Dress Code

Seven years ago when I was still working, Human Resources sent an e-mail titled “Dress Code.”

We expect you to report for work in appropriate attire. The image projected by personnel is important to our company’s success. Even though we have adopted a casual dress code policy, you should exercise discretion in selecting clothes suited to a casual business environment.

For example, the following are not appropriate attire for an office environment:

•    Backless or see-through shirts and/or styles that expose the abdomen, excessive skin or undergarments

•    Ripped/torn clothing or jeans and low-rise styles that expose excessive skin/undergarments

•    Miniskirts/dresses, short shorts and cut-offs shorts

•    Stretch/stirrup pants/leggings unless combined w/mid-thigh length top

•    Visible foundation garments, low cut and/or suggestive clothing

•    Clothing that is unwashed or stained

•    Bare feet, over the knee boots and beach shoes (rubber flip-flops)

Ouch - My wardrobe resembles some of that banned attire!

Leaving work yesterday, I mentioned to the receptionist that I will have to start abiding by the dress code.

“No miniskirts for me tomorrow,” I remarked.

She laughed.

If she only knew!

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For today's post, I considered changing the Femulate Her icon to the Femulate Him icon because the model in the Femulate Her slot looks so boyish.

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I was unable to confirm that Linda Grant in today's Femulator slot is actually a femulator. She is quite tall and her voice is borderline feminine, but I could find nothing on the Internet about her. If you know anything about Miss Grant, please let me know.

Wearing Price

Linda Grant femulating on a 1972 episode of UK television's Braden's Week.
(View Linda's appearance here; thank-you, Stephanie for this find.)

Woden's Day

Giving Thanks Dept.

I want to publicly thank my readers who have contributed to my Coffee Break fund. Your contributions help to keep this blog free of advertisements and gives me an incentive to keep on blogging. So, thank-you!

Google This Dept.

Recently, Mikki wrote, “I love all those clips from films you share with us. I have a bunch of TG/CD films and see items on Femulate that I haven't heard of. Do you have a special source for these photos/films? Can you share it with me?”

I replied, “Occasionally, readers alert me to femulations they encounter watching films and television, but I find most of them myself using Google.”

Google searches for “crossdressing films” or “drag films” sometimes turns up something new, but usually I use a femulation I know to bait Google into giving up other femulations. For example, if I Google “tony curtis crossdressing,” Google comes back with a load of images of Curtis and Jack Lemmon crossdressing in the film Some Like It Hot, as well as images of other actors crossdressing in other films and on television. I will be familiar with most of Google's finds, but there is almost always an image or two I don't recognize, which becomes new fodder for the Femulator slot, like the film femulation below.

Meanwhile, the image at the top of the post is another Google find, but there was no information about its source. Looks like it's from a television show geared towards school-aged kids, but I could be wrong. Can anybody solve this mystery femulation?

My Quest Dept.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that after my purge in 1983, I no longer owned a single photo of myself en femme prior to age 32... or so I thought.

Fiona reminded me that years ago, I recalled that there were photos of me en femme for Halloween at age 25 that appeared in my school's yearbook. The yearbook was lost in the purge, but you can read about my quest for those yearbook photos in this post from December 2011.

Wearing Venus

Max Hansen (center) femulates Gitta Alpar (right) in the 1932 German film Die, oder Keine.
(View a pertinent clip from the film here.)

The Great Purge of 1983

I have been femulating for most of my life and I only purged once, so I called it “The Great Purge of 1983.”

In the trans timeline, 1983 was Mesozoic. There was no Internet and there was very little published information on the subject. We were flying in the dark and grasped any bit of information we could find.

One legend was that you would stop femulating when you fell in love and got married. I bought into that legend because I stopped femulating after meeting and falling in love with my future wife and did not femulate for over two years while we dated and became engaged.

About a week before our wedding, I purged everything because I assumed I was done with femulating. Not only did I discard replaceable items like clothing, wigs, makeup, etc., I also discarded irreplaceable items, primarily my collection of self-taken photographs. As a result, I no longer own a single photo of myself en femme prior to age 32.

Our wedding was in late September. One month later, we were invited to a Halloween party and I dressed as a woman.

And so it goes.

Natalee

Harvey Korman (center row, left) femulating on a 1969 episode of television's The Carol Burnett Show

Barn Back

Good news, girls!

I received a text on Saturday informing me that Dressbarn is back with an online store.

I perused their website and noticed that the selection is limited – nowhere near the selection found on the old Dress Barn website. I imagine that in the future, there will be more for milady to choose from.

By the way, they are offering a 15% discount if you sign up for their emails and texts.

Wearing Madeleine

University of Wisconsin-Madison Haresfoot Club femulator, circa 1920

Someday Funnies

Wearing Venus

British sister and brother act, Ria Jones and Ceri Dupree

In my neck of the woods

Across the street from my home is about 5000 acres of forested land. Most of it is owned by a nearby municipality's reservoir company. A smaller portion is owned by a local hunting club.

Either way, I will never have prying neighbors living across the street seeing me leave or return home en femme. The woods also helps me maintain my girlish figure.

Most mornings this time of year, I hike the woods for an hour. All the vegetation is defrocked and the wetlands are frozen, so that makes it easier to move around. And the season is over for the game that the hunting club chases, so I don't have to worry about a hunter mistaking me for a dodo.

Hiking through the woods is much better exercise than hiking the local highways and byways, which is what I have to do when hiking in the woods becomes inhospitable. My body feels it after a hike through the woods... not so much after a hike on pavement.

Besides better exercise, hiking through the woods is more interesting. Occasionally, I encounter wildlife and there are the foundations of abandoned homes to explore. And there are some spectacular views in my neighborhood, which is the highest point in the county. There is one clearing where I can literally see the whole width of the state of Connecticut – from Long Island Sound to the mountains in central Massachusetts.

In the spring, I will have to return to hiking on pavement as the wetlands thaw out and the vegetation begins blooming. It is not as interesting as hiking through the woods, but it is less wear and tear on my high heels.

Wearing Bebe

Femulating in Weimar (pre-Nazi) Germany

My Not So Secret Identity

When I was closeted, my secret identity was a well-kept secret. People who knew Stana, only knew Stana and people who knew Stan, only knew Stan.

After I left the closet, people who only knew Stan, now knew Stana, too. To confuse matters, Stan no longer existed to some of the people who only knew Stan – they only know Stana. On the other hand, since I am not Stana full-time, there are people who know me as both Stan and Stana, like the staffs at my hairdresser, bank, doctor's office, grocery store, former employer, the boutiques I regularly patronize, etc.

Then there are the people, who I met after I came out of the closet. They never knew Stan and only know Stana.

I almost need a scorecard to keep everything straight (if you can call that “straight”).

I should be straight with everyone and that would make life easier, but there are some people who cannot handle the truth... mostly relatives who have known Stan (and only Stan) for decades. But now that I think about it, some of those relatives have seen “Halloween Stana,” so they might not be as surprised as I think they might be.

If I can only convince my wife about going full-time, but that is probably a bridge to far. Then again, maybe not.

Wearing Eloquii

British professional femulators Colin Ross and Terry Bartlett, circa 1940

Tuesday Shorts

Over the weekend I received an advertisement email from ShopBAZAAR, which featured the image above.

There are a lot of mixed messages being sent in that image. I studied it for awhile and I am not sure what to make of it.

Is the model male or female? Is ShopBAZAAR selling this outfit to boys or girls or both?

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This year, Groundhog Day is the same forward or backward, more or less... 2020 0202!

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Why did Jennifer Lopez wrap herself in the national flag of Brazil at the Golden Globes Sunday night?

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Commenting on a short suit I wore, Pat wrote, “I simply love your outfit and thinks your legs are gorgeous! I’m also a tall girl and reluctant to wear heels because of it, but you’ve now given me courage!”

I wrote back, “Thank you for the kind words. My mother often remarked that with my shapely legs, I should have been a girl!” (Guess what, Mom?)

“Anyway, my attitude regarding heels is that being 6 feet 2 inches tall, wearing flats or heels is not going to be the deal breaker as to whether I pass or not.”

As a result, I wear the highest heels that I can stand!

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Don't be shy! Ask me anything and I promise to respond honestly. However, I reserve the right to respond to snarky questions with snarky answers.

So, don't wait. Click on the "send me e-mail" link under my photo in the right column and ask away.

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I want to publicly thank Linda. Every New Year, she kindly sends me a disc containing all the new and old stories, about 15,000 files in all, posted on Fictionmania. So thank you, Linda!

Wearing ModCloth

Masahiro Matsuoka (left) femulates in Japanese television's Kaseifu no Mitazono, which according to IMDB, is about Kaoru Mitazono, a professional housekeeper who is the best in the field and loves to pry into dirty secrets of every household. But Mitazono has secrets, too. One of them is that he is a cross dresser.

Go West, Young Woman

Since the demise of the Payless shoe store chain, I have received emails asking what do I do now to put new shoes on my feet.

I miss Payless. Their prices were very reasonable, they had stores everywhere and they carried shoes in larger sizes to fit ladies like us.

On the other hand, their sizes were inconsistent. I recall trying on shoes at a local Payless and finding shoes that fit me in three different sizes! That is not a big deal if you shopped in the store, but that made shopping online a crapshoot. Luckily, they had an easy return policy – you could ship returns back to Payless or return them to a local store.

Those days are gone with the wind. So, I took Horace Greeley's advice: Go West, young woman! That is, Go Nine West to be specific.

Actually, I have been purchasing shoes from Nine West for years; just not as often as Payless.

Nine West has a couple of things going for it. The quality of their shoes is very good, whereas the quality of Payless shoes occasionally failed. Their sizes are very consistent – I never had to return a Nine West purchase because the shoe size was unfit (or for any other reason). And like Payless, they have shoes for ladies with larger feet.

On the other hand, they have few, if any, local stores. (There was a Nine West store in a local mall, but not anymore). Also, their prices are higher than the Payless experience. But, they always have sales and I just wait to purchase that shoe to-die-for until it goes on sale.

And so my feet go.

Wearing Nine West

Massimo Bellinzoni (left) in the 1992 Italian film What A Night (Nottataccia).

Someday Funnies

Wearing Morilee

Alec Baldwin femulating for television's Saturday Night Live