Yearbooks and More

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.

Thank You

Thank you so much for your generosity. 

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.

 

Not a Civilian Redux

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

Terry Noel, professional femulator, circa 1960

Femulate Illustrated

Wearing Lela Rose

Moving up the alphabet to the letter B, today’s lovely “Not a Civilian?” laddy hails from Bryant (Arkansas) High School. He (or she) is Wade Barnes, who was the winner of the high school’s 1972 “Miss America” pageant.

Wearing Boston Proper vegan leather dress and Nine West “Bliss” pointy toe pumps.

Wednesday morning, I had to decide whether to move three yards of loam outdoors or photograph myself wearing pretty new outfits indoors. It was a difficult choice and you can see the results of that decision above.

The civilians are next door

People are asking if the femulator in the photo accompanying my previous post is the girl who admitted that she was a civilian whose womanless event photo was one that I thought was too good to be simply civilian!

The answer is, “No.”

The femulator who was the subject of my previous post has asked to remain anonymous and I will never reveal who she.

👠👠👠

Jonie asked, “Where can I find a list of womanless fashion shows and pageants?”

I am not aware of such a list.

One way I learn about such events is to set up a Google Alert to automatically send me emails whenever there is new Internet content that includes the word “womanless.”

👠👠👠

By the way, I have thousands of womanless event images on flickr for your viewing enjoyment. Most of them were culled from online high school yearbooks by my friend Starla and the collection is quite diverse.

Wearing Madeleine

Michal Rudas femulates Shania Twain singing “Man! I Feel Like A Woman” on Polish television’s Twoja Twarz Brzmi Znajomo. You can view the video here.

Back to School

A 1950 womanless beauty pageant at Cradock High School in Portsmouth, Virginia

Commenting on last week's womanless beauty pageant post, my blogging sister Meg Winters wrote, "I can't figure out why the schools sanction these events. There must be some sort of educational explanation, but I cannot for the life of me imagine what it is. Do you have any thoughts?"

I believe that schools sanction the womanless pageants because they are a good moneymakers. The schools' investment is minimal, so most of the income is profit. It is a lot easier than selling chocolate candy bars door-to-door, which is what my high school made us do.

Historically, I believe the womanless beauty pageant was a descendant of the womanless wedding, which was a popular fundraiser in the Midwest and Southern USA in the 20th Century.

Except for the flower girls, the femulating participants of womanless weddings were adults. So when it came time to find fundraising activities for a scholastic femulators, womanless beauty pageants seemed more age-appropriate. The pageants began in earnest in the late 1940s, grew in popularity in the 1960s and today, is still a popular fundraiser despite pushback by transphobia.

Anyway, I sure would have preferred donning an evening gown and sashaying on stage rather than selling candy door-to-door.

Go back to school in this preppy outfit from ModCloth (Source: ModCloth)

Miss Danny Hicks was a vision of loveliness in the 1965 boy beauty pageant at Columbia (SC) High School.

It’s that time of year

By Starla Renee Trimm

Ahhh… autumn in the Deep South.

In a few weeks, the oppressive heat and humidity will begin to wane, the mountainsides will come alive with spectacular colors, the SEC will begin to once again dominate college football and the kids will return to school. And where gays, atheists and Muslims are still soundly reviled, where they would rather let trans students pee in their pants than use the appropriate bathroom, where city council and school board meetings still begin with prayers “in Jesus’ name,” where your “right” to buy an AR-15 without the guv’mint intefering is soundly defended, where schools, streets and parks are named not after Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, but for Lee, Jackson and Davis... yes, where grits are considered a vegetable and animal flesh is thoroughly deep fried to make sure the critter’s dead before it’s eaten... in the land of hypocrisy writ large, Gun ownin’, Bible totin’ real men and genteel women will gleefully and enthusiastically put their ‘tween and teen boys in full, beautiful feminine drag and parade them down a makeshift catwalk in a gymnasium for their school’s womanless beauty pageant with nary a trace of irony, lavishing as much time, prepartion and mascara on them as they do when their sisters run for Rattlesnake Roundup Queen or vie to be crowned Miss Mule Days. (Um, no kidding, those really are things.)

Sarcasm aside, it’s that time of year and what follows are links to galleries of some of the best school womanless events currently available online. Some schools pretty reliably hold a pageant every year like clockwork; others more sporadically so and some are “one-hit wonders” that inexplicably pulled out all the stops for an elaborate pageant one year, while never doing it again.

These are full galleries (and a few videos), some posted by schools, others by parents, teachers or other sources. It is not by any means exhaustive and there are many equally good pageants to which only a single photo or two or three scattered around the Web bear witness or for which the original source galleries have vanished over the years.

Many of the photos in these galleries have been spread around and you may well have seen most of them. But this is a chance for you to see them in context as originally posted with whatever comments were appended to give you a taste of some of the “Best of the Best” school womanless pageants in Dixie.

Will the more consistent schools grace us with another excellent event this year? Will some of the “one and done” schools revive the idea? Or will some school rise out of obscurity to begin a new pageant tradition? We shall see. Meanwhile, be inspired, amused, appalled or whatever by these shining examples of the schizoid Southern culture!

Alexander City Middle School (AL)
2015 pageant (personal gallery)

Beaver Elementary Schoolgurls

Beaver Elementary School (Wildersville, TN)
2014 pageant (personal gallery, manually click/swipe to scan through)

Central Elementary/Middle School (Dubberly, LA)
2016 pageant (personal video of opening number)
2016 pageant (personal video of introductions)
2016 pageant (personal gallery, largely focusing on the poster’s own son):
2017 pageant (personal video of opening number)

Kudos to this school. The womanless pageant is one of its many annual projects to benefit St. Jude and they raise more money than almost any other group in the state. The year I saw documented, they raised $31,000 which is pretty damn good for a not terribly large school in a mostly rural area! Yes, I make fun of Southerners, but give credit where credit’s due.

E.O. Coffman Middle School (Lawrenceburg, TN)
2015 pageant (school gallery)

Ernest Ward Middle School (Walnut Hill, FL)

Ernest Ward Middle Schoolgurls

2010 pageant (newspaper gallery)
2013 pageant (newspaper gallery)
2014 pageant (newspaper gallery)
2018 pageant (newspaper gallery)
2018 pageant (personal gallery)

Gordo High School (AL)
2013 pageant (personal gallery)
2015 pageant (personal gallery)
2018 pageant (personal gallery)

Haralson County Middle School (Tallapoosa, GA)
2017 pageant (personal gallery)
2018 pageant (school gallery)
2018 pageant (personal gallery)

May be an up-and-coming “sleeper” that will get better in time. Right now mostly “so-so” femulations and way too much of the huge, unrealistic balloon boobs sort of thing, but they’re getting an impressive number of boys participating, who seem enthusiastic (which can’t be said for the audience which seems bored out of its gourd at times).

Honaker Elementary/Middle Schoolgurl

Honaker Elementary/Middle School (VA)
2013 pageant (personal gallery)

Potts Camp Middle School (MS)
2018 pageant (teacher’s personal gallery)

Rehobeth Middle School (AL)
2017 and 2018 pageants (school club gallery; manually click/swipe to scan through)
2018 pageant (personal gallery; manually click/swipe to scan through)

Thomasville Middle School (AL)
2013 pageant (winners only)
2014 pageant (school gallery)
2015 pageant (school gallery)
2015 pageant (personal gallery)
2016 pageant (school gallery)

Wilson Hall Middle Schoolgurl

Wilson Hall Middle School (AL)
2015 pageant (professional photographer gallery, 400+ photos!)

Not many schools can afford to engage a professional photographer to document their womanless pageants, however, in this case, the photographer is also the mother of one of the contestants – the gurl in the red dress and headband – so I assume they got these for cost or maybe even for nothin’!

Finally, not a beauty pageant and not in the Deep South by any means, but I have to mention the YouTube videos from the annual talent shows held at Rachel Carson Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland. For several years running, it seemed to be a tradition that some of the graduating 5th grade boys would put on a dance number dressed as girls. However, I can’t document any such act in the last 5 or 6 years, nor prior to 2009. My guess is that it was a specific group of parents that spearheaded and organized these things and when their kids aged out and moved on, the annual drag numbers ceased. But you never know – one of these years, someone associated with the school may see these videos and think, “Hey, what a fun idea!” and revive the tradition. In any case, here are three of the annual events.

Rachel Carson Elementary School (Gaithersburg, Maryland)
2009 (“All the Single Ladies," includes some fun “behind the scenes” footage)
2010 (“Life’s About to Get Good”)
2011 (“Pretty Girls Rock”)

Wearing Jovani

Bill Kaulitz

The Girls of Autumn

The "boys of summer" become the "girls of autumn" when they return to school and volunteer to don dresses and high heels for their high school's next womanless event. Whether it be Gender Bender Day, a womanless beauty pageant, Opposite Day, a womanless fashion show, a Cinderfella pageant or even Halloween, there are gurls in civilian clothing willing to put on their frillies for whatever cause comes along, just as Mark Ruth (above) did for the "Miss America" pageant conducted at Wynnewood (Oklahoma) High School in 1974.

Miss Ruth's photo is one of 160 new photos of the girls of autumn uncovered by Starla from online high school yearbooks. I uploaded Starl's new images to flickr where you may view them in two ways:

Method 1: Open one of the Yearbooks sets (A through Z) and you will find the newest uploads at the end/bottom of the set. (The oldest uploads appear at the beginning/top of the set.)

Method 2: Open my photostream and you will find the newest uploads at the top of page 1. The uploads get older as the page numbers get higher with the oldest uploads on the last page.

The contents of the Yearbook A through Z sets are organized according to school name, for example, the photos from Sacred Heart High School would be in the Yearbooks S set.

I hope you enjoy the view. Meanwhile, I am going to slip into a bikini and work on my tan.

Wearing Boston Proper (Source: Boston Proper)

Sylvester portrays a female impersonator in the 1979 film The Rose.

Civilian or Not? Revisited

By Paula Gaikowski, Femulate Contributing Editor

Paula Gaikowski

Yesterday’s post got my attention. I have to admit I too am intrigued by the non-civilians in these Halloween and womanless contests.

Ms. Caulfield, does appear to be a member of our club. First off, it's Halloween and not a womanless pageant, so we know right off the bat that this was a choice of hers. Add to that the attention to detail that only a non-civilian would be aware of. You mentioned the eyebrows, yes, definitely a clue, the dainty necklace and blouse, a well-styled wig and perfect make-up. The clincher though is the smile ‒ we all know that feeling of true happiness.

As for Mr. /Ms. Waugh, well, the shaved legs, c’mon??? Oh yeah, you’re a swimmer or oh, a bicyclist, oh yeah that’s it. Also, who has a pair of sling back pumps in your male size hanging around that by the way, matches the stylish suit that likewise just happens to be in your size. Judging from her petite image, I’m guessing that Mrs. Waugh doesn’t wear a size 11 shoe nor a size 16W suit.

As for Matt Garber, he’s not even trying to feign civilian status, I am guessing Matt is more likely gay and not transgender and making a statement... just a hunch.

One thing I also noticed about these more recent womanless pageants, they seem to be attracting more realistic versions of womanhood than the caricatures of women in the past. By posing a comical exaggeration, the message was sent that the contestant has no interest in being or looking like a feminine woman, thus preserving their masculinity.

In the past, there seemed to be a denigration of femininity. Today, there appears to be more a celebration with contestants trying to actually femulate the best they can.

Perhaps now young persons who are questioning aren’t quite as hesitant to demonstrate an interest in showing this side of themselves in today’s less judgmental environment.

Who knows us better than our parents, especially Moms, who we see are willing collaborators in these most accomplished femulations.

What better way to for a young transgender person to not only have an opportunity to finally dress as a girl, but to send out a test message and judge the response to coming out.

“Hey, Mom, this might be fun. Can you help me?”

“Sure, sweetheart, let’s start by trying-on some of my dresses.”

“Maybe we need to do a little shopping this weekend. We’ll find you the perfect dress and you’ll be the prettiest one there.

“Oh Mom! Stop, okay let’s go!”

“I’ll have to confess, Mom, dress-shopping was kind of fun and I can’t wait to see myself all made up”

“Wow, I can’t believe I won! Everybody said how good I looked and how pretty I was!”

“I had fun too sweetheart and I was so proud of how well you did. You seem to be a natural?”

“Remember, the makeup, wig and your new wardrobe are yours to keep, I want you to know that you don’t need a pageant to express this side of yourself.”

“You will always be beautiful to me whether this side of you grows or not and please don’t ever be afraid to talk to me.”

Oh, in a more perfect world, one more perfect than the 1960’s and 70’s when I was coming of age... I guess that why I am so captivated by these stories. I truly envy their opportunities and see myself in their shoes grabbing and reaching for that brass ring.

Wearing Tadashi Shoji (Source: Macy's)

2017 Cinderfella pageant contestants in Cleveland, Oklahoma