Throwback Thursday: At Work En Femme

It is hard to believe that the first time I went to work en femme on Halloween was 20 years ago! Wow! Here is my story of that ground-breaking day.

Halloween is “National Crossdresser’s Day,” so they say. I guess there is some truth in that because my first public crossdressed outing was on Halloween and I know many other crossdressers also poked their bewigged heads out of the closet for the first time on October 31. And over the years, I have continued to crossdress on Halloween attending parties given by friends and my support group. But, this year was different.

One week before Halloween, my company announced that they were sponsoring a day of Halloween events including a costume contest. In all my years of being gainfully employed, no employer of mine had ever sanctioned wearing costumes to work on Halloween.

I know some of you have gone to work en femme on Halloween and I often considered it, but I never had the nerve to do it. However, this year, I could go to work en femme with the blessing of the boss! T’was a crossdresser’s dream-come-true.

There was no doubt that my costume would be en femme, but how en femme was the question. I considered my options and decided to dress appropriately for my workplace, which is an office. My costume would be “office girl drag.”

I had a plenty of outfits that qualified as office girl drag, so I went through my stash to decide what to wear. I narrowed my choices down to three outfits. To make the final decision, I slipped into my unmentionables and modeled each outfit for my wife. She and I agreed that the black print, short-sleeved, knee-length sheath looked best. To round out the ensemble, I chose tan pantyhose and a pair of black patent pumps with 3-1/2-inch spike heels.

The night before Halloween, I prepared for the next day. I depilated, combed out my wig, and laid everything out so I could get ready as quickly as possible Halloween morning. I turned in early because I had set the alarm clock for 4:45 AM to give me enough time to depart for work at 7:15 fully made-up and dressed. However, turning in early did no good because I was so excited I had a hard time falling asleep. It was after 2 AM before I finally nodded off and I woke up 15 minutes before the alarm clock was set.

I got up, shaved, showered, and applied my makeup. For a change, I had no makeup disasters and was finished by 6:15. I put on my undies, dress, shoes, and wig, then I checked myself out in a full-length mirror. Was that Nicole Kidman’s reflection in the mirror? Not quite, but when I squinted real hard, I thought I saw Nicole Kidman’s mother.

Last thing to do was my nails. I applied press-on nails to my pinky and ring fingers, then I had an incredibly hard time applying the nails to my middle fingers. None of the press-ons fit quite right and adding glue did not make a difference. Time was running out, so I decided to forgo the nails. After removing the press-ons from my pinky and ring fingers, I grabbed my purse and hit the road.

The commute was uneventful and I arrived at work 15 minutes early. I exited my car and walked to the main entrance enjoying the feminine beat of my heels clicking on the sidewalk.

Inside, the first people I encountered were our receptionist and a woman from Human Resources. At first, neither of them recognized me. Then, they both recognized me and started gushing over my costume. So far, so good.

I went upstairs to my cubicle. Since I was early, there was no one around to see me, so I went to the cubicle of one of my best friends at work (she is one of the few people who gets to work earlier than I}. I stuck my head around the corner of her cubicle and said, “Trick or treat.” She was floored!

After she regained her composure, she began calling me “Stella” and insisted on escorting me to the cubicles where other early birds were already at work. Our first stop was her boss, who had been with the company about six months. I don’t work directly with him, but he is only three cubicles away from me and we cross each other’s paths each day.

My friend pushed me into his cubicle and he had no clue. At first, he thought I was a new female employee, but my friend blew my cover, “Don’t you recognize him?” He didn’t until I explained that I was the guy three cubicles away.

And that was the way it went all day long. A tall woman in a Halloween costume environment is a dead giveaway. As a result, the majority read me as a man in drag, but did not know which man until I showed them my mug shot on my security card. On the other hand, a minority did not read me at all including some folks that I work with on a regular basis.

By mid-morning, the word was out that there was a guy in drag upstairs and a procession of onlookers began marching up to my cubicle to check me out. (No other guys appeared in drag. In fact, only a handful of guys wore costumes at all. On the other hand, the woman had a lot more Halloween spirit and approximately 1 out of 4 women appeared in costume.)

In general, women loved my costume. Some were amazed that I shaved my legs and my arms. Others complimented me on my makeup and some asked, “Did your wife do your makeup?”

“No, I did it myself,” I responded, which caused even more amazement.

A few remarked that I should quit my job and become a professional female impersonator! One woman said, “You made my day,” and she returned to my cubicle three times with two or three new onlookers in tow each time. A pretty administrator remarked, “You look better than most women I know.”

I don’t think I fooled everyone. A few women gave me knowing looks, like they knew I looked too good to have only done this once. But, I didn’t mind.

On the male side, the majority appreciated my costume, but there were two or three who seemed to be phobic about it, typical macho twaddle, I guess.

Shortly after getting to work, my pantyhose began running like crazy! I don’t know if they were defective or I was careless, but by 10 AM, I had three runs that were getting bigger by the minute. I wanted to look my best, so I left the building for a few minutes and drove to a nearby CVS to buy a new pair.

Now, this is the scary part because CVS was not having a Halloween costume contest. I parked the car and walked into CVS passing a handful of people who paid me no mind. I entered the store and to avoid causing a commotion, I went to the first salesgirl I saw and explained that I ran the pantyhose of my Halloween costume and needed a new pair.

“Hosiery is in aisle eight, Ma’am,” she replied, unfazed by my Halloween costume hint.

I guess I was not going to cause a commotion, so I went to aisle eight, picked out a pair, then I went to the register where the same salesgirl rang me up without a clue.

Now, here is the amazing part. I never used a femme voice. I spoke in my normal male voice, which is admittedly soft-spoken, but definitely male. I guess the salesgirl’s eyes convinced her that I was a woman no matter what clues her ears might be picking up. (I had read about this phenomenon, but did not believe it until I actually experienced it.)

I returned to my office and waited for the results of the costume contest. A lot of people said they would vote for me and I guess they did because I won. I thought there were three or four costumes that were better than mine, but I guess having the guts to wear the costume I wore was that little extra that pushed me over the top.

I feel a little guilty about that because it did not take any guts to do what I did. This was something I wanted to do for a very long time. I also felt like I cheated a little because this wasn’t a costume I put together overnight. I’ve had practice dressing like this for years.

I’ll admit that I did have some qualms about possibly losing the respect of some of my colleagues. But when I thought about it, if somebody lost respect for me because I crossdressed on Halloween, then I don’t want their respect. So, qualms be damned! Tighten that corset as tight as you can. Today you are a woman!

I made one fashion blunder: my choice of footwear. I had not worn that particular pair of high heels in such a long time that I had forgotten why I stopped wearing them – because they hurt a lot in a very short time! I have other pumps with the same heel height and even higher that don’t hurt like that pair did. The only saving grace is that I did not have to get up and walk around too much. I could just sit at my desk and pose for my admirers whenever they showed up.

However, I regret that I did not wear more comfortable shoes because I wanted to go to the mall, have lunch at the food court, and do some window-shopping. But by noon, my feet were so hobbled that walking around the mall would have been very ugly.

I also had a fashion revelation. Wearing a tight corset all day was quite painless. The corset did inhibit movement, but it did not cause any aches or pains (like my shoes and clip-on earrings), while improving my figure immeasurably.

I had the time of my life. I wished the day would never end, but it did and now I have a lot of wonderful memories about my first day at work en femme.

Wearing TRE by Natalie Ratabesi skirt suit, Bottega Veneta bag and Casadei boots

John Barrowman femulating on the London stage in La Cage Aux Folles.

Uni to Girly

Brows can either make or break your entire look.

I had a unibrow when I started to get serious about femulating. I did not have a solid unibrow, but there were enough hairs above the bridge of my nose that it was not very ladylike. So early on, I took a razor to that patch of hair.

In boy mode, nobody noticed that I now had two distinct eyebrows. (Wearing eyeglasses in boy mode also helped to disguise my eyebrow feminization.)

Emboldened, I bought eyebrow tweezers and an eyebrow trimmer. With the tweezers, I attacked the stray hairs and with the trimmer, I shortened any hairs that had grown to unruly lengths. The result was neater and more feminine brows. And in boy mode, nobody noticed.

Further emboldened, I began using the tweezers to thin my brows. I only thinned along the bottoms, never the tops because I had read in a number of places that you should not pluck along the tops of your brows because if you do, the hair will not grow back!

Still nobody noticed, so I kept on thinning and the result was a perfect feminine sweeping curve along the bottom of my brows, while the top was not so perfect.

I was a little frustrated until I visited our public library and took out a book titled Beautiful Brows: The Ultimate Guide to Styling, Shaping, and Maintaining Your Eyebrows by Nancy Parker and Nancy Kalish. The book deflated the advice about not plucking above your eyebrows and said to go ahead and pluck above, as well as below.

Immediately after reading that passage, I dropped the book, went to the bathroom and plucked all the strays above my eyebrows! Now my eyebrows, both tops and bottoms, looked neat and feminine and since then I continued to pluck and thin above and below. (By the way, the hair does indeed grow back above as well as below.)

This is a very tricky business, so take your time and go back and forth between your left and right brows so that they will look alike.

To color and define my brows, I use an Avon eyebrow pencil. Although my natural eyebrow color is light brown, I use a blonde eyebrow pencil because I found that using a brown pencil resulted in a brow that was too dark. Blonde is just right for me, so you too might want to go one shade lighter than your natural brow color.

Using an eyebrow brush, I comb out my brow hairs so they are lined up horizontally and pointing away from my nose.

Next, I sharpen the pencil to a very fine point and draw a line that defines the upper edge of my eyebrow. I start drawing the line above the inner corner of my eye (point A in the accompanying figure), angling upwards to the peak of the arch which is above the outer edge of the pupil of my eye (point B), then drawing the brow out to a point that lines up with my nose and the outer corner of my eye (point C). All the while I draw the line as close as possible to my existing brow hair.

After I define the tops of my eyebrows, I use the pencil to fill in the area below the line where the hair is thin or missing. Then I use the eyebrow brush to brush and even out the color I just applied.

Women generally have higher brow bones than men, resulting in a greater distance between the bottom of the brow and the eyelid. To compensate, use a highlighter to brighten the area under the arch and lift the brow even more.

Any questions? I will try my best to answer them.

Wearing Venus

Femulator models her H&M haul

Hong Kong?

Tsang Ching is a 33-year-old Hong Kong cisgender
male, who has been presenting as a female in public
for six years.

My goal this week is to finish doing taxes. That’s six filings – federal and state for my daughter, sister and my wife and me. I use TurboTax, so that helps a lot. The big task is getting all the paperwork organized to input into the software. So I am in a numbers frame of mind this week.

Speaking of numbers, everyday I check the stats for this blog – usually just the number of hits for that day and occasionally, the all-time hit list, which is now in the neighborhood of 19.6 million. But today, just for the heck of it, I clicked on the Audience stat selection and was surprised by the top 10 Pageview by Countries stats.

No surprise that the USA was first, followed by the UK, but the number three spot surprised me; it was Hong Kong! (Germany, Canada, Russia, Netherlands, Australia, Austria and India were in the four through ten slots.)

Chinese and English are the official languages of Hong Kong, so there is no language barrier, but I almost never write about femulating in the Asian continent, so what’s the attraction?

Maybe femulating is so universal that cultural and language barriers are no barriers at all.

Wearing Elie Tahari

Sheila Wolf, professional femulator

Dress to Shop

Meg wrote, “When you’re dressed and shop, what do you wear?

"I'm planning to talk to saleswomen and ask to try clothes on next time I go. I’ve wanted to but never done it so far.

“Is a dress better than a skirt/blouse? If I’m wearing the latter and I want to try on a dress, I have to remove both and there may be many buttons. If I wear the former, I need to find a top to go with a bottom or vice-versa when I want to try one on and if the dress goes over my head, my wig could get out-of-sorts (also with a pullover top, hence the worry about buttons).

“How about sharing your experiences?”

👠 👠 👠

I'll gladly share my experience, Meg.

When I go shopping and plan to try clothes on in the store, I wear something that is easy to take off and put back on, so usually a dress without a lot of buttons. Also, something that has a wide collar opening like a scoop neck or V-neck, so as not to muss up my hair and makeup when I pull it off and on (so avoid anything with a turtleneck).

The best thing I ever wore shopping was a dress that had a zipper in front that zipped from the neckline to the hemline of the dress. I could get in and out of that dress quick like a bunny.

Also, to minimize changing back into the outfit you wore into the store, take as many outfits as the store allows to the dressing room. Or shop in a store where there is personalized service with a salesperson at your beck and call to fetch outfits for you while you are in the dressing room.

If you are shopping for a skirt to match a top or vice versa, then that is a different story and you will want to wear whatever you are trying to match, unless it is so generic that you can find something in the store to use for matching.

On the other hand, if you are just skirt shopping, for example, wear an easy on-and-off dress. When you find the skirts you want to try on, grab a top, too, so that you will have something to model with the skirts. Of course, you don't have to purchase the top, but then you might find one that goes so nicely with the skirt you are buying that you will just have to buy the top, too!

I hope that helps!

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Occasionally, I receive e-mails asking for advice. Often, the writers of these e-mails indicate that they are hesitant about writing to me for advice because they don't want to bother me.

On the contrary, I love receiving e-mails asking for advice. My maternal side loves to help others if she can, so please feel free to ask. Maybe I can help you and maybe you will help me by expanding my knowledge of the transworld. And maybe our e-mail exchange will inspire me to write an interesting blog posting (like this one).

So, use the “send me e-mail” link on the right to write to me.

Wearing St. John

Advertisement for an “All-Male Review” in Atlantic City, circa 1969

Someday Funnies

Wearing Walter Baker

Harold Perrineau (right) femulating in the 2000 film Woman on Top

Gender Is Over

“When people call me a girl or misgender me I don’t really care. To me, gender is over. Gender is so last year.”

That is a snippet from an excellent article written by a 13-year-old named C.J. I think is a perfect piece to conclude the previous three posts and I thank Velma for alerting me to the article. Without further adieu, I invite you to read what C.J. had to say here.

Wearing Ann Taylor

At a recent womanless beauty pageant, I’m guessing that’s Mom in the middle, her son on the right and his friend on the left.

Female-to-Male-to-Female Crossdressing

Don’t know if you read the Comments on my posts, so I am repeating one from Angel Amore commenting on my Guilt-Free Guilty Pleasure post.

“It is almost to the point, not quite, but almost, that when women get all dolled up in ultra femme finery that they are crossdressing. They are dressing as crossdressed men. Who would have thought that the ‘backwardization’ (new word alert) of clothing would be happening this fast. Seems like it's right out of Fictionmania.”

Indeed! Angel makes a good point.

Today, a woman is more likely to wear slacks than a skirt or a dress. Go anywhere and most of the women you encounter are wearing some kind of bifurcated bottom wear. Even at formal events, where you might expect to see women in skirted clothing, women are wearing formal jumpsuits rather than evening gowns and cocktail dresses.

The only place you are likely to encounter women in skirts/dresses are in professional settings like law offices. And even then, they are likely to wear masculine-inspired skirt suits so as not to appear too feminine.

On a personal note, I cannot recall the last time I saw my spouse or my daughter in skirted clothing. Nor can I recall the last time I saw my spouse wearing makeup. I guess they are depending on the man of the house to represent the “feminine” side of our family.

And what’s “feminine” anyway?

Dictionary.com defines it as “pertaining to a woman or girl.” Therefore, with regards to appearance, if women choose to wear slacks, flats, short hair and no makeup, then who’s to say that isn’t “feminine?” And if men choose to wear skirts, heels, long hair and makeup, who’s to say that isn’t “masculine?” It’s not feminine or masculine by old school standards, but the old school is closed and boarded up.

What you see on the runway, on the red carpet and in Vogue is not what you will see on the street or in the mall. A woman who is dressed to kill according to old school standards may be a male-to-female crossdresser or she may be a woman dressing like a male-to-female crossdresser – she certainly does not represent the average 21st Century woman.

Where does that leave the 21st Century male-to-female crossdresser? Does she adapt and dress like a 21st Century woman or does she become an anomaly by continuing to dress like her mother dressed in the 20th Century?

Wearing DressBarn

Sadri Alisi and Izzet Günay femulating in the 1964 film Fıstık Gibi Maşallah (a Turkish version of Some Like It Hot). The film was remade as Fıstık Gibi in 1970. You can view the original here.

Guilt-Free Guilty Pleasure

Couples going out with both the male and female
dressed en femme is becoming more common

In yesterday’s post, I mentioned that womanless beauty pageants have increased in quantity in recent years. I could attribute that to the popularity of this blog, but I won’t! 😁

But I do attribute the increased occurrences of womanless pageants to the increased popularity of crossdressing.

Fifty years ago, when I was squeezing into my mother’s panty girdle, I had no idea why I was doing it except (1) that I liked it and (2) I better keep it to myself because I might get run out of town on a rail if it got around that I was dressing pretty.

Today, crossdressers, drag artists and transwomen are in the news and the media like never before. And the Internet is awash with crossdressing. As a result, crossdressing has become more acceptable and except in some political and so-called “Christian” circles, crossdressing is no longer an abomination. Rather, it has become a guilty pleasure without the guilt to be enjoyed whenever the mood strikes you.

So-inclined males see crossdressing everywhere and feel encouraged to try it themselves. I don’t have to tell you that once you dress pretty, you never want to dress any other way if you can help it.

Never before have so many males been so open about crossdressing... especially young males. They crossdress with great abandon and don’t care who knows it. And that encourages other males who may have been on the cusp, to try it themselves. And on and on and on.

And the popularity of womanless pageants is a by-product of the acceptance and popularity of crossdressing.

Wearing Boston Proper

Professional femulator Danny La Rue, circa 1965

No Girls Allowed

Seems to me that there are now more womanless beauty pageants than ever. In the past, most of them were put on by high schools and civic organizations trying to raise funds for one thing or another. And most of them occurred in the southern USA.

Today, they are being put on by grammar schools, middle schools, high schools and colleges everywhere, not only in the southern USA. And when I say “everywhere,” I mean in other countries as well as throughout the USA.

Not only has the quantity of the pageants increased, but the quality of the pageants has improved, too. Some of the faux girls are drop dead gorgeous. Kudos to the moms and sisters who do their sons’ and brothers’ makeup and hair and lend them their evening gowns and cocktail dresses.

And the way the faux girls expertly walk in high heels makes one wonder how long they have been practicing. Do their stage mothers force their sons to practice weeks in advance of the pageant date?

And it makes one also wonder how many faux girls continue femulating after the pageant?

Wearing Lemoniade

This image has been labeled a “womanless beauty pageant” photo on various websites, but I believe it is a Halloween photo with the participants dressed as characters from The Hunger Games. Whether the participant on the left is a male or a female has yet to be determined. If anyone can shed a light on that mystery, I’d appreciate hearing from you.

A Good Fit

JustFab had a clearance sale last week and I ordered a pair of shoes and a dress.

The shoes were a pair I had seen weeks ago, but did not purchase because I assumed they would eventually go on sale. The dress was an afterthought – I intended to only to buy the shoes, but was tempted by the ridiculously low prices of the dresses on sale. (With a credit I had, the shoes and dress only cost me $13.15 out of pocket.)

Sophie Peep Toe Pump is nude with black ankle straps and 3.5” heels. Made of faux leather/suede, the buckle on each ankle strap has a cute little gold padlock.

Button Front Sweater Dress is striped with a V-neck made of rib knit fabric. It is a midi with a buttoned front and belted waist closure. It clings to the body and shows off every curve – at least that was how the dress looked on the model.

I placed my order last Monday and had low expectations on its delivery – JustFab has been notoriously slow in the past, so I was surprised when they informed me that FedEx would deliver my order the following Monday (yesterday). I was even more surprised when the order showed up a day early on Sunday!

Size-wise, I have been having good luck ordering clothing from JustFab. Their dresses, skirts and tops in size XL are just fab on me. But I hold my breath regarding shoe size. More often than not, their largest size (12) is too small for me and I have to return them. So when the package arrived on Sunday, I immediately tried on the shoes and voila! they were a perfect fit.

Next I tried on the dress and it fit, too, and just like the model, it clings to my body and shows off all my curves. 

I can’t wait to go out wearing my new dress and heels! 

Wearing Fuzzi

A Tokyo Yomiuri Giants baseball player femulating for the team's womanless beauty pageant.
(Thank you, Zoe, for this news.)