Bullies

Throughout my school years, I was a target for bullies. I had a few things going against me that put me in their bullseye.

I was smart. I was always at or near the top of the honor roll and as a result, I was often the teacher's pet.

I was feminine. Compared to my male peers, I was a girly boy and was considered gay.

I was not athletic. Although I loved playing ball, I was usually one of the last to be chosen for a team.

The bullying subsided after I finished school and began working. Occasionally, as an adult, I would have a close encounter of the bullying kind, but most of the time, I was bully-free.

I assumed I would be bully-free for the rest of my life, but the bullies are back. Now they are trying to tell me where I can bathroom.

They claim that they have legitimate reasons to tell me where I can and can not go... to protect women and children in case I decide to become predator while I sit on the throne.

The trans-predator scenario never happened and never will. It is just a bully-sh*t excuse to bully because bullies got to bully and now they are trying to bully us.

 

Wearing Ann Taylor.

Grzegorz Wilk on Polish television's Twoja Twarz Brzmu Znajomo.

Herbert, Dagwood and Blondie

The parody ― National Lampoon Sunday Newspaper Parody, July 1978:

The real thing ― Blondie, #131, November 1959:

And Blondie, October 13, 2013: 

Source: Intermix

Arthur Lake as Dagwood Bumstead femulating in the 1941 film Blondie Goes Latin.

Twins Forever

Source: WhoWhatWear

Claire and John, circa 1915

On Sale Wherever Gaffs Are Sold...

Wearing Ted Baker London.

Audrius Janonis appears on Lithuanian television's Muzikinė Kaukė.

On the Road

This is the only photo I have of me and my Subaru. I must get more photos with the favorite car I ever owned.

I have driven my Subaru thousands of miles cross-country cross-dressed. My experiences as a woman driver were revealing to me.

(Funny story: After I purchased my Subaru back in 2007, a lesbian friend remarked, "How appropriate," because Subaru's are reputed to be the vehicle of choice among lesbians. I had no idea!)

• If I wear shorts or a short skirt or short dress when I drive, tractor trailer drivers will occasionally honk in appreciation of the view. Even though I am an old lady, I have had this experience more than once.

• No surprise here, but male drivers will take advantage of woman drivers. Men drive more aggressively when they cross paths with me. They assume that I will back off and give them the right of way, which I usually do, not because I am meek and mild, but because I am crossdressed. I do not want to get into an accident, then have to deal with civilians and police as an outed crossdresser, which showing my driver's license will clearly reveal.

•  Following up on the previous point, I drive legal as a woman driver. I closely follow all the rules of the road because I don't want to deal with police as a crossdresser. My understanding is that in my neck of the woods, dealing with the police is not an issue because they have been trained to deal respectfully with our kind. Beyond my neck of the woods, who knows? In any case, who wants to deal with the police respectfully or not?

• Car trouble as a woman driver is a piece of cake. You won't break a nail or get a smudge of car grease on your skirt fixing the problem. Being an AAA member is one solution, but instead of waiting for AAA to show up, just look helpless and soon a gentleman will stop by and do the dirty work. It happened to me once while shopping at a strip mall. When I returned to my car with my purchases, my car would not start, so I opened the hood to see if that would help. It did! Within minutes, two gents in a pickup truck pulled up, assessed the situation and determined that my battery was dead. They carefully explained to me how to start the car by popping the clutch and I was quickly on my way.

•   Passing is easy as a woman driver. Just use your turn signal to indicate what you are doing and when the passing lane is clear, speed up to enter the passing lane. After you passed, use your turn signal again and return to the travel lane. Seriously, passing as a woman is easier sitting inside your car. Tinted glass and reflections off the glass camouflage your appearance, so your are less likely to be read sitting in your Subaru. Waiting at a traffic light one night, a guy in the lane next to me rolled down the window on the passenger side of his car and tried earnestly to engage me in conversation. I ignored him, but I assumed that I passed especially since it was dark.

• During long roadtrips, you are likely to need to use a restroom. I have no fear about using the ladies' room in Connecticut because I know the state laws protect me, but I feel less comfortable using the ladies' rooms in other states because their state laws may not protect me. However, I will feel even more uncomfortable if I don't use the ladies' room, so I do what I have to do and have never had a problem. For what it's worth, I have successfully relieved myself in ladies' rooms in the following states: Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.

And so I go.

Wearing Elizabeth and James.

Artur Chamski on Polish television's Twoja Twarz Brzm Znajomo.

The Breakfast Club

By Paula Gaikowski

My dziewczyna Paula has been getting out a lot lately and she is dying to tell you all about it!

I had two road trips in the recent month and of course had time to get out as Paula

The first trip was to suburban Philadelphia.

When I am on the road, I tend to wake up very early, like 4:00-4:30. So I decided to organize my clothes and started trying on different outfits. Well I decided to get all dressed up with makeup and all – just as I would if I were going to be able to spend the day as a business woman. So there I am all dolled-up, and its 6:30 AM and the dining room is open, so off I went purse, laptop, looking very businesslike.

The waitress brought me coffee and addressed me as “Ma’am.” In one respect, it was remarkably mundane, however, the fact that I am out in the world doing everyday things as a woman is marvelously wonderful.

I truly want this every day.

I went back to the room and Cinderella morphed back into Cinderfella. I was so sad.

I must have missed some makeup because later that day one of my co-workers asked, “Hey, what’s on your eye?”

Thinking quickly I replied, “Oh, car trouble must be grease.”

A lady I’ve known many years quipped, “Yeah right!!”

I blushed and moved the conversation back to business.

I had nice weather in Long Beach, California the next week and decided to wear one of my skirt suits that I love so much. I loved my new glasses and had so much fun using my new makeup mirror that you can see to the right in the photo. Having a magnifying mirror made makeup application so easy.

I can’t stress enough what a help a mirror like this is! Please listen girls, the detail you get from the light and magnification is so helpful. It also solves the problem of putting on eye makeup without glasses. For once I could see in detail how I was putting on shadow and eyeliner! It’s lightweight and travels well; I use my hip pads to protect it in my luggage, at Walmart.

I had fun going to M·A·C and having an edgy young makeup artist teach me how to put on eyeliner the correct way. When it was all said and done, I was into it for $50, but oh so much fun and well worth the advice and experience of just being out there in Girl Land.

I bought a bottle of water at the front desk and had a conversation with the clerk, then went to the California Fish Grill and had dinner. While waiting to order, I could see out of the corner of my eye a guy about 45 looking me over, his gaze focused on my backside, then my legs.

“My gosh,” I thought, “He’s checking me out!” Whether or not I’m to his liking didn’t matter; just the fact that he is appraising me as a woman as a “possibility” is all it took for something to stir inside, something long hidden and forbidden coming to the surface.

I grabbed my dinner and walked out and felt my face blush.

Wearing Bebe.

Jack Clarke (right) of the Royal Canadian Air Force competed for the title of Miss Toronto, 1941. He was encouraged to enter the female beauty pageant by his squadron mates, who helped transform him into a viable competitor. (Source: One of the Boys by Paul Jackson)

My First Time: Stana in Wonderland

This is the first installment of a new Femulate series in which I invite readers to share their first crossdressing experience. Try to recall that moment the first time you tried on a woman’s garment and began the process of unveiling and exploring your feminine self. 

To entice you to share your first time story, I will give away a free copy of my e-book Fantasia Fair Diaries to all whose stories I use in Femulate.

To kick off My First Time, I will tell you my own story.

My Self-Portrait

I was a renaissance boy.

Growing up, I was interested in many things and some of those things resided on the feminine side of the street called “Life.” My parents did not dissuade me from my feminine interests and my sister accepted my interests because it gave her an in-house feminine playmate.

So I thought that playing house was just as “normal” as playing baseball. And even though some of my peers let me know that I might be a “fairy” because of my feminine proclivities, I ignored them and happily skipped on board the Good Ship Lollipop.

And so it went until one day at the age of 12, I was home alone and heard a voice calling me. The voice was emanating from my parent’s bedroom. More specifically, the voice came from the drawer of my mother’s bureau that contained her intimates.

I felt like Alice in Wonderland as I opened the bureau drawer and my mother’s nylon s beckoned, “Try me!”

I carefully removed a pair of my mother’s nylons from the drawer and rolled each one up my prepubescent hairless legs just as I had seen my mother do so many times in the past. But something was missing.

When my mother put on her nylons, she finished by attaching each nylon to the garters of her panty girdle. My briefs did not have garters, so the nylons were loose on my thighs and slipping to my knees. I needed a girdle. Conveniently, my mother stored her girdles in the same drawer as her nylons, so I borrowed one from my mother’s stash and squeezed my chubby figure into it.

As I carefully attached my nylons to the garters of my girdle, I was impressed on how well the girdle shaped a chubby boy into a feminine figure. But something was missing.

Although I now had a nice figure from the waist down, my girdle pushed some of my body fat up over the top of the girdle joining up with my boy boobs to create an unsightly muffin top. This will never do, so I revisited my mother’s bureau and found the perfect solution: a long line bra. After I slipped on the bra, everything seemed to be in place and I opened my mother’s closet to look at myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door.

Wow! I was impressed with the female figure that I saw in mirror. I thought I looked a lot like those women I saw in the Playtex and Maidenform advertisements!

As I admired the girl I saw in the mirror, I noticed the stacks of shoeboxes stored in the back of my mother’s closet. I did not hesitate as that voice urged me to go for it. So I searched through the shoeboxes and retrieved a pair of high heel pumps that I quickly slipped on and then revisited my reflection in the mirror.

Wow again! Not only did I have a figure that rivaled a shapely female, but now my legs were as shapely as any female’s!

After admiring myself for a few minutes, I decided that I better disrobe before someone came home. So I carefully removed all my mother’s finery and returned them to their proper place. But my Pandora had escaped and I would often return to my mother’s wardrobe to adorn myself as the girl I discovered in my soul.

Wearing Boston Proper.

David Castiblanco

The Dress

Bebe for me?

When I go to Dayton for the Hamvention in May, I will collect my Special Achievement Award at the Hamvention awards dinner. As I wrote here yesterday, I viewed last year's awards dinner on YouTube and the main reason I did was to see how the attendees were dressed in order to gauge how I should dress.

The men were dressed very nicely in jackets or suits and ties, but it was difficult to determine how the women were dressed because there were not many women visible. The only woman to speak at the dais was wearing a lovely dress, which was in sync with how the guys were dressed. There were other women seated in the audience, but it was hard to tell how they were dressed. I assume they were similarly dressed, that is dressed appropriately for an awards dinner.

So I got to thinking about how I will dress for the awards dinner.

I looked through my wardrobe and came up with a half dozen dresses that would be appropriate.

But then I reconsidered. This is big ― a once-in-a-lifetime event and I should buy something new to celebrate the occasion.

I’m thinking little black dress, but not just a boring LBD… rather, something a little more spectacular. Or maybe an evening gown.

I have some time to decide. And I welcome your advice.

Wearing Bebe.

Caleb Goh channels Audrey Hepburn in the 1998 film from Singapore That's The Way I Like It.

The Voice

...not!

As I mentioned here last week, I am the recipient of a ham radio award, the 2016 Special Achievement Award. I will receive the award when I make my annual trip to Dayton, Ohio, in May to attend Hamvention.

I viewed last year's awards dinner on YouTube and saw how the attendees were dressed ― men in jackets and ties, women in dresses or tops and skirts.  I also noticed that each award recipient spoke briefly  (5 minutes, more or less) after they received their award.

I will have no problem speaking for 5 minutes; I could probably speak for 55 minutes, but it is how I will speak that is a little worrisome. I plan to accept the award as a woman, so in addition to looking like a woman, I should speak like a woman, too, don't you think?

Many years ago, I bought Melanie Anne Phillips VHS video course "Melanie Speaks," which is intended to teach you how to speak like a woman. I watched the video and was impressed with the Melanie's method, but finding free time to practice with the video at home was a problem. So I copied the audio portion of the course to a cassette tape and practiced during my 35-minute commute to and from work.

In about three weeks, I got the hang of it and the voice that came out of my mouth was scary... in a good way! I sounded like a natural born woman!

Although I could sound like a woman, I seldom used that voice because I was embarrassed to do so with friends and acquaintances who were familiar with my usual soft male voice. And when I was out among civilians, my soft male voice usually did not give me away. So why bother?

But I think I will bother for the award ceremony as well as my whole weekend in Dayton. I want to make a good impression. Dressing as a woman, but speaking like a man would impress, but not in a good way.

So as a refresher, I listened to Melanie's course again and have been practicing and practicing and practicing some more. I am using a digital voice recorder to hear what I sound like and I think I am sounding pretty, pretty good. When I reach the point of no return, I will post an audio clip for all of you to hear and critique.

Wearing Forever 21.

Freddie Fenwick, Arthur Holland, Leonard Young and Ross Hamilton entertain Canadian
troops during World War I appearing as "The Dumbells" in The Duchess Entertains.

The Dark Side of Trans “Visibility”

The "transgender tipping point" was a welcome milestone—it's also made trans adults and youth more visible targets

...one of my close friends, who is trans and who hadn’t heard of the holiday (International Trans Day of Visibility), responded with a scowl when I told her about it.

“My goal isn’t visibility, my goal is survival,” she said. “The Jews were extremely visible in 1930s Europe, how much good did it do them?”

Please read the rest of Arthur Chu's thought-provoking article on Salon.

Wearing Boston Proper.

Dave Thomas Brown on stage in The Legend of Georgia McBride (NYC 2015).