Reflections of a "Booth Babe"

Brenda commented on the video of my short presentation at Hamvention last month.

"Stana, you definitely have natural feminine mannerisms that come out in the video. You were 5 nine plus 60db and owned the moment. I hope this gives you the increased confidence that you are the woman that you are and can enjoy life as a woman without hesitation. You have shown us how the thought of coming out is terrifying and even more so where some may know your past but many people have no idea and just see a vibrant woman on stage as the TAPR secretary. Compliments are in order. You looked just fabulous. How about blogging as how you felt being a wonderful booth babe?

Your wish is my command, Brenda.

I confess that on the first time I staffed our booth as a woman in 2010, I was a little fearful about interacting with strangers and felt safer ensconced in our booth.

I spent the morning of the first day of the convention working in the "background" of our booth assisting the guys who were on the firing line interacting with customers.

In the afternoon, the firing line got busier, so I stepped up and began interfacing with the customers. They had questions and wanted information about our products. They did not care who was delivering that information and I quickly felt comfortable in the role of dispensing that information.

Being the only booth babe in our booth, I noticed that I was attracting customers away from the booth boys. Some of our customers actually held off dealing with the boys and waited patiently for their turn to talk with me. So, I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon as the booth babe and after

However, staffing the booth at Hamvention, I got a taste of the prejudices that professional woman face every day.

Approximately 15% of the US ham population are female and the attendees at Hamvention reflected that statistic. By far, the males outnumbered females.

The people staffing booths at Hamvention also reflected that statistic. Some booths have no females, some of the bigger booths have one or two females and a few booths have a bevy of women, but they are professional "booth babes" hired to attract customers.

Some of the visitors to our booth must have read me as the equivalent of a booth babe. On one occasion, a guy approached me at the booth and asked, "Do you know anything?"

Damn! After 50 years in the hobby, I probably knew more about ham radio than he did. I was so taken aback by the question that I did not have a quick comeback. Instead, I did my duty and politely answered his question with a smile.

That moment is probably the low point of my eight stints as a booth babe. If that is the "low point," I guess I am doing OK especially in contrast to some of the high points.

For example, while I was staffing the booth, another guy asked me a question that I could not handle, so I jokingly said, "You'll have to ask him (referring to one of the guys staffing our booth) because I am just a 'booth babe'"

His response was, "And a very good 'booth babe'!"

Still another a guy stopped by and remarked that he remembered me from the previous year because I had bought a receiver kit from his booth. I recalled buying the item, but I did not recall him, so I used my feminine charms and managed to never admit that I did not remember him. And he went away a happy camper.

Countless guys smiled and/or winked at me when they walked past my booth. Women smiled at me too, but in a different way. As you know, there is a big difference between a man-to-woman smile and a woman-to-woman smile.

One fellow, who was staffing another booth nearby visited our booth to get better acquainted. He was interested in taking me out for a date during the convention, but then he noticed my wedding ring, asked about it and then backed off when I explained that I was happily married.

I thoroughly enjoy my life as a woman serving as a booth babe. It was wonderful to meet and chat with the people I already knew, but it was also wonderful to meet and chat with people I did not know explaining the technologies displayed in our booth. It makes the 725-mile roadtrip worthwhile.

During the long hours on the road I do a lot of thinking. As the New York radio stations fade away, I begin thinking about where I have been and where I am going on – especially where I am going in this adventure I have been living.

I love being able to live as a woman and I am so glad that I came out as I did to give me more opportunities to experience life as the woman I really am.

Wearing Celino (Source: Beyond the Rack)

Professional femulator Lee Leonard also know as Liz Lyons

I get asked out when I wear this outfit

By Kristen Nichols

As a single person in the world of Bumble, Raya, and countless other dating apps, it has been interesting observing just how quickly they have changed the dating scene. People are much less likely to ask me out in person like they used to—even just in the span of the few short years since these apps have been around. One theory I have is because it’s easier to face rejection from the comfort of your own living room. If someone swipes left on you or doesn’t reply to a message, it’s doesn’t have the same effect as getting turned down in person. And it’s interesting because now I’m actually stunned (though pleasantly surprised) when someone has the courage to strike up a conversation and ask me out in person.

Recently, though, I was asked out on a couple of dates—in person. Once on a Sunday afternoon trip to the farmers market and the next while standing in line for a salad at Sweetgreen. What surprised me in both cases, aside from the rarity of said scenario, was that I happened to be wearing the same thing both times. In each scenario, I was wearing a slip-skirt outfit—specifically involving a leopard-print style that has quickly become my summer staple.

Read the rest of the article at Who What Where.

Wearing Haney dress, Balmain bag and Dolce & Gabbana sandals (Source: Intermix)

Rudy Giuliani femulates while an admirer considers his next move.

Mid-Week Femulations

Marriage Advisory Dept.

Beth wrote, "Per your comments about your wife's way of accepting you, a writer in an automotive magazine recently wrote, 'Be sure and give your spouse a hug. After all, they put up with you.' And then went on to say that since our spouses allow us to pursue our passions, then we need to be sure that we are allowing them the latitude to pursue what they are passionate about."

Glamulate Dept.

Look right and you will see Christina Marie's results using the online "Your Face on a Glamorous Magazine Cover In Seconds!" app.

Surgery Without Surgery Dept.

This article came across the mojo wire yesterday: How hormones made the transgender journey safer than surgery. I found it very interesting and you may, too.

Just Saying Dept.

The way things are going, Trump will have to build a wall to keep people in the country.

Wearing JustFab (Source: JustFab)

Sailor Moon and Jupiter Moon at the 2014 Dallas Comic-Con

Blank

I am very tired. I have nothing. My mind is blank. Bupkus. Nie mam nic.

Wearing Metisu (Source: Metisu)

British POW Pinky Smith femulating in a POW camp during World War II.

Signs

After yet another complaint about clip-on earrings, Robin wrote urging me to get my ears pierced. She mentioned that if the pain of getting my ears pieced was the issue, I had nothing to fear but ear fear itself, because the pain "was nothing."

I replied that I usually get my teeth fixed without Novocain or whatever they use these days, so pain is not an issue. Rather, my spouse is the issue.

She is not thrilled with the fact that her husband is a woman, but she realizes that I must let my girl out for air once in awhile. I appreciate that she is OK with me being the authentic me some of the time, but I don't want to rub her nose in it.

Everyday, she sees signs that remind her that her husband is a woman.

We share a walk-in closet and as she enters it, she encounters a rack now half full of her husband's dresses, skirts, blouses, and slacks. On the floor below those pretty things are countless boxes containing her husband's high heels. Next to the shoes are storage totes containing her husband's lingerie and hosiery. Next to the totes is her husband's cosmetics box. Still other totes contain her husband's jewelry and purses. And on the shelf above her tops and jeans is a tote containing her husband's wigs.

If I dress as a woman when my spouse is home, I avoid my spouse so that she does not see her husband as a woman because she has often said, "I don't want to see you dressed as a woman." (On occasion, curiosity gets the best of her and she wants to see how I look, but I don't show her unless she is interested.)

My body has signs that may remind her that I am a woman. My hairless arms, legs, breasts, shoulders and back are the most obvious signs.

Less obvious are my neatly maintained eyebrows (eyeglasses hide how neat and feminine they actually look).

She never mentions the stuff in our closet, nor my shaved body, nor my feminized eyebrows – out of sight, out of mind.

But if I had my ears pierced, there would be no way to hide that from her. It would be a constant reminder that I am a woman, so I let it be.

Wearing Bebe (Source: Bebe)

Fran Heuser

Someday Funnies

The Backstory: When I saw the above advertisement among my e-mails, I knew I had to do something with it because the model resembled a film actor, whose name I will not divulge to protect the innocent. The actor happens to be one of my favorites and has appeared in the Jurassic film series and numerous Wes Anderson films among others.   

Wearing Bebe (Source: Bebe)

A Dad modeling in a womanless fashion show in 1956.

Missions Accomplished

I won't mention names, but somebody in this house uses too much toilet paper and occasionally, the downstairs toilet gets blocked. Usually, a few plunges with a plumber's friend clears the problem, but Wednesday's situation was more serious and there was no movement even after I took 30 or 40 deep plunges.

Next, I boiled a pot of water and added that to the mix, but it did not help. I added two more pots of boiling water and let simmer while I made myself a cup of coffee.

Our six-months-old Keurig machine was on the fritz and I had to push the "make a cup of coffee" button three times before I actually got a full cup of coffee. And it took forever to accomplish that feat.

This was our fifth Keurig and I recognized the signs of a dying Keurig. I am a little, but not much wiser, so last time I bought a new Keurig, I paid Uncle Wally an extra $6 for the extended service contract.

While the hot water was brewing in our toilet bowl, I contacted Uncle to put in a claim for our dying Keurig machine, but lo and behold, Uncle Wally told me to contact Keurig since the machine was still under the factory warranty.

After I rolled my eyes, I dialed up Keurig and a very polite fellow listened to my sad story and told me he would ship me a brand new Keurig machine to replace my dying machine. Mission accomplished!

Back to the toilet bowl, the hot water did not seem to make much of a difference as I got the same results plunging hot water as I did plunging cold water.

As a veteran of the toilet bowl wars, I remembered something that worked before and I asked my spouse to flush the upstairs toilet bowl. She did and that did the trick – the upstairs flush cleared the downstairs blockage. Another mission accomplished!

Now all I had to do is wait a few days for a new Keurig machine. I had asked the Keurig service rep where my machine was coming from so I could estimate when it would be delivered. He admitted that he did not know because they have warehouses across the country. So I would just have to keep my panties on and wait patiently. Surprisingly, FedEx delivered a new Keurig machine the very next day.

Sometimes, life is good!

Wearing Bebe (Source: Bebe)

Fred Armisen femulates often in television's Portlandia.

"Little Miss Gay” Beauty Pageants

By Starla Renee Trimm

I have previously discussed at some length the proliferation of elaborate womanless beauty pageants in the Deep South of the U.S. We’ve noted the irony of parents dressing their sons like beauty queens while openly condemning trans people. In a different culture halfway around the world, a similarly befuddling phenomenon exists in the form of “Little Miss Gay” pageants in the Philippines.

(Caveat: I am in no way an anthropologist. I do not speak, read or understand Tagalog. I am not offering any judgments or concluions in this brief overview, which is based solely on what I have obsrved on the Internet. I simply suggest that this is an area ripe for study by those better suited to the task than I am.)

Despite living in a society dominated religiously by Catholicism and facing widepread opposition, the LGBT community in the Phillippines is quite active. As in the U.S., there are circuits of “Miss Gay” pageants in which femulating men compete. But where the similarity ends is that while such pageants in America are strictly adult events, in the Phillippines they reach far down in age to include young boys competing for the title of “Little Miss Gay.” Such events are sometimes staged in conjunction with adult pageants, while other are unaffiliated affairs sometimes sponsored by schools or churches.

(Just as a note of annotation here: it should be pointed out that the English word “gay” as used in the Philippines isn’t strictly a term referencing sexual orientation. It is more generically applied to anyone in the LGBT community, even heterosexual crossdressers.)

As in the U.S. womanless pageants, the “Little Miss Gay” events can often be very elaborately staged affairs, even in impoverished communities. And the attention given to the femulations is even more intense and detailed. While U.S. schoolboys in womanless pageants are mostly doing it as a one-time lark, some of the Filipino boys regularly compete in pageants. Many of them adopt female names and personas and some even grow their own hair out to feminine lengths and have it cut, styled and colored like a girl. And the parents – the power behind the crown as in U.S. female child beauty pageants – will spend prolifically on their son’s pageant wardrobe.

Another difference from American womanless pageants is that while the U.S. affairs are strictly PG-rated, the Little Miss Gay events sometimes find children dressing, dancing, singing or acting in what we would consider a very inappropriate sexually provocative manner. It is very off-putting and creepy to Westerners (like me) to learn about this phenomenon.

Who are these boys? Are they gay and/or trans and embracing it at an early age? Are they being exploited by their parents or worse, is there some degree of coercion or abuse behind it all? As I said, I’m not academically equipped to find answers and only suggest that the phenomenon is one that merits further study and investigation by more qualified people.

(Editor's Note: Philippines is also the nation where very realistic womanless beauty pageants are conducted at the university level, for example, the Miss Eng'g pageant, which has been mentioned here numerous times in the past.)

Wearing New York & Company (Source: New York & Company)

Contestant Number 7 in the South Hill, Virginia, Relay for Life Womanless Beauty Pageant

Potential

Joann Roberts was one of the people who helped me discover my true self.

Jump on the wayback machine to the mid-1980s and you will find me religiously attending my support group meetings twice a month. Those meetings were my only opportunity to be en femme beyond my closet at home and I seldom missed a meeting.

I was still learning the art of femulation back then. My wigs looked like wigs, my makeup was all wrong, my heels were too high and my skirts were too short. (I guess some things never change.)

Besides giving me an opportunity to go out en femme, attending support group meetings helped educate me about the finer points of femulation. By chatting with the other girls in attendance and listening attentively to speakers who appeared at our meetings, I corrected the errors of my presentation.

Joann Roberts was one of our speakers. She spoke for about an hour and then hung back to chat with us as we perused the books she had for sale: her Art and Illusion: A Guide to Crossdressing and her Art & Illusion Companion, which was a supplement to the original Art and Illusion.

I bought a copy of both books. After I paid her, she thanked me for my purchase, then she added, "I could not help noticing you during my talk."

"Huh?" was my clever response.

"You are a natural and have a lot of potential."

I managed to squeak out a "Thank-you" and went on my way.

I will never forget what Joann said to me that night and thanks to her, I have been working on my "lot of potential" ever since.

Wearing Self Portrait dress and Sergio Rossi pumps (Source: Intermix)

Alan Coyne femulates on stage in Charley's Aunt '66.

Thursday Dinner

After shopping on Thursday, I met Shauna at the Westfarms Mall for dinner at 6.

We dined at BRIO Tuscan Grille, an Italian restaurant where I have dined en femme in the past, but always alone, so it was nice to have a dinner companion for a change.

Shauna and I go way back having met at a Connecticut Outreach Society (COS) meeting about 20 years ago. I was the first transwoman Shauna ever met in person and we hit it off from the start.

Shauna dropped out of sight while her children were growing up, but now she wants to get out en femme again and she reached out to me. I let her know that COS was still active, so she went to a recent meeting and then she asked me about a girls' night out and that is how our Thursday evening get together came about.

She said she was a little nervous about being out among the civilians, but she had nothing to fear but fear itself. Most of the civilians paid no attention to us and the handful who had to deal with us face-to-face (like the restaurant waitstaff) treated us like ladies.

After dinner, I remembered that I wanted to buy some makeup (Lancome mascara and eyeliner), so we went to Sephora, but they were out of stock. Then,we tried the Lancome counter in Macy's where I had better luck.

After my Macy's purchase, we decided to call it a night. We both had a great night out and plan to get together again real soon now.

Wearing Boston Proper (Source: Boston Proper)

Romain Duris femulates in the mall in the 2014 French film The New Girlfriend.

Thursday Shopper

As I wrote here, I met up with an old friend on Thursday who I have not seen in nearly 20 years. Shauna and I planned to meet at the Westfarms Mall for dinner at 6, but I was ready to go at 3:30, so I decided to do some shopping beforehand.

Fashionista Dept.

I wore a Muse black and white color block sheath that I purchased over five years ago and had never worn.

At the time of purchase, the dress was tight, but I liked it so much that I bought it anyway and hung it in the TBD area of my closet ("TBD" as in To Be worn after Diet). After losing 20 pounds, it now fits and I accessorized with black tights, black patent high heels, black bag and gold jewelry.

Going to the Dogs Dept.

First stop was Petco to buy dog food for our two pups.

At 4 PM, I was not overdressed for Petco; there were other customers in business attire probably shopping on their way home from work. I did notice a couple of women checking me out, but I like to think they were in awe of my fashion sense rather than my transiness.

Like I Need More Clothes Dept.

Our plan was to meet near the Macy's entrance to the mall. Problem is that there are three Macy's entrances to the mall.

I threw caution to the wind, parked my car near the middle entrance and entered the store. I had over an hour to kill, so I started perusing the racks. I really really did not need any more clothes and I really really did not want to try on anything because I was certain that I would stain my dress with makeup as I undressed/dressed in the fitting room.

Dress-wise, I did not see anything I had to have, but then I came upon a rack of pencil skirts in an array of colors and in a material (scuba) that I had seldom seen before. And they were marked down to $19.99! I realized that I could try on skirts over my dress and would not have to disrobe, so I started shopping more seriously.

I liked all the colors, but the blue ("Lazulite") was my favorite and they had my size. I grabbed an XL and a Large and sashayed to the dressing room to try them on. The XL looked too big, so I did not bother with it. The Large fit, but was a little roomy – do I dare try on a Medium?

I held onto the Large, returned to the rack, found a Medium and returned to the dressing room. The Medium fit like a glove clinging to my figure like a pencil skirt should. So I abandoned the Large and held onto the Medium.

Next, I began shopping for a white blouse to go with the skirt and I tried on a few, but did not find anything I liked.

By the way, the dressing room was busy. Women coming and going and none of them gave me a second look.

Looking for more white blouses, my iPhone rang. It was Shauna letting me know that she was on her way and would arrive at the mall shortly.

So I stopped shopping, paid for the skirt and proceeded to the parking lot to meet up with my friend.

Wearing Rocky Barnes sandals (Source: The Zoe Report)

In the 1970 film Dinah East, Jeremy Stockwell played a glamorous movie queen of the 1950s, who is revealed to be a man after her death. According to IMDB, Dinah East was Stockwell's only film. I wonder if he was a professional femulator. And whatever became of him?

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