Daily email delivery of Femulate

In July, Feedburner, the email delivery system we use for daily email delivery of this blog will discontinue email delivery. So, if you subscribe to Femulate via Feedburner, email delivery of the blog will stop.

I am looking for a substitute and will let you know when I find one.

Maintaining Appearances

It snowed and rained here Monday, so since I was stuck indoors, I painted the kitchen.

Tuesday, I woke up exhausted from going up and down a step ladder all day Monday. (I knew I should have worn flats.)

Too tired to do anything strenuous, I decided to maintain the blog web page. Maintenance was long overdo and I deleted a bunch of old and dead links and updated a few links that had new URLs.

If any of you have a website or blog that has a link to Femulate.org and it is NOT in my list of “T-People & Friends Links,” please let me know (stana-stana at sbcglobal.net) and I will add your website or blog to my list to return the favor.

Wearing Wholesale7

Steve Martin femulates in the 1982 film Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid

Why

Marian posted her reaction to the announcement that I was ending this blog. In response, I commented why. Since I never went into those details here, I am repeating my comment now.

Thank you for the very kind words, Marian. 

You are correct: I spent a lot of time producing each blog post... two hours minimum, but more typically three or four hours! When I was working, I usually put the blog together in the morning before work and put the bow and ribbon on it during lunch. It provided a needed break from writing very technical manuals. 

Since I retired, I typically spent the morning putting together each blog post. The three and four hour chunks were more noticeable and it did not provide a needed break from anything... it became a job. And after nearly two years of retirement, I got tired of doing it, so I quit.

I was overwhelmed by the reaction to my quitting. All my regular correspondents had something to say, but what really surprised me were all the strangers who wrote to me saying how important the blog was to them. I had no idea!

So I decided to continue writing the blog on a limited basis. Once or twice a week at the most. And so it goes.

Best Wishes,

Stana

Someday Funnies

Wearing Joie

Marcie Brown, femulator and Femulate reader

No End in Sight

I thank you for all the emails and comments regarding the end of this blog. They were eye-opening! I had no idea how much this blog meant to so many of you.

So I have decided not to end this blog. Rather, I will write posts on an occasional basis.

With that, I present a lovely poem sent to me by Susan.

Like a welcomed cup of coffee
she started my day
Power on, get on line and see
what Stana has to say

With a passion for fashion
and advice to relate,
she summed it up
with one word she invented: Femulate!

As a blog it was subtle,
no bravado, no alarms
It felt more like a family
We are sisters-in-arms

Now the run is over
All good things must end
Good luck and thank you
I hope I can call you a friend

Wearing New York & Company.

Femulating at Indiana's Tri-State College in 1911. The girl on the left was voted most likely not to be a civilian. 

The End

After 12-1/2 years, I have decided to put an end to this blog. I am tired of writing it, have nothing new to say and want to spend the time doing something else.

It has been an interesting trip. I grew a lot writing the blog and I believe I helped some of you readers to grow, too. And I invented a word, femulate.

My job is done. Goodbye and good luck.

Weekends Were Made for Femulating

Self-Cobbling

I knew I had the perfect pair of high heels to go with the dress I plan to wear to my high school class reunion. Since I had not worn that pair of heels in years, I thought I should check their condition in case they needed to be dusted off or cleaned.

When I inspected them, I noticed that the plastic tip on one high heel was gone exposing the metal dowel that held the tip in place.

I have no recollection of how I lost the tip, but I knew that I had to get it fixed before I could wear the shoe. There is a shoe repair shop about 10 minutes from my home, but I thought I might be able to repair it myself, so I looked online and found iFixit's guide for high heel tip repair.

After reading the guide, the fix seemed easy enough, so I moseyed on over to Amazon to find what I needed for the repair. I ordered a kit for $11.78 that included 30 pairs of replacement tips in five different sizes and a pair of pliers for removing the tip.

The kit arrived yesterday and it took me about 10 minutes to replace the tip. And I now have a lifetime supply of high heel tips!

Which Blog?

In addition to Femulate, I also have a low-traffic blog where I write about my radio adventures.

It is "low-traffic" because I publish a post once or twice a week and it gets about 450 hits per day (as compared to this blog where I post 5 or 6 times per week and average 5,000 hits per day).

And so every year while I am staffing our booth at Hamvention, at least one stranger will approach me and say, "I read your blog."

I always ask, "Which one?" even though I am pretty sure they are referring to Femulate and not my low-traffic radio blog.

When their response is "Huh?"or something similar, I know that they are not a civilian, but rather are one of us.

Wearing Oscar De La Renta (Source: Moda Operandi)

Huntz Hall femulating in the 1943 film 📺 Clancy Street Boys.

Sunday is super in more than one way

First photo of me posted in Femulate.

Sunday is a big day.

It's Super Bowl Sunday and my favorite football team is in it!

Sunday is also the 10th anniversary of Femulate!

I cannot believe that I have been blogging Femulate for ten years. Where did the time go?

Reviewing my posts from 2007 when I started the blog was interesting and even revealing.

Back then, I still went by the name "Staci" and if anyone asked, I admitted to being a "plain vanilla crossdresser," but in my heart, I really thought I was a woman.

Would you believe that I did not post a photo of myself in the blog until seven weeks after starting Femulate!!!

During the first month, Femulate averaged 58 hits per day. During the first year, 250 hits per day. (Today, the blog averages 6,000 hits per day.)

Over ten years, Femulate has had its ups and downs and so have I. During the downs, I have considered giving up the blog and doing something else with my time. But about once a week, I receive an e-mail from a reader who thanks me for the blog.

Some readers remain closeted, but thank me for allowing them to escape from the closet vicariously through my adventures. Other readers say the blog helped them accept themselves and to begin living their lives outside the closet as the women they really are.

And so it goes.

Wearing Madeleine.

Kamil Bijos femulates Mariah Carey on the Polish version of television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.

Femulate: The Word

Sira Siravitch Kamonworawut from "The Femulate Lifestyle"

When I started this blog, I created the word "femulate" and used it as the name of the blog. The word caught on and I often see it used by members of our community.

Christopher Morley, the professional femulator of film and television fame wrote to me once that he loved the word adding that femulate was "so much more accurate than 'female impersonator,'" which he never cared for and "drag queen," which he loathed.

"The Femulate Lifestyle," "tHe Art oF feMuLate" and "Femulate Brasil" are three websites that I am aware of that use the word in their title ― there may be more.

"That lady likes to Femulate" and "femulate" are two boards on Pinterest and then there is "Pins from femulate.org" that contains hundreds of images from my blog that were pinned by me and other Pinterest users. I have no idea how that board works. There is no visible owner of the board, that is, someone who is manually pinning pinned images from my blog, so I assume a Pinterest robot searches all its pins, collects the pinned images from the same source and displays them on a board like "Pins from femulate.org."

Try it yourself. In the URL, https://www.pinterest.com/source/femulate.org/, replace femulate.org with your favorite website and see what happens.

Have Fun!

Actor Phil Johnson on the San Diego stage in She Rantulas from Outer Space in 3D!

Rebelling from Gender

Shannon, a Naugatuck Valley girl like me, suggested some blogs I should visit and perhaps, add to my blog list. And so I did.

Faith's Adventures of a Gender Rebel got my attention immediately with a recent post that included the following image.

Faith looks gorgeous in the photo (she looks gorgeous in all her photos), but it was the caption of this particular photo that did it for me!

I dress like this because I just love being a man.

I have seen photos of Faith in various Internet locations in the past, but I did not know anything about her until Shannon sent me the link to her blog. Turns out that Faith has been posting photos on the Internet like forever, but only started her blog this past August.

I was fascinated by her blog posts mainly because we have so much in common. (If it wasn't for the age difference, I'd wonder if we were sisters separated at birth!)

I spent Sunday evening reading and enjoying her blog and I highly recommend it to all.

Wearing Eloquii.

Femulating actors in the 2014 film Billy Shakespeare.

Death in the Family

My mother-in-law died this morning, so new posts for this blog will be on an irregular schedule for awhile.

We Are All Women

Eight years ago today, I launched Femulate with the following short post:

Welcome to my new blog!

I am a male, who occasionally goes out in the world emulating a female. This blog documents my adventures en femme.

Back then I was in denial about who I really was and referred to myself as a “plain vanilla crossdresser.” Being a crossdresser was “safe.” I could avoid facing the truth and complicating my life.

Things changed. 

Writing this blog on a daily basis changed me. I grew with the blog and faced ― or rather accepted and embraced the truth that I was a woman. 

I was not a woman trapped in a man's body; I was a woman dealing with society’s expectations of what a human being with my body parts was supposed to be.

Society viewed me as a feminine guy and likely gay, but I knew that I was neither. I was a woman plain and simple and I was determined to live my life as the best woman I could be despite the circumstances I found myself in and despite society's desire to straight jacket me. It has not been easy, but some people have it harder than I, so I feel blessed in many ways.

Whether you consider yourself a crossdresser, a transvestite, a transgender, a transsexual, or a whatever, I really believe we are all women.

And I hope this blog has helped you come to that realization and begin living your life as the women you are.

Wearing 4.Collection.

Close cover before striking!

On the Internet

"My job is to make men look like women" is an interesting interview with Jodie Lynn, a London makeup artist "who has dedicated her career to helping men reveal the woman within..." Written by Cassie Powney, the piece appears on the Cosmopolitan UK website.

I found the article personally interesting because I have been following some of Jodie's femulation techniques for years. For example, I thought she was channeling me when she talked about wigs and her lip-plumping procedure is exactly the same procedure I use to femulate my lips.

Wednesday morning, I did not need coffee to start me up when I perused my favorite blogs and noticed the title of Joanna's daily post, "Stana of Femulate."

Wow! Joanna was very kind in her description of me and the blog and I only hope I can live up to her kind words.

By the way, the photo Joanna used in her post was me at work on Halloween two years ago. Coincidentally, I have been mulling over whether or not to femulate for work again this Halloween.

I have femulated for work on four occasions. The first two times (in 2000 and 2003), my workplace had something going to celebrate Halloween including a costume contest. The last two times (2012 and 2013), there was nothing going on at work Halloween-wise. I just femulated and had a wonderful time.

Do I do it again? Three years in a row!

It has almost become a Halloween tradition and some of my co-workers expect it. A woman asked me a few weeks ago if I was dressing up for Halloween. I replied that I had not made any plans and her retort was, "Sure you will."

Enough said!

 

 

 

Street style during Paris Fashion Week for Spring 2015.

 

 

 

Lori Shannon, also known as Don Seymour Mclean
femulating on television’s All in the Family in 1975.

9 Million

The blog's hit counter climbed past the 9 million mark on Monday!

When I started this blog back in the winter of 2007, I never dreamed the blog would become so popular. I just wanted to encourage (by example) other girls like me to flee the closet and experience the world as women.

I have achieved that goal.

My correspondence and face-to-face encounters reveal that many girls who never considered going out before were inspired by this blog to go out and are very happy that they did. They only regret that they waited so long to take that first step (been there, done that).

I wonder how many other success stories there are that I never heard about? If you have a success story, you are welcome to tell it here and inspire even more girls to live the rest of their lives as women.

You go, girls!

 

 

 

Wearing Metrostyle.

 

 

 

Swedish singer Yukiro Dravarious femulates all day and all of the night in Tokyo.

2934/7

Today marks the seventh anniversary of Femulate!

After 7 years and 2934 posts, I think I deserve a day off, so I will leave you with something different and I’ll see you tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Proud mother and her son, a womanless beauty pageant queen.

 

 

 

Wearing Victoria’s Secret.