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| Coco Layne's "Warpaint," a photo project about gender presentation within the masculine and feminine spectrum |
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| "Just A Boy" by TraeCrae |
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| Wearing a dress in a Los Angeles jail, circa 1945 |
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| Gender Switch Day |
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| Professional femulator Jimmy James as Marilyn Monroe in Greg Gorman's 1990 L.A. Eyeworks campaign |
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| Beautiful Boy George |
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| Wearing Venus. |
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| Andrew Semuel, male womenswear model |
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| FF femulating Kate Bush on Portugal television's Your Face Sounds Familiar. |
If you have been following along here for awhile, you know that I express myself with graphics as well as with words.
I can create a cartoon or fumetti relatively quickly once I come up with the words or punch-line for a joke. On the other hand, Photoshopped artwork can take hours, but I enjoy doing it, so the time flies by when I do it.
With that introduction, I present a new piece of Photoshop artwork. Titled Stanley Getting Dressed, Circa 1968, it represents the undergarments I was femulating with back in the late 1960s. (The image started out as a vintage bra and/or girdle advertisement that I found on the Internet.)
I hope you like it!
Reading Genderfork today directed me to the photography of JJ Levine, "a Montreal-based artist, who works in intimate portraiture... Levine works mostly in photography and video, and through these visual media, explores issues surrounding gender, sexuality, self-identity, and queer space."
I found Levine's Alone Time and Switch portfolios fascinating.
Alone Time is a series of photos portraying male and female couples involved in a variety of mundane and not-so-mundane activities. The catch is that the male and female in each couple is the same person. In most cases, I cannot determine if the person portraying the couple is natal male or female.
Switch is similar, but different. It portrays young male and female couples posing in prom wear. Each couple appears in two photos, side-by-side (as above). In one photo, one half of the couple wears male clothing and the other half of the couple wears female clothing. In the other photo, they switch; the person who wore male clothing in the first photo now wears female clothing and the person who wore female clothing in the first photo now wears male clothing.
I believe I figured out who was natal sex-wise in this set of photos, but it is so well done that I would not be surprised if I erred.
JJ Levine has other portfolios on the website; some trans-related, some not, but all are wonderful.
Enjoy! (I know I did.)
My girls’ night out last night was fun!
(That’s me in the photo just before I left the house.)
I met Diana at the Real Art Ways parking lot. She left her car there and I drove our mini-carpool to downtown Hartford to dine at Vito’s restaurant.
We found a parking place on the street right in front of Vito’s and when we entered the restaurant, we discovered that we were the first diners of the evening.
Our beautiful waitress, Ashley, addressed us as ladies and she could not have been more pleasant. I had their “Fiocchi Pasta,” which is
stuffed with four cheeses and pears in a sweet and spicy cream sauce. It was excellent.
The restaurant was very quiet. We were the only diners most of the time; a few diners finally trickled in just before we left the premises.
The last time I dined at Vito’s on a Thursday evening a few years ago, the place was near capacity attendance, so the contrast was stark. However, a party of 40 had reservations last night, so I expect things got livelier after we departed.
Back to Real Art ways for their monthly “Creative Cocktail Hour” and we were first in line to pay to enter.
We bought drinks, viewed the artwork that was on display, then we staked out a table where we sat, chatted, and people-watched for about an hour. A few old friends came by and we renewed acquaintances.
Then we bought another round of drinks (non-alcoholic, by the way) and went outside on the patio to get some fresh air.
One of my blog readers recognized me and introduced herself as a daily reader and fan of the blog. I was happy she stopped to say “hello,” because it is always great to meet one of my readers in person.
The trans crowd was not. Last few times I attended the “Hour,” there were usually a dozen or so transgirls present. Last night, I counted six including myself. Go figure!
Throughout the evening, I noted my interaction with the civilians. Males would look at me and nothing more. On the other hand, if I caught the eye of a female, she would invariably smile and I would returned the smile and if she was close enough, I would say “hello” and she might return the greeting, but nothing more.
As our evening wound down, we sat on a wall-length bench outside the main exhibit area next to a female couple. After awhile, Diana decided to leave, but I wanted to hang on for a little while longer, so I remained seated.
Shortly thereafter, while one member of the female couple was off doing something, the other female engaged me in conversation. Turns out she is the partner of the woman whose art exhibit had opened last night. They are from Brooklyn and we chatted about NYC and Connecticut, etcetera, etcetera.
We had a pleasant chat for about 15 minutes. As we were running out of things to talk about, I decided it was a good time to gracefully exit the premises because it was approaching my bedtime and I had to get up at 5:45 AM. So I excused myself, thanked her for the conversation, and worked my way through the crowd to my Subaru awaiting me outside.
The evening out was superb and I look forward to my next outing en femme.
While poking the Internet looking for trans-related stuff, I occasionally come upon images from Deviantart. Weeks ago, when I viewed my umpteenth Deviantart trans-related image, I decided to check out the web site for myself and in doing so, I found a motherlode of trans-related art, photos, and texts. (For example, a search on the word "crossdress" on Deviantart turned up over 11 thousand items!)
Anime, manga, role-playing, cosplay, etc. dominate Deviantart. Since I am not very familiar with those worlds, some of the references escaped me, but crossdressing is crossdressing and I appreciate the trans-related Deviantart works nonetheless.
After spending hours browsing Deviantart, I decided that my favorite work is a piece created by rocketdave titled Memory Lane. Its caption reads, “As he feared, introducing his girlfriend to his mother results in the revelation of certain aspects of his childhood he would have preferred remain buried.”
Memory Lane appears at the top of this blog.
Throughout my life, drawing and sketching has been an outlet for me being transgender. When I was a kid, I began drawing as soon as I discovered the business end of a pencil.
In my early teens, when I became fascinated with femulation, my drawing started serving a purpose. When I could not crossdress (which was most of the time), I drew pictures about crossdressing as a release for my frustrated femulations.
Over the years, I have used ballpoint pens, fountain pens, rollerball pens, crayons, colored pencils, and markers for my trans-drawings, but a simple pencil and eraser were my usual tools until I bought a Macintosh computer in 1985.
Now my computer is my primary drawing tool, although I still use a pencil occasionally (see above right) to keep my penciling skills toned.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you cannot help seeing my trans-artwork on display here. I don't know if you readers prefer reading what I write or seeing what I drew.
For me, drawing is fun, while writing is hard work. As a result, I have a big backlog of trans-art, but almost no backlog of trans-words. The daily content of this blog reflects that.
Now go put on a dress!
Green Satin Shoes by Tasmin Cornish
Switching Modes by Tasmin Cornish
Close-up of Green Satin ShoesAbout Tamsin: Tamsin Cornish lives in Surrey, in England and has just completed her joint degree, one side of which was art.
About Tamsin's paintings: My paintings portray personal glimpses into others' private lifestyles, lifestyles that most people would class as 'perverse' or 'unhealthy.' Using the real words of those who live out their desires, I have tried to open up the avenue of thought that these people feel happier and more complete living as they do, and to show that anyone could be living like this, but keep it so secret that no one would ever know. Rather than a damning of the unnatural, I wanted my paintings to be a journey to uncover and accept the unknown.
Contact Tamsin: ms.t.cornish @ googlemail.com
Renoir’s Daughters: How Renoir Feminized His Sons by Cara Healey is an interesting piece about French artist Pierre August Renoir and how he used his three sons to pose as girls for his paintings.
