How did you make out?

By Paula Gaikowski

Friday, Stana posted my article of memories, an archive of sort that chronicled my journey over the years dealing with this special gift that we have. One of those memories generated a request for more details about making out at a Halloween party when I was dressed as a girl.

This is something that for years I pushed down and away and didn’t want to remember or acknowledge. When I started dating and then married, I made it a point to consciously forget about it. Now at 63-years-old, years of therapy and self-acceptance, I can look back at the event with pleasant thoughts.

So, let’s go back in time to 1979, Hahn Air Base, Germany. A married couple from my workplace was having their big annual Halloween party at their house off base. We were a young crowd, older teens, 20’s, some 30’s, very much into partying. 

On the night shift, costumes were discussed and when boyfriends and husbands rejected the idea, I happily volunteered to go as a girl with just enough insincere resistance. At 19-years-old, I was a size 14-16 and could not wait to wear the Air Force blue skirt suit that women wore on duty.

If you know my story, I was no stranger to crossdressing at this age and really didn’t need any encouragement or help. One of my female co-workers was a happy helper and loaned a uniform. I made a covert trip to the Base BX to purchase bra, panties, pantyhose and a slip and to a German store in town, a red lipstick.

Over to Linda’s apartment the afternoon of the party to “get ready,” I remember feeling so proud that Linda was impressed with the proficiency and aptitude that I had in getting dressed in women’s clothes and putting on makeup. (I had spent years after school using my mom’s make-up and trying on her clothes.) 

As Femulations go, this was a good one. I liked the way I looked, considering my inexperience in dressing up fully to pass. 

The party itself was a raucous affair, ranging anywhere from 30-50 people. I had a great time, playing along with the innuendo and crude comments. I reveled in and relished the attention and felt so feminine. Now remember, this is Germany and the Mosel Valley, beer and wine! By midnight, those of us left were all very buzzed.

A small group had gathered down in the basement, a side room at the end of the evening. We were all chatting, laughing as the night wound down. Then it was quiet and I was alone with a guy who I had been talking to at different times throughout the night. We started talking about my costume, crossdressing, drag shows, and I remember specifically he asked me how it felt to wear pantyhose? My inhibitions thinned by alcohol, I replied “Great, Silky and smooth!” 

Two lustful and lascivious 19-year-olds, one ravenous for the feel of a woman, the other desiring to feel like a woman. Now alone in the dark, thousands of miles from home, both drunk. 

His hand skimmed my leg, soon it was up under my skirt. “If you want me to stop, tell me now,” he whispered.

I was stunned, wanting to shriek and run, however, another part me wanted this, just a few seconds more I thought. He grabbed at my bra, I sighed, He pushed me backward and we’re lying down, a light kiss, then another, an embrace, this feels wonderful. Then as quickly as it started, it ends. I’m sitting alone and the night is ending. What just happened?

For years, I refused to think about that night buried away in the corners of my mind. I was young, confused and even ashamed of what happened. It has taken me years to accept and understand who I am. Now I take it out of that special hiding place, a treasured curio and share it with my sisters and community here at Femulate. 

Source: ShopBop

Another femulator out and about acclimating society to pretty men in pretty clothes.

Grandpa’s Femulation

Paula Gaikowski shares another ephemeral femulating memory.

While the My Three Sons episode “Spring Will Be a Little Late,” had a weighty and thoughtful impact on me, there was an episode of The Munsters titled “Lily Munster, Girl Model” that was delightfully cute, but not as serious.

Lily wants to do something with her spare time and she finds a job as a model. Herman gets angry and jealous because he believes that all the men will admire her. Using his magic potions, Grandpa turns into a woman, in order to help Herman make Lily jealous. So Grandpa goes down to the dungeon mixes up a potion and with a puff of smoke, there is a gorgeous blonde standing there. Of course, the actress (Nine Simpson) playing the transformed Grandpa has Grandpa’s voice.

Of course, Lily sees this woman with Herman and becomes insanely jealous, but it gets all sorted out in the end. The best part comes at the very end when Eddie appears coming up from the dungeon, now looking like the cutest 10-year-old girl in the world. A pretty young actress stands there in a frilly party dress with Eddie’s booming voice.

“Serves you right for playing in Grandpa’s dungeon,” admonishes mother Lily.

Eddie in a panic cries, “But what am I going to do Grandpa? I have a baseball game in one hour!”

Grandpa shakes his head and says, “Well, I guess you have to learn to pitch underhand!”

To which I remember thinking, “I would love to learn to pitch under hand!”

Yet Another Ephemeral Femulating Memory

Marta Kirsten (right) as Peggy/Pig. Marta
later played Judy Robinson on Lost In Space.

Today, Paula Gaikowski brings back one of her esphemeral femulating memories.

If you’re a baby boomer, you'll remember watching My Three Sons.

I will never forget the impact of an episode titled “Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year.”  Robbie had a new friend named “Pig,” who was rough around the edges and the best mechanic in town. Robbie’s world is turned upside down when “Pig,” who is a really a tomboy, finds her feminine side and puts on a dress and perfume and now wants to be called "Peggy."

I was amazed by this and identified so well with Peggy. She was tired of all that masculine veneer and wanted to express the girl within.

What captivated me most was I thought Pig was really a boy and then became Peggy. I’m not sure if the writers clued the viewers in as to Pig’s true gender in the beginning. If they did it went undetected by me.

In the end, Peggy appears in the prettiest and most feminine dress. As Robbie takes her hand to escort her to the dance, he says, “Wow, you sure look pretty. I guess you being a girl ain’t all that bad.” 

Peggy smiled with feminine grace and movement answers, “Oh, why thank you Robbie." (sigh)

Keep those ephemeral femulating memories coming!

Another Ephemeral Femulation Memory

The People's Choice was an NBC television situation comedy starring Jackie Cooper and a basset hound named Cleo. The show ran from 1955 through 1958.

As a youngster, I saw many episodes in rerun during the daytime hours in the late 1950s and early 1960s. One episode, "The Male Ego," which aired originally on February 20, 1958, is my earliest ephemeral femulation memory.

Here is a brief summary of that episode from an online The People's Choice episode guide.

Sock, a realtor, played by Jackie Cooper, "loses the sale of a house because the prospective buyer's wife dislikes a minor detail. Convinced that women are beginning to take over the world, Sock goes to sleep and has nightmare on the subject."

The episode guide does not describe the nightmare, but I remember it. Note that I have not seen this episode in over 50 years and I only saw it once, so some of my memories may not be right on the money, but here is what I recall:

Sock's nightmare takes place in a world where the women are taking over and are in the process of acclimating men to their rule. All the women wear pants suits and they are shown forcing reluctant men to enter a transformation booth, which "refines" their personalities and their attire.

When they exit the booth, the men act effeminately and wear mini-skirted outfits. As Sock enters the booth, he seeks help from his loyal canine companion, Cleo, but she refuses to help him because Cleo is female and more loyal to the distaff side of civilization rather than her owner. The nightmare ends as Sock exits the booth as a girly-guy in a girly outfit.

That is all I remember, but it left an indelible impression on my impressionable mind back then, just another added twist to my gender identity that began when my mother put me in a dress for my christening at the age one month.

If anyone has any other details concerning this episode of The People's Choice, I would love to hear them. Or better, if anyone has a video recording of that episode, I'd love to borrow it. (I searched high and low and no recordings exist for sale or viewing anywhere I looked.)

And keep those ephemeral femulation memories coming.

Got Ephemeral Femulating Memories?

Starla, the young lady who hunts down femulations in online high school yearbooks for your viewing pleasure, is today’s guest blogger.

With all the time I have spent scouring old yearbooks looking for incidences of “civilian” femulation, I have been thinking about other ephemeral items from the past relating to crossdressing and feminization. Specifically, I thought it might be an interesting feature in your blog to have readers submit memories of long-lost items they may have seen or heard in their younger years, whether print, photo, media or whatever, that made an impression long before our modern age of Internet saturation.

I have three examples from my youth that will provide an idea of the kinds of items I’m talking about. All three made quite an impression on me in my adolescence/teen years, and I would love to be able to see them again!

• An episode of the game show To Tell the Truth circa early 70’s, featured a young man as a guest contestant who, as a joke, had been dressed up by some female friends and entered in a local beauty contest. To their amused surprise, he actually won! The guy and the two “imposters” trying to fool the TTTT panel were all nicely femulated for their appearance on the show. (Note: The Game Show Network has shown some old TTTT episodes, but I do not get GSN,and have no idea whether this episode has ever been rebroadcast. If it does show up, somebody needs to put it on YouTube!)
• A filmed humorous “human interest” item used as filler on a circa mid-70’s newscast (whether network or local, I do not recall) concerning a beauty school hairstyling competition in which they recruited several long-haired males to act as models. There were brief clips of them getting rolled, dried and teased, as well as the quite elaborate finished feminine ‘dos. It appeared like both the stylists and their somewhat embarrassed subjects had a lot of fun!
• This last item appeared in a Sunday newspaper magazine supplement (similar to Parade) in the mid-70’s or thereabouts. Similar to the first item, but this involved a photo contest rather than an in-person pageant. In Britain, a local newspaper sponsored a mail-in beauty contest. Some fun-loving young birds took a male mate, did his hair and makeup like a woman (no clothing involved, as these were headshots only) and submitted his photo under the fake name of “Eileen Hussy.” I recall that his hair was not terribly long, but was sufficient to create a nice feminine teased “bubble” style. While he did not win, he was among the finalists, and the article featured a reprinted excerpt showing “Eileen’s” pic among all the female competitors.

So there you have some of my distant memories of “femulating ephemera.” I’d love to hear those of other readers!

where's Billy?

After I wrote the previous blog entry, "fiddling around," I searched the Internet to find an appropriate image to complement what I wrote and I came up with a photo of a beautiful woman playing a violin.

The woman in the photo reminded me of someone from my youth, my best friend in grammar school, Billy. I think Billy resembles the woman in the photo and vice versa.

I have not seen Billy in over 40 years, so I have no idea what he looks like today, but take the Billy I knew in the early 1960s, put him in drag, and he would be a dead ringer for the woman playing the violin.

I never saw Billy in drag, but I know he dressed as a girl for Halloween at least once and I suspect he is trans.

Billy and I were best friends throughout grammar school. I can't remember how we became friends, but we had a lot in common and that is what probably drew us together. We were both Polish, which was a rare commodity in our neighborhood, we both went to the same church (a Polish parish, needless to say), we were both artists, which put us on the outs with the school's "in crowd," and we both were fascinated in the opposite sex. We had crushes on certain girls, but we both were also scared of them and never did anything about our crushes, at least not in grammar school.

Around puberty, maybe in the 7th or 8th grade, I remember Billy hinting that we dress as girls for Halloween. At that time, I knew something was up with me gender-wise, but I didn't know what and the idea of dressing as a girl for Halloween was very attractive, but I was also in public denial about my gender issues and told Billy that I had no interest in his Halloween costume plans.

I don't remember what I wore for a costume that Halloween, but I do recall that I went out with my usual Halloween trick and treat partner in crime, my other best friend, who lived across the street.

In school the next day, Billy mentioned that he did dress as a girl, he trick and treated at my house and was disappointed that I was not home to see him in his costume. Note that Billy never before trick and treated my house, so he made a special effort that night to show me his girl costume.

Around this same time, I remember that one of us decided that we should adopt girl names (why - I don't know) and for days, he addressed me by my girl name, which was "Susan" and I addressed him by his girl name, which I cannot recall now.

As I mentioned above, we were both artists. He was very good at painting and I was a very good at sketching. As an outlet for my budding trans psyche, I spent a lot of my free time back then sketching males wearing female clothing. I must have killed a forest doing it. One day, Billy mentioned that he had been doing something similar and another day, he showed me some of his sketches. My reaction was to show disinterest.

But my real reaction was fear. I was in uncharted waters; I did not know what was going on with him (or me). I had enough trouble sorting out what was going on with me without having to deal with what was going on with my best friend, so I basically ignored him and I think that was the begiining of the end of a beautiful friendship. We hung out less during our last days in grammar school and ended up going to different high schools and after a few years, we were both out of each others' lives.

I think Billy was reaching out to me. He probably was just as confused as I was and maybe he thought he and his best friend would be better able to work things out as a team rather than solo. If that was the case, he was probably correct and I very much regret not reaching out to him and trying to work out together what the heck was going on. And so it goes.

Over the years, I learned through a mutual friend that Billy got married and lives two towns away, but our mutual friend said nothing about anything trans and I certainly did not ask.

But I often think about Billy and wonder if he really was trans (or was it just my 'magination) and if he ever did anything about it. I often hoped that one day he would show up at my support group and we could become best friends again except that this time we would be girlfriends.

right out of fictionmania*

When I was a kid in the mid-1960s, my mother worked in a discount department store that went out of business long before the arrival of Wal*Marts and K*Marts. Mom worked the 5 to 10 PM shift in the fabrics department, cutting yards of fabric for customers to take home to sew.

Everyday, my Dad, who worked 7 AM to 3:30 PM, would send us kids to bed around 9:30 PM and then drove across town to pick up my mother from work. During that drive, we were supposed to go to sleep. Sometimes I fell asleep, sometimes I did not.

On those nights I did not fall asleep, I would hear my parents come home and listen to them exchange stories about their day. I don't remember many of their stories, but I do remember a story concerning one of my mother's customers. Evidently, this woman was a regular customer, became friendly with my mother, and confided with her that all the fabrics and dress patterns she had been purchasing were for outfits she sewed for her son. The boy was about my age and preferred dressing as a girl; his mother willingly complied with his wishes. At one point, the woman brought her son to the store dressed as a girl and my mother remarked that he was a very pretty girl.

As you can imagine, this story impressed me. I wished I was that boy. I wondered if my mother would do the same for me.

My mother was a whiz at the sewing machine and sewed outfits for her and my sister. I am sure if I confided in her, she would have sewn a few dresses for me, too.

* www.fictionmania.com