Full-Time vs. Part-Time

Casually Stana

Rhonda’s post Feminine Differential – Overt vs. Covert motivated me to write this post.

Rhonda wrote, “For years I hid behind a big wig, long sleeves, and high neck tops in a created, over-the-top, feminine facade. Although stylish, I was the caricature of a man who was crossdressing. Women generally did not dress that way; then or now. However in public, I thought I was being covert (no one is noticing) in my efforts to pass. I was thinking I was blending-in. Likely the only place I did blend-in, was at a crossdressing convention.”

Today, Rhonda dresses more casually: jeans or shorts, t-shirt, and sneakers with her hair in a ponytail.

She wrote, “I am ‘ma’am’ almost 100% of the time without the over-the-top feminine facade now.”

Contrast that with the office girl uniform I usually wear when I go out. I’m hoping that in the minds of civilians I encounter, I am a working woman going shopping after work or grabbing a bite to eat during lunch hour and not a crossdressing man.

Rhonda and I are different. She is full-time and I am part-time. 

Being part-time, I wear the office girl uniform because I only get out so often and I want to wear a dress and heels when those opportunities arise. If I was full-time, I would still wear my office girl uniform on occasion, but I would dress more casually most of the time just like Rhonda. 

That is exactly what happened when I attended Fantasia Fair, where I was a woman 24 hours a day for a week. During the day, I dressed casually – a top, leggings or shorts and flats to attend the various presentations and luncheons. But during the evening, it was a dress and heels to attend the banquets and shows.

And so it goes.

Wearing Venus

Raymond Cordy (wearing boa) femulating in the 1934 French film Mam'zelle Spahi.

Why do you wear high heels?

I receive email advertisements regularly from Abby at Vivian Lou. (I am a very satisfied customer of their weight-shifting insoles for high heels.) The following email ad showed up in my inbox recently and I thought I would share it with you since many of the readers here are high heel fans.

Women wear heels for a variety of reasons.

Dolly Parton has said she wears heels to lift her spirits.

Shoe designer Charlotte Olympia Dellal wears heels to feel taller, sexier, more confident, powerful, and glamorous.

French fashion icon Carine Roitfeld wears heels to move, sit and speak differently.

Fashion designer Monique Lhuillier wears heels to feel empowered. 

Rocker Lita Ford wears heels for attitude.

The former editor-in-chief of British Vogue Alexandra Shulman said, “Wearing a heel gives you a completely different feel about your body. In my case, it makes me feel in control.”

Whatever your reason for wearing high heels, it is our mission to help women like you - and the ones listed above - wear high heels 4x longer without pain so we can focus more on our dreams and less on our feet.

Here's to high heels without the hurt!

Cheers!

Abby

So, why do you wear high heels?

.

Wearing Venus

Tam Williams femulating on British television’s A Touch of Frost.
You can view this episode of A Touch of Frost on YouTube.

Got Reddit?

By Paula Gaikowski

There’s been a lot of talk here lately about Reddit.

So, what exactly is Reddit? Essentially, it’s a huge collection of forums where people can share news and content or comment on other people’s posts. Here’s everything you need to know.

Reddit is broken up into more than a million communities known as “subreddits,” each covers a different topic. The name of a subreddit begins with r/, which is part of the URL that Reddit uses. For example, r/nba is a subreddit where people talk about the National Basketball Association, while r/boardgames is a subreddit for people to discuss board games.

You can search and read through all of Reddit without an account. To comment or post a message, you need an account. That’s easy enough and can be done using a gmail address. Many people have multiple accounts and you will notice usernames like “throwaway1234” – an account that someone wants to use to make a post or comment without referencing their user account. You can have multiple usernames tied to an email address so you could have one username boxing_bob99 and another roberta_flowers98 to avoid the collision of your two worlds.

The search bar can help you find subs. However, I will go over a few of the more popular subs that I believe will interest our Femulate community. This is only a small sample of all of the different transgender related subreddits.

r/crossdressing – A place to post photos and comments, mostly a young crowd here. Pictures and language here has to be wholesome. This is meant as a non-sexual place where younger and older persons can feel safe.

r/crossdressed50 – A place for older gals

r/CrossDressedRealism – A place to develop your out in the world look.

r/Crossdress_Expression – A place for sexy, artistic, a little bit naughty photos

r/transpassing – A place to post photos of yourself and ask if you pass and receive kind constructive advice.

r/asktransgender – Questions and discussions about, for, to or from the Reddit transgender community. Things here can get very political and it seems someone always get offended. For example, I consider myself transgender but also use the term “crossdresser” to describe myself. Oh well, not good.

r/transpostive – A place to share positive news about being transgender. This is an active sub with a laid back attitude; a lot of people in transition sharing first times and new outfits.

r/transgender – An aggregation of transgender news stories.

r/transtimelines – A place where people post before and after photos

r/TransLater  – Older transgender persons, very open non-sexual atmosphere with transgender persons sharing with each other.

r/Transgender_Classics – The over 60 transgender crowd. 

See you on Reddit!

Don’t Miss Miss on YouTube

The film a lot of us have been waiting for is now on YouTube with English subtitles. The plot: A young man, played by Alexandre Wetter, seeking his gender identity decides to take part in the Miss France beauty pageant. 

Click here to view the film. 

Thank you, Jenn Monk, for alerting me about Miss.

Wearing Venus

UK femulator Priscilla Collins

Office Girl Review

I have been retired for five years. I don’t miss work much, but I do miss going to work as an office girl on Halloween. 

I did it seven times. The first two times (2000 and 2003), the company sponsored a costume contest. (I won both times.) The last five times (2012 to 2016), there was no contest – I just used the holiday as an excuse to crossdress in public (among the civilians).

With only six weeks left to do your Halloween shopping, I decided to review my seven appearances at work as my real self. As a bonus, I also included my office girl appearances at the company Christmas parties in 2017 and 2018 (I was retired by then, but was invited back for the parties).

Halloween at work in 2000, 2003 and 2012

Halloween at work in 2013, 2014 and 2015

Halloween at work in 2016. Christmas party in 2017 and 2018.

Wearing Ann Taylor

Thiago Fragoso femulating on Brazil television’s Sexo Fragil

Got Balance?

In light of my ever advancing age, my love of four-inch stilettos and my recent tumble down the stairs in heels, I am rerunning this story about the benefits of wearing high heels.

According to a story in the Daily Mail, “When it comes to high heels, surprisingly, experts believe that wearing them into our 70s may actually help protect us from falls, by maintaining our sense of balance.

“‘Most high heels have a very small surface area to walk on, so you need a good sense of balance and proprioception [a sense of how various parts of the body move relative to each other] to be able to walk in them,’ explains Christopher Walker, a consultant in trauma and orthopaedic surgery at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

“‘This means that because of wearing high heels, women have a very good sense of balance.’

“Balance involves the brain processing vast amounts of information from different areas, including the eyes, muscles and balance mechanisms in the ear.

“Heels challenge your sense of balance which, over years, hones these mechanisms.

“If women stop wearing heels, their sense of balance can actually deteriorate, adds Mr Walker, who also works at the Bone and Joint Centre, Spire Liverpool Hospital.”

Read the rest the Daily Mail story here.

Wearing ROCOCO SAND

Femulating men at work, circa 1955

Susanna’s Casa is Our Casa

I’ve written here about Casa Susanna many times. (Just use the Search Femulate option to see how many times.) 

In case you missed what I wrote, “Casa Susanna was a popular weekend destination in Jewett, NY for cross-dressing men and transgender women in the early 1960s. The bungalow camp was run by Susanna Valenti and her wife Marie, who also ran a wig store in town.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Casa Susanna, a documentary by French filmmaker Sebastien Lifshitz, vividly brings the past to life through archival footage, photographs and the memories of those who stayed at Casa Susanna.

Click here to view the film’s trailer, click here to view Cineuropa’s clips from the film and click here to read IndieWire’s review of the documentary.

The film is “in production” according to the PBS International. Since it is a PBS International production, I hope that means it will appear on television via PBS. In any case, this is a film I will not miss. 

(Thank you, Gary, for alerting me about the film.)

Femulate reader Jim O. dress shopping at Macy’s last Wednesday

Crossdressing May Be Hazardous to Your Health

Yesterday, I had a luncheon date with my lady friends. I was all dressed up (see photo) and ready to drive to the restaurant a half hour away.

Before I left, I checked myself out in the mirror and noticed some hairs that I missed while shaving. So I went upstairs and used my electric razor to remove them.

On my way down the stairs, I slipped with three steps to go and landed flat on my face on the rug at the bottom of the stairs. Blood exited my nose and a small gash on my forehead. There were bad rug burns on my nose and below my nose. I also bloodied my good knee. I no longer resembled the accompanying photo.

No way could I look presentable for the luncheon, so I called Diana that I would be a no-show.

I cleaned myself up and applied band-aids where needed. 

I was very upset that I missed a day out en femme. And it may be awhile before I can go out again. (How long does it take rug burns on your face to heal?).

Update: I was wearing heels when I fell, but I don’t think that was the cause. I had already been up and down the stairs a half dozen times in heels before the fall. However, by then I was running a little late,  hurrying to get on the road ASAP and was not as careful as I should be going down the stairs.

Wearing Bebe

Another modern couple

Kids

Nathan Janak on Nickelodeon’s All That

Commenting on Friday’s The Iceberg post, Paula wrote that the Crossdressing Subreddit has over 235,000 subscribers – mostly younger, late teens to 20’s. What’s interesting is the taboo seems to be lifting. Many are out to friends; even more out to their girlfriends. The other thing I noticed is these crossdressers are really good at what they do – very pretty and passable.

I occasionally visit the Crossdressing Subreddit, but not too often because viewing the girls there makes me consider turning in my Official Femulator membership card. 

For starters, all the girls are young (much younger than I) and as a result, their femulations are exquisite (they all pass).

Many of the girls have no inhibitions regarding their crossdressing. They go out crossdressed everywhere, all the time and don’t think twice (it’s alright).

I read about one girl who was going clothes shopping and needed something that could be easily removed in the fitting room, so he/she borrowed a front buttoned dress from his/her wife! Remarkable!

Makes me wonder if the mainstreaming of crossdressing inspires young femulators to crossdress. Of course, there is the RuPaul franchise, but youngsters are more likely to watch Nickelodeon and that network’s All That, which includes some excellent young femulators.   

Anyway, visit the Crossdressing Subreddit and be inspired by the young femulators you will find there.   

Exquisite 

I checked the online Google dictionary to make sure I spelled exquisite correctly in the above piece and found this archaic definition for the word: a man who is affectedly concerned with his clothes and appearance; a dandy. 

A Milestone

On Friday, the blog’s daily hit count reached an all-time high of 16,798! The previous all-time high (15,042) was recorded the day before.

By the way, 25,810,329 is the total hit count since this blog went live. 

Wearing Bebe

Ryan Alessi femulating on Nickelodeon’s All That.

The Iceberg

I am fascinated by the number of crossdressers on the Internet. It seems that everyone is crossdressing – kids, teens, young adults, the middle-aged and senior males are all crossdressing and documenting their feminine side with photos posted all over the Internet.

However, the tens of thousands of crossdressers on the Internet does not translate to the numbers of crossdressers out among the civilians. If the numbers correlated, you would be running into crossdressers everywhere, but the sightings of crossdressers in public are rare (which does not take into account those crossdressers who pass and as a result, fail to be counted in the crossdresser census). 

One can assume that most of the crossdressers on the Internet are closeted and don’t mix it up with the civilians.

And one can also assume that the various estimates of the crossdressing population are low. You can’t count them if you can’t see them, although there are plenty to see on the Internet.

My guess is that there are a lot more crossdressers out there than most people believe. The Internet might just be the tip of the iceberg. 

After all, most males want to crossdress (don’t they?) and the mainstreaming of crossdressing today gives reluctant crossdressers the courage to do so. The majority may stay in the closet – so far back in the closet that they will never post photos anywhere. And those that do post photos are in the minority, but the numbers of that minority are huge as evidenced by the Internet, so can you imagine the numbers below the waterline of the iceberg!

Wearing Venus

Paul Dano femulating in the 2020 film The Extra Man

Really a He

Really!!!

I wear many hats in my amateur radio organization. One hat I wear is to compose and distribute announcements regarding our organization. I make the announcements via five email lists that my organization sponsors. Typically, the announcements get re-posted on other email lists.

Last week, I distributed an announcement calling for speakers for our upcoming annual conference. The announcement traveled hither and yon and ruffled some feathers on one email list because someone considered it to be spam. A half dozen posts were exchanged on the subject and someone asked why I even made the announcement.

Someone Else replied to the question as follows, “Because she (really a he) is desperate for content for the conference.”

I don’t know Someone Else, but he obviously knows about me. 

I have no problem that people know about me. After all, I voluntarily outed myself in the amateur radio world, but was the “(really a he)” necessary?

I was annoyed, so I asked Someone Else that very question in a private email. So far, I have not received a reply.

Source: NameBrandWigs

Eddie Shields femulating on stage in Casa Valentina