Minimizing the appearance of your shoulder is something that most people try to do when dressing femininely. We aren’t in the 80s with power suits with padded shoulders but that’s not to say ‘big’ shoulders are the end of the world either. 

The first thing to understand is that shoulders are not inherently masculine, the built muscle is what can make it seem that way. So as long as you get men to do any kind of lifting heavy things for you, you should be all good to not have them be perceived as masculine since most people equate big muscles=masculine.

Despite wearing jeans, cowboy boots, and a button up top, would you say this is a masculine outfit? (The answer is no)

Second thing is that shoulders are typically the limiting factor of whether jackets or tops with sleeves* fit properly. 

What does the limiting factor mean? 

The limiting factor is what part of your body limits you from going a size smaller, for almost everyone on earth, this is your shoulders as they will be the widest part of your body unless you are simply built different. 

Speaking from experience with my body shape, as that’s more or less what I’ll be using as a reference for most of if not all my posts, shoulders are the limiting factor. This means that sometimes what limits something from fitting you is your shoulders.

*As an exception to the rule, sleeveless tops are limited by your torso size, which is usually around your boobies (bust size)

 For example we have this leather jacket here. This jacket is a size Large, but as you can see from the rest of my body, I’m not very wide (aside from my shoulders). I had to get a Large in this jacket for me to be able to put it on because of the width of my shoulders. If I had gone by the size chart at the time using the bust as a guide for how it would fit me, prior to my BA, I would be a size small and then it wouldn’t fit me at all.

Once I would get the jacket in the mail and attempted to put on a small, there’s no way it would have fit properly and honestly it still kind of doesn’t because as you can see it is pretty big around my actual torso, especially my waist making my upper body look larger. This is due to the size of your shoulders, going across. Most brands don’t list shoulder width in their size charts so it’s always best to try things on in person.

I happened to try on this jacket in person before but the sleeves of a medium were too tight for me to wear anything with sleeves underneath it so I ended up with a Large. This was before I was dressing femme so I wasn’t big into sleeveless things at the time (now I am a big advocate for sleeveless things)

Women have so many different cuts of tops and dress that show off their shoulders and here are a few examples which you can find more information on in the vocabulary section, mostly under> Necklines.

• Halter neck
• Scoop neck
• Plunging 

The last thing is that your shoulders do not equal your whole shoulderline. Your shoulder line is the whole width from the outside edges of your shoulder, so it includes your collarbone area and a bit below it depending on the cut of your shirt, if it’s low cut. I would also argue that it includes trapezius muscles and maybe the first 2 inches of your neck’s base. Basically everything circled in this image.

Here are the tips I’ve picked up across my career as a full time woman.

1. The first tip I can say is show some skin. Women show a lot more skin on average compared to men for how they dress so it’s something you can do pretty easily. Pretty much the only time non-women show skin is to show tattoos or muscles so you will be more than safe most of the time with this tip.

As you can see with these outfits, the sleeves make a big difference. Even just when rolling them up.

2. Next is to keep your hair down. If your hair is long enough to go past your shoulders, you should let it. Depending on how you tie your hair up it might be seen as feminine but long hair is just easier in that sense. Even just keeping it in front of you makes a difference like in this example.

3. Wearing necklaces is also great tip because jewelry is primarily for women. I prefer larger necklaces because if they’re too dainty and small, they won’t be as noticeable. The style of necklace is somewhat important since chains are seen as more masculine. Getting things with pendants or gemstones is a solid choice.

A good way to think if something is “feminine enough” is to imagine if a man wore the same thing, how would it look, it’s more necessary that you just like the piece but it’s something to keep in mind as jewelry becomes more gender neutral. I have a basic guide for buying jewelry if you’re not sure where to start here: A Quick Guide to Buying Jewelry

4. Wearing accessories like scarves or crossbody bags also help break up your figure. I don’t have scarves to demonstrate with but I’m sure you can imagine what those looks like with the power of the internet.

5. For clothing, one of the most important features to appear feminine is its neckline/shoulderline. You may notice that if you have t-shirts from the men’s section, their necks go super high up; hardly allowing for any jewelry to be shown. 

This is pretty low cut women’s tank-top, but comparing it to this t-shirt (which is pretty tight) you can see the difference in what I mean by this.

You can also see how by just leaving buttons open on this blouse makes it seem more feminine, despite the poofy shoulders technically making my shoulders look bigger. Necklines that show more skin will be immensely helpful.

6. This also applies to the tightness of clothing. I’m going to use t-shirts to demonstrate the difference here, but this applies to all tops. Now we’re using my own body as the example here so keep in mind your body shape when applying this tip yourself.

The pink shirt shows my curves a bit more since it’s tighter, and also because it’s lighter it lets you see the actual shadows and highlights of my features. Looking at the dark shirt you can see that because of its oversized shape, that will also make my torso look oversized, in addition to my shoulders since the sleeves are looser as well. So try to avoid loose fitting clothes, especially sleeves around the shoulders.

However when we compare it with this white t shirt you can see that the neckline being lower makes it look much more feminine, even with such a minor difference. The paisley patterned t shirt is oversized, so everything about it is much bigger, including the sleeves.

Wearing tight sleeves is something you should aim for if you want to wear things with sleeves as the fabric kinda poofing out makes a difference which you can see with the sweater’s sleeves below. This is because it can ‘close a gap’ between the area of you arm and torso giving your upper body a seemingly larger appearance.

If you have wide shoulders another tip is to avoid clothes that have a flat neckline, both like the t-shirt above and like this purple sweater. The reason is because you have no break in sight of where your shoulders start and end because the neckline is effectively a flat straight line the whole way across your shoulderline.

Things such as this hoodie or turtleneck allow you to see the difference of having some kind of detail around your shoulderline makes for minimizing your shoulders.

Patterns can also help break up your figure a bit more than solid colors do. Since patterns can be ‘distorted’ by your body’s curves it can also help a bit highlighting those, this works better with lighter colored patterns. This is why zebras have stripes! These 2 examples still give me a larger figure but my shoulders look smaller because of the pattern.

A complimentary tip is to wear wider bottoms to detract your attention away from your shoulders al; together. If your legs or hips look bigger then your shoulders will look smaller as you change your proportions. Need help with that? Check out this post on making your hips look bigger.

Also it never hurts to get clothes tailored to your body once you are at a stable body type you are happy with. Tailoring things before then just means they won’t fit if you get a BA or lose/gain weight and wasting a bit of money. Thankfully tailoring isn’t that expensive unless it’s special material like leather. Expect around $15-20 for a top, and $30 for a dress.

So in brief what did we learn?

1. Wear tight clothes
2. Wear lower necklines
3. Keep your hair down
4. Wear necklaces
5. Avoid boxy and loose clothing
6. Accessorize with things that break up your figure
7. Details around your shoulders and neck (such as a hood) help break up your shoulderline