Photographing My Self

I take photos of myself nearly every time I present as a woman. I do it for two reasons:

1. To feed this blog. (The blog is hungry for photos and it must be fed.)
2. To see if the outfit I am wearing is good, bad, or ugly. Photos are more revealing than a mirror. What I see in the mirror often looks different in a photograph. Photographing my fashion faux pas allows me to make adjustments, for example, put on a girdle so I don’t look so fat.

Self photography is an art. I probably discard 4 out of 5 of the self-photos I take because there is something technically wrong with them (usually related to focus, framing, lighting, or worse, because I look fat).

I use my iPhone 14 Pro for most of my self-photography. The quality of the iPhone photos is very good in my opinion and it is hard to beat the convenience.

I use the self-timer function in the iPhone’s Camera app for a lot of my self-photography. Set the timer for 10 seconds, click the Camera’s shutter button, walk into the Camera’s field of vision, pose, smile, watch the birdie and wait for the Camera to snap a shot.

In a pinch, I lean the iPhone against something to take a self-timed photo. But most of the time, I use a small tripod designed to hold the iPhone. The tripod has bendable legs, so I can use it in diverse settings.

That covers the hardware, but what about the software, that is, the model in my selfies?

I learned that my best photos are ones in which I smile.

Over the years, I have seen thousands of photos of transgirls and I can never understand why some girls look so unhappy in their photos. They are living their dream, although sometimes only momentarily and they should be very happy about it, yet some of them look like they just downed a spoonful of castor oil!

So, smile and smile naturally, not in a forced manner. I used to have a forced smile in my photos, but I worked on it and now my smiles look natural and the results are much better!

I am also becoming more adept at posing for my photos.

1. I tilt my chin up slightly and extend my neck forward to avoid the double chin.
2. Instead of a straight-on shot, I turn my shoulders slightly to the left or right. And pose with one leg in front of the other, for example, by crossing my legs at the ankle.
3. With legs crossed, sometimes I will put one hand on my hip. This elbow-jut pose results in a ladylike ballerina effect.
4. To accentuate my legs, I thrust one hip to the side, stretch out my opposing leg as far as it will go and point my toes.

Taking selfies as you pose in a mirror is tricky.

1. For starters, shut off the flash, otherwise your selfie will be nothing but flash reflected in the mirror and that is not the result you want unless you are Barry Allen.
2. Take mirror selfies while looking at your reflection in the mirror rather than looking at the trigger button on your smart phone. This is simple with the iPhone because you can shoot a photo by clicking one of the iPhone’s volume buttons, which is a lot easier than trying to click the virtual trigger button on the iPhone’s screen.
3. Before showing off your mirror selfies, use photo-editing software to flip the image horizontally so that you look natural and not the opposite, which is what a mirror displays.

I am a work-in-progress and so is my self-photography, but practice, practice, practice and someday my photos will do justice to a complete woman.

(This post is an update of a post that originally appeared in June 2015.)

Wearing Posse

Before and After

Wear a dress!

March 6, next Monday, is National Dress Day when we celebrate the most versatile and fun article of clothing there is — the dress! 

Fashion designer Ashley Lauren founded the day to help pay homage to dresses and the magical moments that happen when we wear them. “I remember the dresses I wore to my prom, first job interview, first date, competing in a pageant, my first red carpet event, the list goes on.”  (In our case, remembering the first dress we wore or the dress we wore the first time we were out among the civilians.)

“This is a fun day to cherish and celebrate those memories.”

The simplest way to celebrate National Dress Day is to wear a dress! Because the day falls during March, it may be cold where you live and maybe you’ve been wearing pants for months. Use the day as an excuse to get out your favorite dress — no matter how springy — put on some leggings or tights and make new memories in your favorite garment.

I hope you will wear a dress next Monday and if you do, take a selfie, send it to me and I will post it here to celebrate National Dress Day online.

By the way, next Wednesday is International Women’s Day, so if you can’t wear a dress on Monday, wear one on Wednesday (when I will be wearing my birthday dress). 

Even better, wear a dress on Monday and Wednesday!

I plan to wear a dress on those days. But it is too early to wear heels. Everything I’ve read says that you have to wait three months after knee replacement surgery before you can wear high heels. I guess I could pose for a few selfies in heels, but I won’t be hoofing anywhere in stilettos for awhile.

My recovery from surgery progresses. I no longer need a cane to get around, however, for my own sense of security, I use a cane when I am going down stairs (although I have navigated the stairs a few times when I forgot my cane).

I had my first rehab session on Friday and the therapist says I am recovering fast, so it won’t be long (yeah) before I will be able to go out en femme again.

Wearing Millie

Lilo Wanders, German professional femulator

Femulating Foto Fun

Recovering from knee replacement surgery, I have been spending a lot of time browsing the Internet when I am not doing physical therapy. One thing leads to another on the Internet and on Wednesday,  I explored websites that transform photos of males to female and vice versa. I ended up on the gender swap filter page of the AI Lab Wondershare website. 

You simply upload a photo to the website and after a second or two or three, the website displays your gender swap. (The website permits you to make ten swaps. After ten, you have to register to continue swapping.)

I uploaded a handful of recent photos and the gender swaps were interesting. I could definitely see the male me in the resulting female swaps. Here are two of the best swaps:

Then I tried something different. I uploaded some photos of moi en femme and the results were amazing. (I’d do the results!) Here are the best – blond, brunette and the redhead image at the top of this post:

In my opinion, the redhead swap was best at retaining my male visage, although I do see me in all the photos that I swapped.

One lesson I learned from all the swaps: I’d probably look more feminine if I thinned my eyebrows more than I have already thinned them.

Anyway, this online app is very addictive. You can spend hours swapping your gender. Have fun!

Wearing Black Halo

Christian De Sica femulating in the 2018 Italian film Amici Come Prima (Friends Like Before).

Say “Cheese”

How many crossdressers does it take to change a light bulb?

Three – One to climb the ladder to change the bulb, one to hold the ladder and one to photograph the event.

Whenever I am out en femme, I bug people – friends, acquaintances and strangers alike to take my photo. My excuse is “to feed the blog.”

You readers want to see photos of girls like us out doing things in public, so my reason for getting photographed is legitimate. But that is only part of it; there are other reasons.

I like to see how I look in the photograph. Does the outfit I put together look good together or did I err grievously in my fashion judgment?

Do I pass as a woman? At least, if I pass in the photograph that increases my chances of passing in public.

And when I am not en femme, I like to have a photo on hand of myself en femme to remind me of the good days. That is why I had a photo on my desk at work of myself en femme.

(It is funny how nobody ever commented about the photo on my desk at work. Frequently, visitors to my cubicle would look over my shoulder at that photo, which sat on the desk behind me, but no one ever said a word. I wish I could have read their minds.)

Wearing Rue La La

Glenn Tryon (left) femulating in the 1925 film Madame Sans Jane.

Still Too Good To Be True

There is a lot of trans stuff on the Internet that is the product of people’s imagination, wishful thinking and Photoshop.

Spend a few minutes viewing a few trans pages on Pinterest and you will see photos of purported transwomen who look too good to be true. Same thing on YouTube. 

For example, the photo on the right was on Pinterest purporting to be a young fellow en femme, when in fact, the “fellow” is a cisgender female, not a femulator.

I smell a rat when the whole video has a musical soundtrack that masks what is really going on; you cannot hear any conversations that might reveal the truth, nor can you hear the voices of the “girls.” Another giveaway is when the video does not permit comments (no news is good news).

A little research can also reveal fabrications. A video from an academy in Peru showed male students getting dressed to kill as girls to pose for the school’s fund-raising calendar.

I was suspicious because the calendar was dated 2014, but the video did not appear until 2016, not to mention that the whole video had a masking musical soundtrack and comments were disabled. 

I did a little Googling and found a handful of other videos from the academy. Turned out that the boys in those videos were youngsters, whereas the “boys” in the calendar video were high school or college-aged.

This issue came up again recently when a reader commented about an impressive male-to-female transformation video on YouTube and I called it out as a fake. 

Another reader wrote questioning my conclusion, “...did he hire about 75 people for this ‘phony’ ceremony? The person who was his mother is really an actress? She is shown with him in both male and female mode. Are you implying that the girl is not the boy but a female?”

My conclusion was that the video was originally a shoot of a girl’s Quinceañera and that the person faking the video edited and added captions to tell his “story.” 

The tells:

👎You never see the boy being transformed from a boy to a girl; you just see the finishing touches being applied to the girl’s makeup. 

👎When the boy appears next to his grandfather, he is noticeably shorter than grandpa, but when the girl dances with grandpa, she is noticeably taller. No high heels are that high!

👎A musical soundtrack masks the whole video so you cannot hear what is being said. If the video was really what it was purporting to be (i.e., a boy’s Quinceañera), it would have been interesting to hear some of the things being said about this role reversing event, for example, the mother’s introduction of her transformed son.

By the way, I have been guilty of publishing trans fabrications, too. I try to weed out the fakes, but sometimes I miss the obvious. For example, an old post about boys wearing bras contained references that revealed its obvious fakery. When a few readers pointed out what I had missed, I removed the fake immediately. And just yesterday, I deleted a photo that had an obvious head replacement – not so obvious to me until someone alerted me to the fakery.

Other times, people have written first person accounts that have elements right out of trans fiction. I took the writers at their word, but some readers wrote to me that the stories were “too good to be true.” Without proof, I find myself between a rock and a hard place, so I let those posts live on in infamy with a promise to myself be more careful in the future.

Wearing Unique Vintage

Candid Camera

I have a lot of photos. I took most of them myself. Others were taken by friends, acquaintances and strangers who I imposed upon to take my photo.

The vast majority were posed photos, that is, I was aware that I was being photographed, so I smiled and tried to look as ladylike as possible. A few were candid photos – no posing, no forced smiling, no nothing, just me caught on “film” au naturel.

Despite all the effort I put into looking my best in posed photos, I look OK in about one in five photos. Or maybe it’s more like one in ten. Or one in twenty... 

One of my best photos was a candid shot taken by my friend Jamie at the Transgender Lives Conference. I volunteered to staff the conference’s registration table and Jamie caught me while I was going over some paperwork related to job.

When I posted the photo here, it received rave reviews. The consensus was that I looked so naturally feminine in that photo. 

What gets me is that I wasn’t even trying!

Wearing New York & Company

Enzo Cerusico femulating in the 1979 Italian film Scusi, Lei È Normale?
You can view the film on dailymotion.

Throwback Thursday: My Quest

Another post from the past – nearly nine years ago, December 14, 2011.

In 1983, I purged everything related to femulating.

Not only did I discard replaceable items like clothing, wigs, makeup, etc., I also discarded irreplaceable items, primarily my collection of photographs. As a result, I no longer own a single photo of myself en femme prior to age 32.

Starla has been scouring the Internet searching online high school yearbooks for photos of high school femulations. She has sent me her findings and I have posted some of them here in the past.

Last week, it occurred to me that there were yearbook photos of me en femme (at the ripe old age of 25) attending my law school’s Halloween party. I lost the yearbook (it went out with everything else in the great purge of 1983), but I wondered if Starla could find it online.

I asked her, but after searching her resources, she responded that she could not find it. She explained that the majority of online yearbooks are of the high school variety; only a few college and graduate school yearbooks are online. She suggested contacting my law school.

I phoned the law school library and asked if they had the yearbook in their stacks. They checked and as it turned out, they had it! They welcomed me to visit the library to view it and photocopy anything I wanted.

Wednesday, I dressed en femme. I wore my black dress with the sequins pattern at the neckline that I bought from Ideeli, nude pantyhose, my new Nine West patent red and black Mary Janes, a new matching red bag from ShoeDazzle, earrings, bracelet, and watch. I topped everything off with my white fake fur coat and was off to Springfield to visit my alma mater.

(I might mention here that although I graduated from law school, I never practiced in the profession – not for one second. My first love was writing and while I waited for the results of the bar exam, I got a job as a writer and never looked back.)

An hour later, I arrived at the law school, parked the Subaru and walked to the school entrance.

There was a security guard station at the entrance. The library is not open to the general public; only students, alumni, faculty, and attorneys can gain admittance. I explained to the guard that I was an alumnus and she asked me for a photo ID. As I extracted my driver’s license from my purse, I told the guard that I was trans and that I looked a little different than the photo on the ID.

She said, “You're not the first.”

After she logged me in, I walked down the hall to the library. It was deserted. Final exams were underway and I assumed most of the students were in the classrooms filling up blue books. (Do they still use blue books?)

The library staff had set the yearbook aside for me, so they did not have to search the stacks again. I just had to fill out a simple form to borrow the book.

I found a comfy chair in the library lounge to cuddle up with the book and recall the past. I was sure that there were two candid photos of me attending that Halloween party 35 years ago en femme and I was a correct.

I wish I had my computer scanner to copy the photos, but all I had access to was a copying machine. I did my best adjusting the darkness to capture the best image and the result accompanies this post.

By the way, you find me in the photos wearing my first wig (purchased at a local Frederick’s of Hollywood store), my mother’s skirt (that I borrowed surreptitiously), my own boy mode sweater, a blouse of unknown origin and my first pair of Mary Janes.

And I was so young – so young that it brings tears to my eyes!

My Wednesday en femme did not end at the copying machine in my alma mater's law library.

As I exited the law school, I asked the security guard, who had been very personable so far, if she would take my photo. She was happy to do so and was even willing to go outdoors to take it.

It was a beautiful December day, so we decided to do the photoshoot outdoors. The photo accompanying this post is from that shoot.

I thanked her for her hospitality and left the school. I drove home and my day en femme was over.

All the people (male and female) who I encountered were polite, often friendly and always helpful when I needed their assistance. I don’t know if I passed or not and whether passing had anything to do with their reaction to me.

I have reached a stage in my life in which passing is not a deal breaker.

When I prepare to go out, I do my best to be passable. I try to be impeccable in my dress and makeup and make sure that there is not a hair out of place, but once I am out the door, I stop being concerned about passing.

I used to be very shy when I was en femme fearing that everyone I encountered would read me. If they seemed ok with me, then I would open up and be more like myself, but if they were not ok with me, I would get out of Dodge as quickly as possible

Now, I am personable to everyone I encounter. I don't wait to see how they react to me. I believe that by being personable and outgoing, it surprises people and they react positively whether they read me or not.

And I don't even think about it. That's the way I am in boy mode and now that I am free of the shackles of passing, I can also be myself in girl mode.

Wearing New York & Company

A Liverpool lad femulating in a 2018 stage production of Bugsy Malone

The Photoshop Challenge

In my Mothers and Sons post, I wished I had a photo of my mother with me en femme. Meg threw down the gauntlet, “You're pretty good at photoshop. You should be able to make that picture.”

I accepted her challenge.

I had plenty of photos of moi, but I had no idea how many photos I had of Mom. After going through the family photo albums, it turned out not many.

I chose two photos for the effort. One, which I believe was her high school graduation photo taken in a photo studio, was from around 1940. The second, taken atop the Empire State Building, was from 1949.

The challenge was trying to make my relatively current photos look like photos from the mid-20th Century.

Turned out that the 1940 photo was easier to match than the 1949 photo. It took about an hour to achieve the results that appear in the previous Femulator slot. The Empire State Building photo accompanying this post took over three times as

long and I am still not satisfied with the results, but the effort taught me some more about using Photoshop.

Wearing Venus

L is for this Lovely Lass from Lee High School in Columbus, Mississippi. Her perfect hairdo, makeup, figure and accessories gave her away as “Not a Civilian?”

Four of a Kind

Woden's Day

Giving Thanks Dept.

I want to publicly thank my readers who have contributed to my Coffee Break fund. Your contributions help to keep this blog free of advertisements and gives me an incentive to keep on blogging. So, thank-you!

Google This Dept.

Recently, Mikki wrote, “I love all those clips from films you share with us. I have a bunch of TG/CD films and see items on Femulate that I haven't heard of. Do you have a special source for these photos/films? Can you share it with me?”

I replied, “Occasionally, readers alert me to femulations they encounter watching films and television, but I find most of them myself using Google.”

Google searches for “crossdressing films” or “drag films” sometimes turns up something new, but usually I use a femulation I know to bait Google into giving up other femulations. For example, if I Google “tony curtis crossdressing,” Google comes back with a load of images of Curtis and Jack Lemmon crossdressing in the film Some Like It Hot, as well as images of other actors crossdressing in other films and on television. I will be familiar with most of Google's finds, but there is almost always an image or two I don't recognize, which becomes new fodder for the Femulator slot, like the film femulation below.

Meanwhile, the image at the top of the post is another Google find, but there was no information about its source. Looks like it's from a television show geared towards school-aged kids, but I could be wrong. Can anybody solve this mystery femulation?

My Quest Dept.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that after my purge in 1983, I no longer owned a single photo of myself en femme prior to age 32... or so I thought.

Fiona reminded me that years ago, I recalled that there were photos of me en femme for Halloween at age 25 that appeared in my school's yearbook. The yearbook was lost in the purge, but you can read about my quest for those yearbook photos in this post from December 2011.

Wearing Venus

Max Hansen (center) femulates Gitta Alpar (right) in the 1932 German film Die, oder Keine.
(View a pertinent clip from the film here.)