One regret I have is that I did not come out of the closet sooner.
For about 60 years, I have explored the other side of the gender divide, but I have only been out of the closet for about 15 years.
During the first 40 years, my female presentation was limited to home, support group meetings and transgender conventions, which were all closets in one way or another. In my mind, I stepped out of the closet when I began doing outreach and flying solo in public as a woman.
Once I was out of the closet, I realized that I should have gotten out sooner... much sooner. It was so wonderful to live as a woman and it was so much easier than I ever imagined.
That's what kept me in the closet ― I thought it would be too hard, if not impossible to navigate society as a woman because I was too tall and that would give me away. But I was so wrong. Either I passed successfully as a woman or our society has become so nonchalant about dudes who dress like ladies, that no one minded me being their presence. Ether way, it was a win-win situation.
“Youth is wasted on the young” was so apropos in my case. I should have exited the closet and experienced the world as a woman much sooner.
So I urge anyone who is on the fence to get off the fence. Sitting on the fence is not very comfortable, whereas living as a woman is the most comfortable place in the world to be.
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| Wearing Elbis NY |
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| Femulators celebrating Carnival in Rio de Janeiro in 1913. |
Lady I Second that Point!
ReplyDeleteEven tho I did go Clothes shopping en femme in the Seventies,at 6'2', I never did it except when far from home or Washington DC.
Altho in tops that showed off my girls it was a little bit easier, until I had to speak.
To anyone else reading: get out and enjoy your real self while you can.
Sara Blevins
Regrets?
ReplyDeletePerish the thought.
We ALL do as we are able, in the time and place in which we live. As a young person, we usually have no control of these factors.
What you could do in your youth from your home town, there was small chance of experiencing anything near your own adventures here in North Carolina. Even if an opportunity presented itself, the public transport system was so limited, the chance would not really exist to visit an 'adult magazine' store, if I actually knew such a thing existed.
Later, we all are limited by our obligation to maintain shelter and sustenance for ourselves and family, and that would mean keeping a job and keeping a 'respectable' corporate image.
What looks so easy now, was just not that easy 'back in the day'.
Now, any young person with a question can simply summon Google and not waste 30 odd years questioning ones self.
Yes, things have changed.
Tonight, I happened upon the old movie 'Peyton Place', which later morphed into the TV show of the same name. The movie merely 'bobbed and weaved' around 'delicate, sensitive', 'adult' topics without naming specifics.
I recall my parents hustling my younger brother and I off to bed, before 'that show' started. Then, they turned the TV volume 'way down' so delicate ears would not hear.... My wife mentioned that she and her younger sister got the same treatment from her parents, when "Passion Place" (remember the Mad Magazine satire?) was on...
Surrender, surrender (Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright)
But don't give yourself away
Surrender, surrender
But don't give yourself away
Have no regrets...
Velma
Stana -
ReplyDeleteI agree with you - we should have done it much sooner....
M
It took me until I was 50 years old to get the courage to just go out in the pretty, feminine clothes that I like. When you reach midlife, you really cease to care about what others may think of you. I know that they know I’m a man in a dress, but why should that exclude me from participating in the delights of feminine presentation?
ReplyDeletemany younger women are taller than my 6'
ReplyDeleteemily
How did the femulators in the bottom picture make their busts?
ReplyDeleteThe bra as we know it was not invented until 1914 and did not come into widespread use until 1917
Lucy
Where nature fails, man provides
DeleteThe item that provided the means before the bra was.....some with shelves that could be stuffed, my grandmother's sisters had a family collection stored in a Victorian attic in the sixties going back a hundred years, I wish I still had it but I did try them on back in my youth, hard to wear but the figure ...oh la la (socks still worked as they do today) !
DeleteCorsets.....
The Earliest is the Shocker even by today's standards of dress....
http://tahliamckellartextiles.weebly.com/corset-timeline.html
I have some ugly memories of crossdressing ladies and drag queens being badly abused back in the 1950-1060s. I watched as DC police beat these folks, sometimes with their billy clubs, outside Johnny's on 8th Street, SE. I remember a carload of guys stopping outside Remmington's on PA Ave, unloading to beat up a drag queen who had stepped outside between sets. That doesn't happen these days, but I still haven't erased those images from my mind. And I read TGForum weekly and see their coverage of the carnage of TG/CD women. I'm older now and I'm not passable and have to scan the area carefully when I'm out at night.
ReplyDeleteI didn't "come out" so much as I just stopped worrying about who was seeing me crossdressed. I still haven't shared it with my kids and family, but none of them are close by, so it doesn't seem to be a big deal to me. Now I laugh at how I would hide out in the house until I didn't see anyone out on their porch before my mad dash to the car and zooming away. It's so much nicer to saunter to my car and take my time driving off. I won't be looking over my shoulder when I go to the grocery store in casual women's clothes in just a few minutes, nor will I do so when I put on a dress and makeup Friday to shop for clothes at Macy's and then join a friend for lunch. The public seems to have evolved to the point that they have better things to do than gawk at a crossdressing man, and I have better things to do than worry about who might "see" me. We're not "there" yet, but I've sure seen big steps forward in my lifetime.
ps. On the height thing..... I'm 6' tall and there's nothing I can do about it. I have a considerable foot problem that prevents me from wearing heels. When that first happened I was afraid I'd lose my "Crossdressing License". Ha! But I'm a supporter of women's sports at Maryland University and walking among all those girls on the basketball and volleyball teams long ago "cured" me of worrying about Mikki's height.
We all say the same thing that we should have gotten out sooner so if you are young and reading this GO GO GO!!!
ReplyDeleteSweet picture and caption.
ReplyDeleteI was 50, just widowed and with children now away at university. The first “bonjour madame” when walking the dog was one of my great moments, and it still is
Lily
P.S Dog walking clothes are pants, casual top, flats or walking boots and a waterproof jacket, so I had heels, albeit not so high, a smart and almost pencil skirt and a “town” coat, but that was all I had.
DeleteWould do better now.
Lily
I think what stopped a lot of us from Coming Out, or indeed even making our closets bigger was fear. Fear of what we might lose, relationships, jobs, respect; fear of what might happen, bullying, violence, exclusion; fear of being found out, of ridicule, In general none of that happens, the younger people today have role models and can see that most of the things we feared didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteStana,
ReplyDeleteHave no regrets, we only do what we can with the information we have to hand. A fascinating conversation with my eldest this evening revealed that trail-blazing such as your own has brought the change we wished we had when we were children in society - the assaults, slings and arrows of TERFs notwithstanding.
In the interests of using as many aphorisms as I can pack into a small comment: better late than never. Let us all enjoy the time we have and the lessons we have learned and, where possible, avoid looking back too unkindly on the decisions we took when we were younger.
Light is the left hand of darkness, and darkness the right hand of light. Creation unfinished.
Joanna