead, it’s fine to have it painted by his own psychology.

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I have a trans character. It’s a woman, and in the Ink version, she wears feminine clothing, but has a male body. Then in the Limelight version, she has a few male features (I don’t know to say it exactly), but overall is a female.