I became my own role model

Vincent McDoom

My mother was my first role model. Growing up, I wanted to be just like her.

I also modeled myself after a long list of tall, beautiful film and television actresses I wanted to emulate.

Then there were my transgender role models... all those gals who were completely open about being trans. I am referring to the likes of Michael/Miqqi Gilbert and Grayson Perry, who are well-known in their respective fields as guys, but occasionally (or often) present as gals and damn the torpedoes. And Vincent McDoom and Vladimir Luxuria, who present as women full-time, but are open about the fact that their sex is male.

I wanted to be just like them when I grew up.

I will be celebrating my 68th birthday in a couple of weeks, so I guess I grew up.

And like my transgender role models, I am open about being trans, I am well-known in my field and I often present as a gal.

I did not realize it until now, but I guess I succeeded in being just like my transgender role models.

Wearing Bergdorf Goodman (Source: New York magazine)

Vladimir Luxuria

My First Emulation-Worthy Femulator

As a young femulator back in the 1960s, I did not have any femulators to emulate.

On the big screen, there were Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot, but they dressed in 1920s flapper styles ― an attractive style, but difficult for this young girl to emulate during the Jackie era.

On the small screen, Milton Berle made an occasional appearance en femme, but his femulations were strictly for laughs; they were clownish and often ugly ― nothing this girl wanted to copy.

The New York newspapers occasionally had ads displaying professional femulators at Club 82 and I so wanted to dress in showgirl drag like the girls at 82, but let's be practical.

There were no femulators that dressed like women dressed in the mid-1960s... no one I could look up to for inspiration.

Finally, one evening watching television in 1964, I saw a great femulation of a mid-1960s woman on a new episode of The Munsters of all places! In that episode, character actor Cliff Norton played a cop who disguised himself as a woman (see photo) in order to trap a guy who was accosting women in the park at night.

Norton's femulation left an impression on me for a very long time. He was not a beautiful woman, but he passed and more importantly, he was dressed like a mid-1960s woman in the styles I knew and loved and wanted to wear.

(The title of The Munsters episode is "A Walk on the Mild Side" and you can view it online in a number of locations; just search on "'The Munsters' 'A Walk on the Mild Side'" and you will find it. The femulation occurs about 19 minutes into the episode in case you want to fast-forward to it.)

(Caveat Emptor: This is a repurposed post from the past.)

Wearing Intermix.

Alex Wetter, male womenswear model