My friend Carlos e-mailed me that Brazilian model and TV hostess, Camila Alves, is 5’10”.
In my opinion, the most gorgeous person at the recent Oscar ceremonies was former model, Kathy Ireland, at 5'11" (photo right).
UCONN basketball player Maya Moore is 6’0”.
Elaine Armen of T* Art Blog fame informed me that the former Miss Ghana (Miss Universe 2006 contestant) Angela Asare is 6’2” (same as me).
My Saturday en femme begins with a visit to The Facial Clinic and Med Spa, where I will spend the afternoon getting the works.
After my transformation at the spa, I will proceed to the Four Points by Sheraton to attend the annual Connecticut Outreach Society Awards Dinner, aka "The Banquet." The night will be filled with dinner, dancing, and entertainment, which includes yours truly lip-synching a song selected from my vast collection of diva classics.
Stories and photos galore will follow in a day or two, so please check back.
Women now prefer feminine looking men over their more rugged counterparts because they no longer need to worry about the survival of the fittest, new research suggests.
Read all about it here.
Read the rest of the story here.
Even better: I lost 5 pounds during my illness and only regained 1 pound. So, I will be in great shape to slip into the figure-hugging red satin cocktail dress I plan to wear to my support group’s annual banquet this Saturday evening.
Ooh la la!
(To be à Paris en femme is my dream.)
I hope you enjoy the gallery and dream!
Paula sent the following e-mail in response to "my rebirthday" post:
I am still ill, but I am getting better all the time (can't get much worse). 
Mid-morning Thursday, my stomach began feeling queasy. A stomach virus has been making the rounds through my family and I feared I was next.
"Femulate: The Art of Becoming Womanly" is the title of my workshop. The Conference catalog describes it as follows:
This workshop will assist male-to-female crossdressers in the art of becoming womanly and ultimately, to femulate successfully. (Successful femulation is the ability to emulate a female so well that the femulator is accepted, that is, she “passes” in society as a female.)
This will be my third time I have presented a workshop at this conference. In the past, my presentation has attracted a diverse audience and they usually go away pleased (according to the reviews they write at the end of the workshop).
In addition to the workshop, I will be working at my support group's booth during the rest of the day at the conference (that's me in the photo above working the booth in 2007). After the conference, my traveling companion, Diana, and I will dine at a restaurant.
I want to live more authentically than I have been living so far. I want to present as a woman as often as possible, certainly more often than I do now.
Gloriosky! There has not been a tall edition of Femulate since January 26!
To view all the photos from the event, go here.
UPDATE: Fixed the bad link; thank you all for the heads-up!
Embracing my own role reversal
I truly believe what I have written in this four-part series.
Part 1 is historic fact - you can look it up.
Part 2 is also factual -- current events that I have witnessed and continue to witness -- but factual nonetheless.
Part 3 is conjecture on my part based on the trends I described in Parts 1 and 2. Some readers may feel that Part 3 sounds like something out of Fictionmania. Maybe so.
Do you remember Cracked magazine? It was a Mad magazine imitation and when I could afford it, I would purchase a copy if there was no new issue of Mad to buy.
An article in Cracked issue #26, dated November 1962, titled "The Gradual Change in Men’s Fashions" had a profound effect on me.
The introduction to the article read, "Through the ages, female fashions have changed with incredible speed. A woman would buy a dress one day and the following morning, it would be out of style. It seems men’s apparel has gone through change also, but at a slower rate. Only recently, has the male really asserted himself in fashion.
"Cracked magazine would like to show what might happen if this trend in men’s apparel continues to gain momentum. Advertising, style, and products would all show the effects of competition with the women’s industry."
The article went on to predict what would happen in the future as the change in men's fashions accelerated. As a budding femulator in 1962, the article fascinated me and I wondered if any of its predictions would ever occur in my lifetime. I hoped that they would occur, but I doubted that they would.
It turned out that almost every prediction made in that article came true! Here are the predictions:
--- Men's slip-on shoes would morph into high-heeled and platformed styles that resemble women's high heel pumps with thicker heels.
--- Men's aftershave products would morph into men's perfumes or "colognes" as the manly men prefer to call it.
--- "Hair styles will alter greatly!" according to Cracked and they certainly did. In 1962, most males wore short hair. Need I describe the evolution of men's hair styles since then?
The article also predicted that "Men’s Fashion Ad Illustrations Will Shift." To demonstrate this, the article presented three images.
--- The first had a man, circa 1962 in a manly pose smoking a cigarette while wearing a suit and felt hat .
--- The second image labeled "Tomorrow" showed a thin man with a longer hair style wearing a short-sleeved shirt while smoking a pipe. His pose would be considered masculine, but he stood next to a flowery wall panel that feminized the image.
--- The third image labeled "Day after Tomorrow" showed another thin model in a unmanly pose wearing a striped T-shirt, a style that was not considered masculine in 1962.
--- The article concluded that "Social Customs Will Be Remodeled." It predicted that men will gossip (true), women will give up seats to men (untrue), men will go to bargain sales (true), women will dress alike (untrue), women will act like men (true to some extent), and women will make passes at men (true). (I used some of the images that accompanied this part of the article in Part 3 yesterday.)
And consider the things that the article missed that were totally out of the picture in 1962, but are male consumer items today: jewelry, purses, makeup, girdles, pantyhose, leggings, etc.
You never know!
Anyway, I recently read another fictional story about a guy, who loses a bet and has to live as a female.
Turns out that the guy enjoys living as a gal. One thing leads to another and he attends a meeting of the local crossdresser's support group.
During the meeting, one of the leaders of the group addresses the attendees.
"As more and more women become the leaders of our society and the breadwinners of our families, we have to fill the vacancies left by the women. Living in the 21th Century, it is our duty to serve. We must become the caregivers, the nurturers, and the housewives in the new women's world.
"As crossdressers, we already are well on our way to becoming the wives in the woman's world. So why not drop the other shoe and start living openly and full-time as a feminine male. By doing so, we will serve as role models of the new male and lead the way for other males to accept their place in the new world."
Wow! That's inspiring. I couldn't have said that better myself.
I believe that every time I go out en femme, I am making it easier for my sister femulators to go out en femme. The more of us that go out en femme makes it possible for more of us to go out en femme as the public becomes acclimated to seeing us.
Our public femulation may also persuade our sisters who are on the brink to come out en femme, too. How many of us were guys for the longest time before we finally sucked it up and acted on our pent up desire to be gals? How many potential gals will never be able to suck it up until they are encouraged to do so by seeing their sisters out there?
And if the world becomes a woman's domain, even better because we will fit right in.
Roll out the role reversal
If the changes in society (described in Part 2) continue on their current path, I expect that in the near future, females will control both the public sectors and the private sectors of our society.
Females will have broken through the old glass ceiling. In its place will be a new glass ceiling that will confront the males who do not have the education nor the status required to compete with females.
Females will probably dress the same as they do today, that is, they will wear some kind of bifurcated clothing most of the time, but they will have the option to wear a skirt or a dress whenever they feel like it.
On the other hand, boys will dress to please and attract a female mate, that is, they will dress to expose and show off their physical assets, which they can best accomplish by wearing tight, revealing, skimpy, and sexy styles of clothing, similar to what females wore when they were in the same position.
When women become the dominant gender, they will act like the dominant gender. They will be strong, self-confident, courageous, assertive, vigorous, bold, virile, and loud (traits that we see in many females already).
There will be a turnabout in the gender roles. To what extent the turnabout goes depends on the females; they will be in control and it is entirely up to them how boys will fit in the woman's world.
For example, will females write males out of the Constitution just as females were excluded when the Constitution was originally drafted? Thus, males would lose the right to vote, hold public office, own property, speak freely, etc.; they would become their female’s chattel.
Another example, will female scientists develop a way for males to give birth and rid females of that burden? If male pregnancies are possible, will male breasts be able to become heavy with milk to feed their newborns?
These and many other questions remain to be answered when the role reversal occurs.
(Part 4 of "What Will Men Wear When Women Wear Trousers?" will appear here tomorrow.)
When the other shoe drops, it will be a high heel pump.
Meanwhile, on the male fashion front, most males continued wearing bifurcated garments.
We are now experiencing the first generation of working in home fathers (WIHFs). The wihf movement started slowly, but gained momentum as the ascent of females gained momentum.
Getting back to the fashion designers... they are a persistent bunch. They kept on testing the waters of "skirts for males" and finally, some boys took the bait.
On my recent visits to New York City, I witnessed feminized male fashions everywhere, which is no surprise in the Big Apple. But, I have also noticed a growing number of boys in the suburbs of Connecticut dressing in a more feminine style.
For example, an anti-suffrage postcard asked, “What will men wear when women wear (trousers)?”
A German postcard provided the answer. Titled “Modern Marriage,” it depicts a female wearing trousers standing besides a male wearing a dress. The female is holding a hairbrush in an intimidating manner as if she is threatening her spouse to keep him in line, meanwhile, the man is nursing a baby.
Another German postcard titled “Pictures from the Women's State,” portrays various scenes as the matriarchy makes progress in a post-suffrage world.
The left side of the postcard contains images of wives disciplining hapless husbands. In the upper image, a wife threatens her husband with a carpet beater, while he stands in the middle of broken crockery. In the lower image, a wife has her husband over her knee and is spanking him with a shoe, while their smiling daughter looks on being educated about the relationship of females and males in the post-suffrage world.
The caption accompanying the image in the center of the postcard reads, “While the women will wear trousers, the men will wear none at all.” The accompanying drawing shows two dapper women wearing suits with trousers. The women also wear hats (one a top hat, the other a felt hat), carry canes, smoke (one a cigar, the other a pipe), and have short hairstyles. Also, the cigar-smoking woman wears a monocle.
Standing nearby are two post-suffrage males in ankle-length dresses. One male wears a picture hat that matches his dress, which is trimmed with ruffles and lace. He also carries a purse. The other male is lifting the side of his dress slightly to reveal a blue petticoat (blue is for boys).
The scenes on the right side of the postcard depicts further role reversal. The upper image shows a female in a suit with a bowtie carrying her top hat and cane in one hand and a smoking pipe in the other. She is dressed like a professional and is either on her way to the office or returning home. Her husband stands by wearing a yellow blouse and red skirt while holding a baby.
The lower image shows two female chimney sweeps. Perhaps one is married to the househusband in the scene or maybe they have been hired by the househusband’s wife to clean the chimney. The househusband, in a white blouse and red skirt, stands over a wooden tub doing the laundry.
Woman is doing the work of man,
So She’ll wear the trousers, if she can,
And it’s quite easy to prophecy,
What Pa will look like, by and by.
As you know, the anti-suffrage propaganda did not work. Females got the vote.
(Part 2 of "What Will Men Wear When Women Wear Trousers?" will appear here tomorrow.)
And, by the way, you can click on any image to enlarge it.
I collect female impersonator ephemera. (You can view my collection here.)
During my search for additions to my collection, I often encounter a set of early 20th Century postcards from France titled “Travestis Parisiens,” which translates to “Parisian Transvestites.” The postcards depict a person in various stages of dress/undress being assisted by an angel. The beautiful images are artist signed Jean Tam.
Are the transvestites depicted by artist Tam males dressing as females or females dressing as males or both. The postcards appear below; you be the judge.
By the way, these postcards are too expensive for me and are not part of my collection.
UPDATE: I don't speak French, so I used Babel Fish to translate "Travestis Parisiens" from French to English and it cam up with "Parisian Transvestites."
In retaliation, Janie said that Tyra used to be a man (not that there’s anything wrong wit that).
"She's huge. She's a big woman. I used to think she was a man. I used to look at her and think, 'Something isn't right here,'" said Janie.
That’s the whole story, but if you want to read the source, go here.
I blame the weather for my lack of Februray femulation. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
March is more promising on the femulation front.
On the 12th, I will attend the True Colors Conference, where I will be presenting my "Femulate" workshop. When I am not presenting, I will be working at the Connecticut Outreach Society's booth.
On March 20th, I will attend the annual banquet of the Connecticut Outreach Society, where I will eat, drink, dance, lip sync, and schmooze en femme.
I am so looking forward to March.
So, you can imagine that I was very pleased to discover “An Interview With the Blonds” (Phillipe and spouse David) on The Huffington Post.
You can read the whole interview here.
…it's not a matter of men dressing like women, or vice versa. "I don’t like to put limits to gender," the Canadian-born designer explained. "I think everybody is feminine, and everybody is born unisex." Not physically, of course. "I don’t believe in making differences between women and men. I think we’re born just, like, a human on the planet and it’s just the way we’re conditioned that we create desire."
Read the whole story here.
Planning a transgender wedding went pretty smoothly. Only one question remains: Will The New York Times accept a wedding announcement from a transgender bride?
According to The Huffington Post...
