Fantasia Fair On My Mind

The Fantasia Fair Facebook page has been more active lately as the count down to Fantasia Fair progresses (62 days to go). As a result, I have Fan Fair on my mind.

Miqqi Alicia Gilbert, the Executive Director of Fantasia Fair, has written about her experiences at the event and you can read them here. And you can read my daily diary of my first Fantasia Fair here.

At the end of that diary, I ask, "Will I attend future Fantasia Fairs?" and my conclusion was that I don't need to attend Fantasia Fair, but "I am sure I will attend the event again in the near future."

Those conclusions from 2008 are still valid. "If you are a closeted femulator and want to get out of the closet in a safe way, I highly recommend Fantasia Fair to you, but I don't need that." I go out en femme a lot and the places I go are not dangerous, but they do not provide the safety net of Fantasia fair and Provincetown. Rather, I go out in the real world to experience it as a woman. On the other hand, I have returned to Fantasia Fair twice since my first trip and will return again this year.

Why?

I met a lot of cool people at Fantasia Fair, wonderful friends and acquaintances, who I want to see again.

Provincetown is a beautiful place to spend a week vacationing (or a life living).

Fantasia Fair food is not the rubber chicken your encounter at a typical convention. At Fan Fair, you dine at honest-to-goodness restaurants. During my three trips to Fan Fair, I only recall having one meal that was just so-so; all the others were at least above average and many were outstanding. And I even learned to like sushi at Fan Fair!

Fantasia Fair has a great program that is entertaining and informative. And if you are a diva or a fashionista, you have an opportunity to perform on stage in the Fan Fair Follies or strut down the runway in the Fan Fair Fashion Show.

Fantasia Fair is a lot of fun and who doesn't need fun?

By the way, to read about my 2010 and 2012 Fan Fair trips, browse my daily posts in the blog archives for October 2010 and October 2012.

Also, by the way, the photo above is me at Fantasia Fair in 2012 with Jamie Dailey, a sister from Connecticut, who I have known like forever!

 

 

 

Wearing MyHabit.

 

 

 

Professional femulator Max Jens, circa 1900

Mondays

The past two weekends have been jam-packed and as a result, I wrote this and last week's Monday installments of the blog on Monday morning while the first cup of coffee sinks in.

I saw Chicago and REO Speedwagon in concert Friday night. I am a big fan of the former, but never saw them in person until now and they were great. REO was very good, too. The two groups jammed as one for six songs during the encore.

Forty-five years ago Saturday, I saw Canned Heat, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Country Joe and the Fish, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, John Sebastian, Mountain, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and The Who at Yasgur's Farm in Bethel, NY.

45 years!  I have been letting that number sink in all weekend! Yikes!

I was with family Friday night, so I attended the Chicago concert in boy mode. But I will be on my own on Thursday and will attend the stamp show en femme. I am looking forward to that.

 

 

 

Wearing Leota.

 

 

 

Actors Ram Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Riteish Deshmukh
femulating in Humshakals, a 2014 film from India.

Fantasia Fair Femulate Blog Party

In a mere two months, I will be packing for Fantasia Fair, which runs from Sunday, October 19 to Sunday, October 26.

In conjunction with Fantasia Fair, there will be a Femulate Blog Party on Tuesday afternoon, October 21. The "party" will provide an opportunity to meet and greet other femulators who read this blog (or not) and make it to Provincetown. It will also be an opportunity to meet yours truly (what a thrill!)

The Femulate Blog Party is part of the Fantasia Fair program and as such, is only open to folks who are paid and registered attendees of Fantasia Fair. It is not open to the general public, so you can feel safe and secure; there will be no transgender chasers or transgender haters in attendance.

During my three previous Fantasia Fairs, I seldom encountered a hater. The only haters I ran into were the proprietors/employees of a pharmacy in the heart of Provincetown. Maybe "haters" is too strong a term. But I found that they were very cold whenever I did business in their establishment. And other girls indicated to me that they got the cold shoulder there, too. Otherwise, I found all the other civilians in town to be friendly and accommodating.

On the other hand, I encountered a lot more transgender chasers than haters during my three visits to Fantasia Fair. The chasers show up by the busload during Fantasia Fair because they know we are in town en masse and present an easy target... not that we are "easy."

Actually, I found it flattering to be chased. Thank-you, but no thank-you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old and new womanless pageant beauty queens.

Crossplay = Cosplay + Crossdress

Tuesday's Femulator photo depicted a male-to-female crossplayer. I received a few responses to that photo which indicated that some readers of Femulate are not familiar with crossplay.

Simply stated, crossplay is crossdressed cosplay.

It seems that there is more female-to-male crossplaying than male-to-female crossplaying, however, a lot of the guys who crossplay are top-notch femulators! (I should look so good!)

To see what I mean, visit Men of Crossplay and be amazed!

 

 

 

Wearing Bebe.

 

 

 

Male crossplayer femulating Kiryuin Satsuki (Kill la Kill).

About Mascara

Of all the cosmetics I use, I find that mascara is the most problematic. Not so much applying it; most of the time, I get it on without a problem. Rather, I have issues with the product itself.

Mascara is very inconsistent from brand to brand. Some mascaras are too thick, some are too clumpy, and some are just right. And the few that are just right have shelf-life issues, that is, they dry up or go bad (get clumpy) too quickly.

I was glad to see Daily Makeover's recent post "10 Mascaras That Will Not Clump (No Matter What)." Nice thing about the list is that some of the 10 recommendations are not expensive ($10 or less), so a purchase won't put a big dent in your purse.

By the way, I have been an Avon lady for 18 years and have seen a lot of Avon mascara products come and go. I have tried most of them over that time.

Early on in my Avon career, I did not find any Avon mascaras I liked --- I would try them once and swear them off after that initial use.

Things changed for the better and over the last half dozen years or so, I have been very satisfied with Avon mascaras and they are what I use almost all of the time.

But your mileage may vary.

 

 

 

Wearing JustFab.

 

 

 

Rocker Jai Brooks femulates for the Real Girls Eat Cake music video (2014).

Childhood Friend

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. However, 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 beginning 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.

(This post originally appeared in September 2008. I thought it was appropriate to rerun it because Billy recently appeared in a dream.”) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A contestant femulating in the Mr. Tiger womanless beauty pageant.

Nano Nano No More

I was at the computer answering e-mail last night when my sister called with the news that Robin Williams had died.

I was very saddened by that news, but not surprised; my peers have been dropping like flies lately and the loss of another is not much of a shock anymore (just another feature of being a sexagenarian).

According to my count, Robin Williams appeared in four films that included transgender bits: Mrs. Doubtfire, The Birdcage, The World According to Garp and To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, but in my opinion, his best film performance was in Good Will Hunting.

My favorite Robin Williams moments were when he riffed with Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal in Comic Relief. They were a great team. Whoopee and Billy must be taking the loss of their teammate very hard.

I will miss him a lot, too.

Boys don’t make passes at “girls” who wear glasses

 

 

 

Wearing DressBarn.

 

 

 

Male crossplayer femulating as Bridget from Guilty Gear (video game).

Gimme Femulation

Wednesday, I wrote about singing along with songs sung by girl groups as they played on the radio.

Coincidentally, ham radio sister Trish e-mailed me about a news CD/album released by one of my favorite punk rock groups  Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Titled Are We Not Men? We Are Diva!, the Gimme Gimmes cover 12 songs made famous by female singers including such diva standards as "On the Radio" by Donna Summer, "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul, and "The Way We Were" by Barbra Streisand.

If you like Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, you will like their Diva album. And to make things even more interesting, the group's lead singer, Spike Slawson, appears en femme on the cover of the album!

 

 

 

 

 

Spike Slawson (center) of the rock group Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
femulated for the group’s new album Are We Not Men? We Are Diva!

Are you OK?

Rejected

 

 

 

 

 

 

Professional femulator Donna Sachet and friend.

Better Selfies

Moved by Paula's photography post, I poked around the Internet looking for tips about taking selfies.

Google provided a selection of websites containing tips and after poking Google's finds, I am passing along one that I thought was the best of the bunch for taking selfies: wikiHow's How to Take Good Selfies.

Over the past year, I have been using my iPhone 5 for most of my photography. The quality of the iPhone 5 photos is very good in my opinion (good enough for me) and it is hard to beat the convenience.

The only problem is that the Camera app bundled with the iPhone does not have a self-timer and girls like us can’t live without self-timers! So I bought two inexpensive apps that do have self-timers: Top Camera and Camera+. The former costs $3, the latter $2.

And to do a self-timer selfie right, I also bought a small tripod ($4) to hold the iPhone while I get ready for my close-up.

 

 

 

Wearing Naked Zebra.

 

 

 

Omar Kingsley femulating as “Miss Ella” circa 1885.