Have You Seen Your Brother, Baby, Standing in High Heels?

Commenting on the "Moaning Lisa Smile" post, Beverly wrote,

I'm not sure, but I think the first use of a trans person in a music video was The B-52's "Love Shack." My trans-radar always went off when I saw that video. Then I found out the video was the debut of the tall woman of color with the huge hair. A local Georgia girl named Ru Paul who was a friend of the band.

"Love Shack" was a hit in 1989 and I recall seeing the video, but I missed Ru Paul.

Back then, I watched music videos on MTV and recall a number of trans moments, but I don't know if they involved actual trans people. For example, in ZZ Top's 1984 video for "Legs," there is a young guy in a boutique dress-shopping. Who knows if the actor playing the guy was actually trans ― probably not.

Then there's David Bowie's music video for his 1979 hit "Boys Keep Swinging" in which he appears in three drag personas. David claimed he was bisexual, but never trans, although he appeared in female clothing quite often, especially early in his career.

Before there were "music videos," as popularized by MTV, there were promotional films made to stimulate the sale of singles. For example, The Beatles made a bunch of these and they would be shown on The Ed Sullivan Show in lieu of live appearances by the Fab Four.

The Rolling Stones made a promo film for their 1966 single "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" If you recall, the front side of the picture sleeve of the 45 RPM recording of that song had the boys standing around in a group, while the back side of the picture sleeve had the boys standing around dressed as girls.

The promo film for "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?" shows the band performing the song interspersed with clips of the boys getting dressed en femme for the picture sleeve photoshoot. Needless to say, that version of the promo did not get much airplay anywhere in 1966.

Wearing Etienne Aigner.

David Bowie in the Boys Keep Swinging music video (1979).

Femulate: The Word

Sira Siravitch Kamonworawut from "The Femulate Lifestyle"

When I started this blog, I created the word "femulate" and used it as the name of the blog. The word caught on and I often see it used by members of our community.

Christopher Morley, the professional femulator of film and television fame wrote to me once that he loved the word adding that femulate was "so much more accurate than 'female impersonator,'" which he never cared for and "drag queen," which he loathed.

"The Femulate Lifestyle," "tHe Art oF feMuLate" and "Femulate Brasil" are three websites that I am aware of that use the word in their title ― there may be more.

"That lady likes to Femulate" and "femulate" are two boards on Pinterest and then there is "Pins from femulate.org" that contains hundreds of images from my blog that were pinned by me and other Pinterest users. I have no idea how that board works. There is no visible owner of the board, that is, someone who is manually pinning pinned images from my blog, so I assume a Pinterest robot searches all its pins, collects the pinned images from the same source and displays them on a board like "Pins from femulate.org."

Try it yourself. In the URL, https://www.pinterest.com/source/femulate.org/, replace femulate.org with your favorite website and see what happens.

Have Fun!

Actor Phil Johnson on the San Diego stage in She Rantulas from Outer Space in 3D!

Moaning Lisa Smile

I watched the Grammy Awards Monday night primarily to see Eagles perform live one more time. Sans Glenn Frey, Jackson Browne sang lead on “Take It Easy.” That was the highlight of the show for me, although I also enjoyed the Lionel Richie tribute.

I was not familiar with 95% of the rest of the music, so the rest of the show was not of much interest and I headed for bed with an hour of awards left to go. However, just before I shut off the TV, my trans-radar went off when there was a snippet from a music video by Wolf Alice for their song titled “Moaning Lisa Smile.”

I viewed the video on YouTube and the three make members of the band appear en femme throughout the video. See the screen captures of the video above and below or see the video for yourself here.

Wearing Saint Laurent.

Wolf Alice femulates in their music video for "Moaning Lisa Smiles."

Got Stamps

In addition to being an amateur radio operator, I am also a stamp collector or "philatelist" as they say around the Merriam-Webster.

Stamps are like high heel shoes ― there are just too many for one girl to collect them all, so stiletto and stamp collectors specialize. On the stiletto front, I only collect high heels to die for and on the stamp front, I collect stamps from the United Nations (among other countries and specialties).

Perusing the latest stamp collecting news weekly, I was surprised to see that the UN Postal Administration has just issued a series of stamps in conjunction with their Free & Equal campaign for LGBT equality. (Cool!) And one of the stamps in the series honors transgender people. (Very cool!)

That's her on the right.

Wearing Eloquii.

Vittoria Schisano (right) in the 2012 Italian film Tutto Tutto Niente.

DeviantArt Femulators

Here is a recent missive from Pontus:

Hi there Stana,

I have been watching your site for a couple of weeks.

A couple of times you have done a few shout outs to femulators on deviantart (DA). As someone who often visits DA, I thought I`d suggest a few other femulators on DA that you may not have seen before (or maybe you have) to check out.

Pontus was correct ― some I have not seen before and some I have. Anyways, here they are:

Sophiexdresser

Danakpop

Shenzou

Divinesanity

And if you`re interested, you can check out Pontus'contributions to the femulating culture: toons in drag.

Daffy Dusting

Becky Storm

June 1995 Photoshoot

As I wrote here Monday, before they deteriorated, I scanned nearly 300 photos from the 1990s for preservation. I had not viewed most of the photos in years and they brought back a flood of memories that I will share in this and future posts.

I don't recall much about these photos except that I was home alone on a Saturday in June 1995 and decided to do a photoshoot modeling my new to-die-for dress.

In retrospect, looking at these photos, I see a woman, not a man in a dress, but a woman who enjoys being a woman.

Wearing Monique Lhuillier.

All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.

Tricia's Favorite Photo (of Tricia!)

Fulfillment of a Lifetime Dream

Tricia Riley, April 2013

Tho’ I have no idea why, since my pre-teens, I have had a fascination with female period dress, especially formal long gowns with crinoline skirts.

Today marks the fulfillment of owning such a garment. Unlike “days of yore” when communications were so primitive, today with the Internet and on-line shopping, Tricia Elizabeth Riley (AKA “Lady Patricia of the Highlands”) has completed her first “dress rehearsal” in a lovely 1700’s style ball gown. A crinoline underskirt would have been too hard to store, so the fact this wonderful creation has collapsible side panniers has more than made up for this.

The colours are a deep pink underskirt and ivory overskirt and top. The bodice is a paisley-covered combination of these colours and features a rose at the bust.

Thus, as soon as practicable this morning, Tricia got herself made up, attached her breast forms and dressed in her best corset and lingerie. Then came the challenge of the dress for the first time. The panniers were tricky for a start, but Tricia soon worked those out.

Then THE moment. On with the dark pink underskirt over the panniers, then the ivory overskirt and detachable “velcroed” bodice. The sleeves are only ¾, so the pink long sleeve gloves purchased to hide the arm hair were a good and necessary investment.

Thence, to the “crowning glory” ― curly blond “Marie Antoinette” wig, long dangly pink and rhinestone earrings,(to match the dress) and a glittering rhinestone necklace. In order to complete the “off to the 17th century ball” picture, a pink with white feather “masked ball mask” was put in place.

The entire dress creation was made for me by E.T. Costumes in Melbourne, Australia. The owner, Christine, did a fabulous job at a very reasonable price.

Will someone please pinch me. Surely I am dreaming all this and I will wake up soon!!. But no… it is for real…

Crossdressing nirvana has been achieved!

Hugs to all!!

Lady Patricia

2016 Update: Sadly Christine passed away after she made this lovely outfit for me. The photo was taken about a month after I wrote about wearing the dress for this first time. This was the first of three professional makeovers by a genius makeup artist, who again, sadly for Tricia has since moved interstate.

P.S. Being a “glutton for punishment,” about a year later I bought a gorgeous “Scarlett O'Hara” Civil War gown from Recollections Inc. in the USA.

If anyone is interested in “Chapter 2” of this “tale,” happy to provide same.

Calling all girls! My open invitation to post your favorite photo along with the story behind it and the reason it is your favorite photo still stands, so don't be shy, send me your fave foto. ― Stana

Wearing Spiegel.

Actress Vittoria Schisano covers Italian Playboy.