I’m from New Jersey, and of course a big Bruce Springsteen fan. I remember friends coming home from trips “down the shore” and playing the 8-track tape “Greetings from Asbury Park.” I was hooked and continued to be to this day.
The other night alone with my earbuds, a bottle of Chablis, and about 100 Bruce songs I sat out on the deck and listened alone with my thoughts.
Back in 2008 as many of you know from reading my posts, I came out of my shell and started going out in public as Paula. Business trips took me all over the country and world. I was able to experience so many of my dreams as a woman. I attended dinners, classes, concerts, I shopped and socialized. I was able to spend 3-day weekends living as a woman. I began therapy and was able to talk about and come to terms with my transgender nature. A bad back in 2018 grounded me and then the pandemic grounded us all.
A little know Springsteen song “Stolen Car” resonated with me the other night. It’s about someone who’s stuck in life with an unsolvable problem. If you’re brave enough, pour yourself a cold one, grab your earbuds, and I’ll let you peek inside my head. Click the title for a video to the song.
I met a little girl and I settled down In a little house out on the edge of town We got married, and swore we'd never part Then little by little we drifted from each other's hearts
(Getting married will make this all go away, it will cure me.)
At first I thought it was just restlessness That would fade as time went by and our love grew deep In the end it was something more I guess That tore us apart and made us weep
(In the end it was something more, my being transgender that caused us pain)
And I'm driving a stolen car Down on Eldridge Avenue Each night I wait to get caught But I never do
(I go out as a woman, everywhere, and I become purposely careless, I’m waiting to get caught, for drastic and seismic change, but it doesn’t happen)
And I'm driving a stolen car On a pitch black night
(I’m stealing away as a woman, taking something, I want but they say I can’t have, I am isolated with my secret, in the pitch-black night.)
And I'm telling myself I'm gonna be alright
(Someday, I’ll be a woman I’ll be alright I tell myself)
But I ride by night and I travel in fear
(I do this all-in secret, metaphorically at night, and I live everyday fearing it’s going to come crashing down.)
I hope you are enjoying the revived flickr Yearbooks Collection. There have been nearly one million views since the Collection went live on Monday, so it seems to be a big hit.
Since I have unlimited storage, I also posted some personal photos on flickr. They are under three categories: Stana Cosmopolite, Stana Fashionista and Stana Office Girl. I will probably add more categories in the near future.
You can access all the contents of the Femulate Image Library using the links in the blog’s sidebar (under the heading Flickr Image Library.)
Wearing Joie
Lovely Phillip Sacks struts his stuff at Downey (California) High School. A sample from our flickr Yearbooks Collection.
Reader contributions to the Femulate Coffee Break! fund were sufficient to cover the Flickr Pro annual fee. So I subscribed to Flickr Pro and rebuilt the collection of photos that Starla Trimm culled from online high school yearbooks. The photos represent womanless school events from 1929 to the present – mostly womanless beauty pageants, Halloween festivities, gender bender days and stage productions.
The 4500+ photos are arranged by the name of the school and sorted into 26 albums, A to Z, but not X (there is also an Unknown Location folders for a handful of images whose location are not known).
There are some duplicates in the collection and I am slowly weeding them out.
Anyway, without further ado, click here to access the Yearbook albums.
And thank you again.
Revisiting Henri
Tropical storm Henri was a bust. Contrary to the weather forecasts, it never reached hurricane status and remained a tropical storm as it spent most of Sunday working its way across the Southern New England dumping just 1.8 inches of rain on my weather station. Its winds were not bad and we never lost power, although other parts of the state were not so lucky.
Wearing J.McLaughlin
Femulating at Pike-Delta-York High School in Delta, Ohio. A sample from our flickr Yearbooks collection.
In the previous post, my “Not a Civilian?” run through the alphabet concluded with the letter W. Letters Q, X, Y and Z were no-shows because there are not many schools with names that start with those letters. As a result, the pickins were slim and no one qualified as not a civilian.
Perusing the 4,745 school yearbook images collected by Starla, I discovered a few things.
– A number of schools held Halloween dances where all the attendees showed up crossdressed.
– Starla’s images included 37 male faculty members crossdressed for Halloween. About half looked like “men in dresses,” but the other half put in some extra effort, which tripped my not-a-civilian radar. Photo captions indicated that a handful crossdressed on other Halloweens, which lit up my not-a-civilian radar like a Christmas tree!
It was not an easy task selecting each “Not a Civilian?” ...so difficult that on a few occasions, I could not select just one non-civilian. In those cases, I posted multiple non-civilians. So rather than stop cold turkey with the letter W, over the next few weeks, I will post more images of those who were close to being selected “Not a Civilian?” during the first run through the alphabet.
Only 148 days until Halloween!
Wearing Madeleine
Mr. (or is it Ms.) Phillips is on the faculty at Wasson High School
A femulator at Hanford High School (Richland, WA) in 1981
I killed my flickr account.
Because of the vast quantity of images I had posted on flickr, I needed a “Pro” account, which only cost $25 per year when I signed up for it back in 2015. Last year, the price increased to $50 per year.
Friday, I received a PayPal receipt indicating that flickr was now charging $7 per month ($84 per year). That was the last straw and I killed my Pro account as quick as a Playboy bunny.
I actually had only a few dozen personal photos on the site, but I also had nearly 5,000 photos of womanless events that Starla culled from online high school yearbooks. I hope to find a new, less expensive home for those images real soon now.
Source: Beyond the Rack
A womanless wedding, circa 1910, put on by the Boys Club in Waterbury, Connecticut. Not the greatest femulations, but I am posting the image for two reasons: (1) Waterbury is my hometown and (2) womanless weddings in Connecticut were rare – in fact, this is the only Connecticut womanless wedding I am aware of.
“That which we call a rose,” Shakespeare famously wrote, “by any other name would smell as sweet.” Well, perhaps. But if a rose were instead called a “fibbertywhatsis,” I doubt it would have quite the same romantic cachet.
Would John Wayne still be seen as a tough guy if he’d used his birth name of Marion Morrison? Would Cheryl Ladd (the “Shemp” of Charlie’s Angels) have had as successful a career as Cheryl Stoppelmoor? (A name that looks like a typo.) Would Gerald Ford have been more or less respected as President Leslie King?
Names matter. They have power. The wrong name can be an albatross around one’s neck; the right name can be one’s ticket to success.
Rightly or wrongly, we have a history of stereotyping people by their names. Remember when names like Bruce or Percy were associated with gay men? (They sound a bit fey when lisped and of course, all gay men lisp, right? The malarkey we used to believe.)
Some believe that your birth name is prophetic and can shape the direction your life and career will take. When you think of a woman named Bambi or Brandy or Barbie, do you envision a future CEO or an exotic dancer? Do you think a young lady named Ethel, Gertrude or Hortense is likely to win Miss America?
Therefore, many people change their name to try to minimize such problems. And not only in the direction you’d assume. In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People,” a woman named Joy rebels against her saccharine, polyanna Mother by changing hers to the ugliest name she could think of: Hulga.
Obviously, names are an issue for trans folk. Someone born male and transitioning to female can hardly keep their male birth name unless it happens to be traditionally neuter/unisex. And even then, one might want to change it just to have a clean break with the past. Even if one is not legally changing their name, the right chosen name can be of tremendous significance to one’s self-image, and how others see them.
Many MTF trans people simply take on a feminized form of their male name. Joe beomes Joanne or Joanna; Dennis becomes Denise; Robert becomes Roberta. It’s the simplest path; it’s easy to remember and easier for others who knew you from back when to get used to. I’ve heard some say that their parents told them something like “We named you Brian; if you had been a girl, we would have called you Brianna” and deem it appropriate to take on that name. Those who do have a unisex name may retain it, but change the spelling (Chris to Kris, Kim to Kym, etc.).
On the other hand, there are those who want nothing to do with their birth name, feminized or otherwise. Perhps that name is just too negatively associated with their pre-transition life, so they go in a completely different direction. Some choose a name that seems to fit the image they have of themselves as a female. Others choose a name that has some special meaning or significance. Canary Conn, in her autobiography (the first trans-penned book I ever read – it made quite an impression) relates how she was often mistaken for a girl when very young and how one day a woman heard her singing and exclaimed to her mother, ”She sings like a canary.”
Myself, I’ve gone down both paths. For a few years when I was working as a female, but had not yet legally changed my name (in fact, I never did), it seemed simpler just to retain my birth name, but ask that it be rendered as just an initial in my work record. So, the people with whom I worked knew me by the femme variant of that name, payroll would issue a check with just the first initial and I could deposit it in my bank account bearing my male name and no one would be the wiser.
But in my non-professional life, I have always been Starla, to myself and later, to others, at least since the age of 14 when I entered high school. There I encountered someone who made a strong impression on me. To paraphrase Francis Pharcellus Church, “Yes, Virginia, there was a Starla.”
She was one grade ahead of me, a Junior to my Sophmore. A baton-twirling majorette during marching band/football season and a clarinetist in concert band. So even though we rarely had an academic class in common, our music-related activities kept her in my sight and on my mind a lot.
Starla was beautiful. Not a garish over-the-top beauty, but a very quiet, understated, natural beauty. She would not have been the first girl that caught your eye when you entered the room, but before long, you’d be hard-pressed to take yout eyes off of her. She was lithe, statuesque (about 5-10), with long silky hair that came right out of a Prell ad and a flawless complexion. (To put makeup on that face would have been a crime.)
No pants for this girl. Except on the coldest Central Florida mornings (meaning maybe 4-5 days a year), she came to school smartly attired in pretty patterned mini-dresses. (The better to show off those long, gorgeous legs.)
Moreover, she had a quiet, but delightful personality. Smiling came easy to her and she showed a kindness towards everyone she met. You could not find one person in school that had anything bad to say about Starla. Needless to say, she was totally out of my league. But I don’t doubt that had I screwed up the courage to ask her on a date, she would have turned me down in the gentlest, sweetest way possible.
Of course, I never even considered asking her out. Not just because she was a goddess and I was a fat little class clown, but because she confused me. Yes, I idolized her, but at that stage of my life, when hormones were starting to rage and I was first beginning to question my gender identity, I found myself constantly vacillating between wanting to be with her and wanting to be her. I’m sure many of you can identify with that.
So, that’s how I came to call myself Starla. I liked the name; it was unusual (still fairly uncommon today) and somewhat exotic without being too hippy-dippy. (It was the 70’s – lot of strange names floating around back then.)
How about you? Did you choose a femme name that was unrelated to your birth name? If so, how did you come to choose it? Was there a person or incident in your life that made that name significant? Or did it just seem like a name befitting the woman you wanted to be?
P.S. Had this doll and its commercial been around 20 years earlier, I might have chosen another name after all. That doll’s creepy robotic voice would have freaked me out!
At a busy bus stop, a beautiful young crossdresser wearing a tight leather skirt was waiting for a bus.
As the bus stopped and it was his turn to get on, he became aware that his skirt was too tight to allow his leg to come up to the height of the first step of the bus.
Slightly embarrassed and with a quick smile to the bus driver, he reached behind to unzip his skirt a little, thinking that this would give him enough slack to raise his leg.
He tried to again take the step, only to discover that he couldn’t.
So, a little more embarrassed, he once again reached behind to unzip his skirt a little more and for the second time attempted the step. Once again, much to his embarrassment he could not raise his leg.
With a little smile to the driver, he again reached behind to unzip a little more and again was unable to take the step.
About this time, a large guy who was standing behind the crossdresser picked him up by the waist and placed him gently on the step of the bus.
The crossdresser went ballistic and turned to the would-be Samaritan and screeched, "How dare you touch my body! I don’t even know who you are!"
The guy smiled, "Well, ma’am, normally I would agree with you, but after you unzipped my fly three times, I figured we were friends."
Wearing Paige (Source: Paige)
Garland Strate gets made up for the Mess Guymon Pageant at Guymon (OK) High School in the mid-1960s. (Thank you, Starla, for the photo.)
I have previously discussed at some length the proliferation of elaborate womanless beauty pageants in the Deep South of the U.S. We’ve noted the irony of parents dressing their sons like beauty queens while openly condemning trans people. In a different culture halfway around the world, a similarly befuddling phenomenon exists in the form of “Little Miss Gay” pageants in the Philippines.
(Caveat: I am in no way an anthropologist. I do not speak, read or understand Tagalog. I am not offering any judgments or concluions in this brief overview, which is based solely on what I have obsrved on the Internet. I simply suggest that this is an area ripe for study by those better suited to the task than I am.)
Despite living in a society dominated religiously by Catholicism and facing widepread opposition, the LGBT community in the Phillippines is quite active. As in the U.S., there are circuits of “Miss Gay” pageants in which femulating men compete. But where the similarity ends is that while such pageants in America are strictly adult events, in the Phillippines they reach far down in age to include young boys competing for the title of “Little Miss Gay.” Such events are sometimes staged in conjunction with adult pageants, while other are unaffiliated affairs sometimes sponsored by schools or churches.
(Just as a note of annotation here: it should be pointed out that the English word “gay” as used in the Philippines isn’t strictly a term referencing sexual orientation. It is more generically applied to anyone in the LGBT community, even heterosexual crossdressers.)
As in the U.S. womanless pageants, the “Little Miss Gay” events can often be very elaborately staged affairs, even in impoverished communities. And the attention given to the femulations is even more intense and detailed. While U.S. schoolboys in womanless pageants are mostly doing it as a one-time lark, some of the Filipino boys regularly compete in pageants. Many of them adopt female names and personas and some even grow their own hair out to feminine lengths and have it cut, styled and colored like a girl. And the parents – the power behind the crown as in U.S. female child beauty pageants – will spend prolifically on their son’s pageant wardrobe.
Another difference from American womanless pageants is that while the U.S. affairs are strictly PG-rated, the Little Miss Gay events sometimes find children dressing, dancing, singing or acting in what we would consider a very inappropriate sexually provocative manner. It is very off-putting and creepy to Westerners (like me) to learn about this phenomenon.
Who are these boys? Are they gay and/or trans and embracing it at an early age? Are they being exploited by their parents or worse, is there some degree of coercion or abuse behind it all? As I said, I’m not academically equipped to find answers and only suggest that the phenomenon is one that merits further study and investigation by more qualified people.
(Editor's Note: Philippines is also the nation where very realistic womanless beauty pageants are conducted at the university level, for example, the Miss Eng'g pageant, which has been mentioned here numerous times in the past.)
Wearing New York & Company (Source: New York & Company)
Contestant Number 7 in the South Hill, Virginia, Relay for Life Womanless Beauty Pageant
Those among Stana’s disciples who enjoy the efforts of “civilians” putting on womanless beauty pageants, and have immersed themselves in the history and practice of that cultural phenomenon that is most prominent among the schools of the old Confederacy, quickly catch on to one thing: we learn that there are PAGEANTS and then there are…well (yawn) pageants. That is, we find ourselves reacting to photos of many middle/junior high school pageants with a jaw-dropping “Wow!” and most high school efforts with an indifferent “Meh.” Many of the former are virtually indistinguishable from “legit” female pageants in the femininity and beauty of the participants, while at the higher level, it’s pretty obvious right off the bat that these are guys.
The most obvious reason for this disparity is, of course, biology. Middle school boys are just smaller and in general more androgynous-looking than their older counterparts. Take most any 12- to 14-year-old male,before the full ravages of puberty, body hair, and that final growth spurt have worked their masculinizing voodoo, and with just a little attention to makeup, a good wig, and a well-fitting pageant dress, he’ll be as pretty as a female of similar age. Many boys that age even sound more like girls; their voices not yet having fully dropped from juvenile soprano to budding baritone. But just a scant few years up the road, when the testoterone begins to really boil… beard shadow, broad shoulders, leg and arm hair… well, it just complicates things.
But there’s more to it than that. There is also, perhaps more importantly, the psychological factor. There is a vast difference between, say, a 12-year-old sixth grader and a high school senior about to turn 18 in their personality, self-image and the way they relate to others.
Middle school boys are more malleable at that age. They are much more likely to cooperate and yield to Mom and/or Sis’ cosmetic machinations (you don’t think they look that good on their own, do you?) and allow themselves to be transformed into a believable, attractive girl. Hell, a 6th or 7th grader is only a couple of years removed from a time when playing “dress-up,” in general, was seen as a fun activity and while they are beginning to rebel and leave “kid stuff” behind, there’s still a lot of “kid” there.
But once in high school, attitudes change. Guys now have much more invested in their personal masculinity and they are more reluctant to be seen as enjoying themselves in silk and satin, lest their friends raise an eyebrow. They are far more likely to treat a womanless pageant as a joke and present a slipshod image that cries out, “Hey, I’m still a MAN – I don’t take this crap seriously.” And even the ones that do still make some effort cosmetically and sartorially, often adopt a kind of “fierce” drag queen look – more RuPaul than Miss America.
There are exceptions, of course. A fellow friend of this website once suggested that high schools that really cultivate an overall attitude of excellence and achievement among their students often produce excellent womanless pageants. The same young men who strive and compete to excel in sports or academics may well approach a pageant with the attitude of “well, if I’m going to do this, I’m going to be the prettiest 'girl' on that stage and win this thing!” and put forth as much effort as they would making the football team or aceing the SATs.
There are also schools like Glenvar High School in Virginia (with its decades-old annual “Groovy Teens” pageant) that have a long-standing tradition of putting on a pseudo-professional pageant with many realistic femulations, in which case it’s a matter of school pride to play along. To buck tradition and not go all out would be unthinkable.
But, for the most part, if you enjoy seeing excellent (and sometimes truly remarkable) amateur femulations, younger is definitely better. (Actually, that’s pretty much true in a lot of life’s arenas, as this just-turned 60 and wondering how I got so old so fast girl can attest!)
Wearing Venus (Source: Venus)
Gabriel Sanches femulates in Brazilian television's The Big Catch.
One time my wife and I went to a costume party and everybody said I looked too good not to have dressed before. I would have thought someone would ask about how much clothes do you have and how are you so good at makeup.
No co-worker has ever asked me about the quantity of womenswear in my closet, however, my makeup acumen has raised the curiosity of more than one female co-worker.
Typically, they have asked if my wife did my makeup. My reply is that I did my own makeup because there was no way that my wife was going to get up at 5 AM to do make up my face. (By the way, my wife stopped wearing makeup about 15 years ago and even when she did, she would ask me to help because I was more expert at applying makeup than she was.)
When I replied, I did my makeup, sometimes they asked if they could have a closer look. When I said, "Go for it," they got up real close to give my makeup the once-over. They usually complimented me with comments like "You do your makeup better than I do" or "Can you give me some makeup lessons?" or "You could be a female impersonator."
And so it goes.
Wearing Boston Proper (I love this dress! Source: Boston Proper)
Alex Ringler and Marty Thomas femulating on stage in Pageant: The Musical.
