Our Dead

Years ago, a bunch of girls decided to go to a gay bar after the conclusion of our support group meeting. I had never been, so I agreed to go to see what it was like. 

As it turned out, I didn't like it. Smoky dimly-lit bars are not my cup of tea, so I had one drink and hung around just long enough so that my clothes and wig stunk from the cigarette smoke.

The bar was not in the best neighborhood. The streets were not well lit and my car was parked a long block away. As I left the bar, another patron exited after me, followed me and began accosting me. He thought I was one of the girls performing in the bar’s drag show and he wanted a “date.”

I was very scared.

I ignored him and walked to my car as fast as possible. (In retrospect, I should have returned to the bar and asked for an escort to my car.) He finally gave up pursuit, I assume, because I would pay him no mind. I escaped unharmed, although a little unnerved, but others have not been so lucky. 

There are a lot of girls, who have turned up dead after being in similar situations (this year in record numbers) and we are about to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.

Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is next Friday and there will be events throughout the world next week to commemorate the event. Due to the pandemic, live in-person gatherings have given way to virtual meetings, so you will be able to participate from the safety of your computer. (Here, in Connecticut, the Metropolitan Community Church Hartford will be holding a virtual TDOR on November 20 at 7 PM via Zoom.)

In the past, there have been websites that listed all the TDOR events occurring throughout the world. This year, I cannot find such a website, so I cannot tell you where to look to find out what is going on in your area. If anyone knows where to look, please let me know and I will amend this post with that information.

(Thank you, Diana, for the information about Connecticut’s TDOR for 2020.)

Wearing Rotate

Paolo Sassanelli femulating in the “La Vendetta” episode of Italian television's Classe di Ferro.

This is another of my Foreign Film Femulating Finds. I don’t understand Italian and there were no English sub-titles or dubbings, so I had to piece together the plot from what I saw, not heard. According to IMDb, Classe di Fierro was a 1989-1990 Italian television series about “The funny misadventures of a group of guys serving at a military barrack in the north-east of Italy.” According to me, the plot of the “La Vendetta” episode was as follows. A group of wives want to catch their husbands in the act of philandering, so they enlist the Italian military for help. Four soldiers demonstrate their crossdressing talents to the affected wives and the wives choose one soldier who they believe is the best femulator. The wives select “Gabriela” (Paolo Sassanelli, pictured above) and he/she proceeds to work his/her magic on the unsuspecting husbands and all hell breaks loose.

You can view the film on YouTube. (If anyone understands Italian and can come up with a better description of the plot, please let me know.)

Wow, was I wrong!

Sara summarizes the plot in the first Comment below and Helene sent me a link to a more comprehensive description of the plot on the Italian Wikipedia website. Use Google Translate to translate the Italian description to the language of your choice.

No More Closets

I was in the closet for a very long time.

Although my interests in feminine things go back to my earliest memories, I did not take up crossdressing until I was 12-years-old. But once I began, I crossdressed at every opportunity, typically whenever I found myself alone at home.

When I was 19, I reached my tipping point and had to let Stana out of the closet. So I dressed en femme on Halloween despite the fact that I had nowhere to go. Unlike today, where there is a Halloween event everywhere you turn, back in the late-1970s, there was not much Halloween-wise for a young adult. I had not been invited to any Halloween parties (I didn't even know of any Halloween parties) and I was too young to go to any bar that might be celebrating Halloween. So, Mom let her “daughter” borrow the car and I visited some friends and relatives to “trick or treat.” (How desperate is that?)

Post-Halloween, I was back in the closet honing my femulating skills while waiting for next year’s Halloween party invitations. I never went out en femme to trick or treat again, but I did get a few party invitations over the years. 

I always attended the parties dressed as a woman, not as a woman wearing a woman’s costume. Invariably, some party-goer would wonder why I wasn’t wearing a costume and I would explain to their astonishment that I was in costume. Post-Halloween, I would be back in the closet again, but at least I realized that all the practice in the closet was not for naught.

Online (via CompuServe’s Genderline), I discovered and joined a local support group in the early 1980s. Now, I was able to get out of the house en femme on days besides the last day of months beginning with the letter O. I attended meetings once or twice per month, always dressing at home and driving to the meeting hall 25 miles away. 

On occasion, the support group sponsored outings – usually dinners at local restaurants, which sheltered us in a private room so we would not to mix with the civilians. I always attended, but being a rebel, I made a point of using the public ladies’ restroom instead of the private restroom that had been assigned to us.

I wanted more and began attending trans conventions, which gave me the opportunity to have the run of a whole hotel for a long weekend en femme. But I realized that I was still in the closet. I just had more closet-space: in my home, in my support group’s meeting places and in trans convention hotels.

I still wanted more, so I became a little more adventurous. On my way to support group meetings, I would stop off to buy a refreshment at a convenience store or fast food joint. Amazingly, no one seemed to notice or care that I was en femme. I was passing or at least, I was accepted and that emboldened me to do more. 

It took 55 years, but I finally summoned up enough courage to go out in public en femme. I decided to make that leap by going to the mall. I dressed en femme, drove to the mall, arrived just as it opened and sat in my car for a half hour trying to muster the courage to exit the car and walk across the parking lot to the mall entrance.

I finally pushed myself and did it and spent the better part of day at the mall having the time of my life. Some people read me, but it was not the end of the world and once I got a taste of the world en femme, I wanted more. 

Subsequently, I picked my days and spent them en femme, shopping, dining, being entertained, enjoying the arts, etc., etc. and I loved it, doing what other women did when they were out.

It all felt so natural to me. I was always feminine. As I have written here before, I was not a female trapped in a male body, rather I was me trapped by society’s expectations of what a male was supposed to be. The “problem” was that I preferred to fulfill society’s expectations of what a woman was supposed to be. 

Finally, I realized I was a woman, who happened to have a male body, but I was not going to let that little handicap hinder me from being the best woman I could be.

And so it goes.

Cavet Emptor: Today’s post originally appeared here in 2011. I rewrote it and reposted it in 2015 and I rewrote it once again and reposted it today.

Wearing father and son outfits from Boston Proper

Mark McKinney femulating in The Kids in the Hall’s 1996 film Brain Candy.
You can view the film on YouTube.

My Favorite Thing

Going out en femme is my favorite thing. But this year, my outings have been severely limited by the pandemic. With Joe Biden in the driver's seat next year, I believe things will improve and by this time next year, I will have racked up thousands of miles out en femme. But for now, all I can do is reminisce about past outings like the following from the summer of 2012.

I went out en femme yesterday.

I wore the brown draped brooch shift dress and necklace that I bought at Dress Barn in June. I accessorized with my simulated snake skin bag and peep-toe slingback heels (see the first photo).

I learned something new yesterday: perfumes stain.

When I finished dressing, I dabbed on some Chanel Eau de Cologne No. 22. A couple of drops got away from me and landed on the hem of my dress. I assumed the drops would evaporate, so I didn't think anything of it.

Hours later, I noticed that the perfume drops had left stains on my dress. (I hope they come out in the wash.)

Dressed and out the door at 9:45 AM, my first stop was the Ann Taylor store in West Farms Mall in Farmington. I saw some attractive dresses on their website that I wanted to see in person.

Entering through Macy’s, I walked through half the mall to get to Ann Taylor. On my way, a few women smiled and some said “Hello,” a few guys looked my way and no one pointed and shouted, “She's a man,” so I felt confident about my femulation.

I entered Ann Taylor and a “saleswoman” greeted me and pointed out the racks of dresses that were on sale. (I put saleswoman in quotation marks because the two women working in Ann Taylor yesterday looked like high school kids to me. I realize they were not that young, but their ages were a lot closer to high school age than mine!)

The saleswoman loved my shoes, but admitted that shoes like mine hurt a lot. We discussed the perils of high heels, then she complimented my necklace. (Yesterday, I received a lot of compliments for my necklace.)

I noticed that all the dresses in the store topped out at size 14, whereas larger sizes are available online. Eyeballing the size 14‘s, they looked like ample size 14‘s, so I found three dresses to try on.

I managed to slip into all three dresses and close their zippers. The dresses were gorgeous and would look very nice on me if they were one size larger (or I was one size smaller). As is, they were just a little too tight, so I left Ann Taylor empty-handed and disappointed.

I decided to walk to the other end of the mall to JCPenney. They have a huge dress department and I almost always have shopping success there. 

I spent about an hour in JCPenney looking through the dress racks and trying on my finds. During the hunt, I was very surprised to find the exact same Dress Barn dress I was wearing for sale. I had assumed incorrectly that Dress Barn and JCPenney did not sell the same lines of clothing, so I learned something new twice yesterday.

My hunt ended with two dresses making the final cut, a purple ruffle dress (“Flowing ruffles add a feminine flair to this sheath dress in a comfortable matte jersey”) and a sleeveless black/teal color-block sheath (“Bold colorblock print adds a modern twist to this classic silhouette.”).

Trying on a dress makes all the difference in the world when shopping. I knew the ruffle dress would look good on me assuming that it fit, whereas the color-block sheath was one of those dresses I was not sure about. I grabbed it as a “what-the-heck” pick since I was going to the dressing room to try on some other dresses anyway. Turned out it was one of the nicest dresses (on me) that I tried on yesterday. So, you never know.

I took my finds to the cashier and she asked if I wanted to use my JCPenney credit card.

I said I wanted to pay cash.

She asked if I had a JCPenney credit card.

I said I did, but have not used it in years.

She tried to convince me to sign up for a new credit card and get a 20% discount on all my purchases that day.

I knew I would have to show a photo identification to apply for a new card and I was a little reluctant to out myself whether or not the cashier had already figured me out. But the 20% discount was hard to resist, so I relented.

As I handed the saleswoman my driver's license, I commented that I looked a little different than when the license photo was taken.

She glanced at the license and then said something to the effect that my hairdo was now much bigger.

For a fleeting moment, I wondered if I had not outed myself afterall and that she thought that the license photo just showed me, a woman, with a short female hairdo. But there is a big letter “M” next to the “Sex” on the license that is a dead giveaway.

I'll never know what she thought, but whatever the case, she was very pleasant, treated me politely throughout our encounter and that’s alright by me.

After leaving the dress department, I passed the jewelry department and checked out the earring racks for those rare hard-to-find clip-ons. There were a handful and I found a retro style pair that I purchased with my new 20% off credit card.

A saleswoman rang up my purchase and mentioned that they were getting in some more clip-ons from Monet.

I told her I would be back and I am sure I will be.

My day out as a woman was going very well except for one thing. By the time I exited JCPenney, I had an intense headache and was so tired that I could have taken a nap right on the spot.

I decided to call it a day if I did not feel any better by the time I walked the length of the mall back to Macy’s where my chariot awaited me. I stopped briefly at a couple of stores along the way, but more or less made a bee-line to Macy’s.

I did not feel any better, but I thought fresh air might help. It was now raining, so I sprinted to my car as quickly as my high heels would permit me and regrouped.

It was hot and stuffy inside the car, so I turned on the ignition and cranked up the air conditioning. The AC did not help; I did not feel any better, so I decided to return from whence I came.

Upon my return, I took a short nap (I rarely nap during the day unless I am ill). I felt a little better afterword.

Before I returned to boy mode, I took some photos wearing my new dresses. (You can compare me with the models on the JCPenney website in the second and third photos. By the way, I did not cut off the model’s head – JCPenney did it)

I was disappointed that it was a short day out en femme, but it was a day out en femme and that is a wonderful thing!

I highly recommend it to everyone.

Wearing Wolford

Maurycy Popiel femulates Debbie Harry on Polish television's Twoja Twarz Brzmi Znajomo.
You can view the femulation on YouTube.

Someday Funnies

Wearing ModCloth

Nino Manfredi femulating in the 1966 Italian film Adulterio all’italiana. Nino plays Franco and is married to a woman who invents a lover in order to get Franco more interested in her. Franco tries to figure out who is the lover by disguising himself as a woman. You can view the film on YouTube.

Think Like a Woman

In the last post, I mentioned finding foreign films and television shows with crossdressing contents. Think Like a Woman looks like one of the better finds.

Dumay, Kak Zhenshchina (Think Like a Woman) was a 2013 Russian television series starring Marat Basharov, who according to IMDb, plays “a self-centered man, not deprived of female attention. But due to a vicious setup, he fakes his own death and assumes the identity of ‘Eva.’ Now he has to clear his name, while coping with the struggles of being a woman.”

The series is viewable on YouTube. Be forewarned that the series is in Russian; there are no English subtitles or English dubbing.

Wearing Metrostyle

Marat Basharov femulating in Russian television’s Dumay, Kak Zhenshchina (Think Like a Woman)

Friday at Femulate Headquarters

My posts have been irregular this week. Long hours watching the election results, short hours watching the inside of my eyelids, removing 7 million leaves from my yard, weird dreams along with my normal housewife duties, it has been an unusual week here at Femulate Hq.

Usually, I don’t remember my dreams, but I remembered one from Wednesday night that was really weird. In the dream, I was wearing a classic white female nurse uniform and I was at work, but my employer is located in my old grammar school. A fellow, a well-known local news show personality, who is now retired showed up at my workplace in a wedding gown and asked me to find someone to officiate his marriage. I knew someone at work who was a justice of the peace, so I began searching the building for him. And then I woke up.

Sitting in front of the television watching the election results, I spent some time with my iPad on YouTube searching for films with crossdressing contents. I was surprised to find a lot of foreign films and television shows in which crossdressing made an appearance. Sometimes there was just a brief crossdressing encounter, but sometimes crossdressing was a significant theme of the film or TV show.

Using Google Translate and IMDb along with YouTube, I have been sorting out all my finds and it will take a while. In the near future, I will report here what I found.

Wearing L'Agence

Joshua Agai, male womenswear model

Wednesday

Prettiest Kid in the Hall Dept.

During a 2010 interview for The Kids in the Hall television series Death Comes to Town, Dave Foley (photo right) was asked, “Well, Kids in the Hall fans always say that you made the prettiest woman, so I guess it would make sense that you play Marilyn.”

“It’s true,” Dave replied, “Though I’m not as pretty as I used to be.”

Same Old, Same Old Dept.

Just watched the trailer for Transhood, a new HBO documentary that chronicles the lives of four transgender kids.

Maybe I am jaded, but it looks like more of the same. I am sure it is well done (most HBO documentaries are), but I wish there was a new sympathetic in-depth documentary about crossdressers – not transsexuals, not drag queens, not trans kids, but crossdressers. Now that would be something new under the sun.

Wearing Brahmin

Angus T. Jones femulating on a 2008 episode of television’s Two and a Half Men

Femulators in the Hall

The Kids in the Hall was “a Canadian sketch comedy TV series that aired for five seasons from 1988 to 1995, starring the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall. The troupe, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson, appeared as almost all the characters throughout the series, both male and female, and also wrote most of the sketches.” (Source: Wikipedia)

I watched the series for the humor and more importantly, to see the males impersonating females – the same reasons I watched Monty Python's Flying Circus. I preferred Monty Python’s humor to The Kids in the Hall’s humor. However, when it came to female impersonation, there was no contest; I greatly preferred The Kids in the Hall to Monty Python.

Monty Python parodied women, whereas The Kids in the Hall femulated women. Their femulations were so good that they could pass among the civilians if they desired.

In his review of the Kids' film Brain Candy, Roger Ebert notes that the female characters in the film ‘are played “straight,” in the sense that we’re supposed to relate to them as women, not men in drag.’ Mia Steinle on Canonball blog observes that the troupe’s humour derives not from the fact that these are men in dresses, but rather that ‘situations involving women can be just as funny as situations involving men.’ For instance, the recurring ‘Kathie and Cathy’ sketches, featuring Bruce McCulloch and Scott Thompson as the titular secretaries, tend to work via character comedy, playing Kathie’s flustered giddiness off against Cathy’s sarcastic confidence. 

This conforms to the views expressed by the various Kids in interview regarding the way they performed as women. Scott Thompson states that they were not ‘winking at the audience’ […] these were playing ‘real women’, not ‘drag queens’. Bruce McCulloch relates their ease of playing women to the fact that the troupe is composed of
as he puts it
‘feminine guys’. Kevin McDonald corroborates this opinion by explaining that because he’s a ‘feminine guy’, it makes it easier for him to become a ‘masculine woman.’  

What is interesting here is that the Kids position themselves in opposition to the strategies adopted by ‘drag queens’ who are assumed by them to be ‘fake women’. If Monty Python often adopted the same costumes – permed grey wigs, handbags, etc. –
in order to represent types, the Kids’ costumes... are impressively varied. Strapless dresses; wedding dresses; jumpers; denim miniskirts; boots; t-shirts; pyjamas; waist-coats; trousers; the costumes often accentuated by subtle make-up techniques and convincing wigs. 

The rhetoric the Kids adopt indicates that they place gender on a spectrum to be performed
– thus it is possible for a feminine man to move a few notches to become a masculine woman –
rather than a binary system under which gender simply flips between male and female. This rhetoric by which the Kids are keen to demonstrate that they play women as women would do often results in them positioning themselves against the notion of drag. Dave Foley interviewed by Fred Topel about (the Kids’ film) Death Comes to Town makes this clear: ‘We kept working with our makeup and hair and wardrobe to get it as far away from drag as possible. We didn’t want to look like drag queens and we didn’t want to look at (sic.) men in dresses.’ 

When, in Mother Camp, an older performer critiques a younger boy’s drag performance, for ‘looking too much like a real woman,’ this is a critique I can imagine the Kids embracing as a great compliment and solidifying their position against drag.

The five indented paragraphs above are from an essay written by Adam Whybray titled “‘I'm Crushing Your Binaries!’ Drag in Monty Python and Kids in the Hall.” I urge you to read the entire essay if you are interested in Monty Python versus The Kids in the Hall femulating; it is excellent.

Wearing St. John

Bob Seagren femulating in a 1977 episode of television’s Soap
You can view the episode on dailymotion.

A Departmentalized Monday

A femulator at Casa Susanna, circa 1964

Herstory Dept.

Read a great article by Alicia Winokur about the history of Tiffany Club, a support group for crossdressers and transexuals during the Dark Ages of the last century. I came out in the middle of that history, so it was nice to backfill what I missed. The story is New England-centric and I actually knew some of the people involved, so it is a story that is near and dear to me, but I think anyone who was a member of a support  group during the late 20th Century will find the article interesting.

(Thank you Stephanie for alerting me to the article.)

She Gets My Vote Dept.

Heather wrote, “I've voted in person today. The lady who checked me in didn‘t realize that the name on the ballot and ID didn‘t match the image of the lady standing before her. She said I looked great. I had many positive comments.”

I often considered voting in person en femme, but worried that when I showed my male photo ID, all hell would break loose. But Heather’s story inspired me to do it next time I vote in person, so wait ’til next year as I already voted by absentee ballot this year. 

Can’t Get Too Much Wetter Dept.

Aunty emailed, “For my Guys to Gurls on Stage and Screen flickr group, I dug a little more into Mr./Ms. Wetter's background and came across him femulating Sissy Spacek in a video artist's homage to Brian DePalma's masterwork, Carrie. Brice Dellsperger has done 40 separate videos where he or other men assume female roles, such as in his first Body Double video that was based on DePalma's Dressed to Kill, and in that one he plays the Angie Dickinson role amazingly well.

Click here to view Brice Dellsperger’s videos (Alexandre Wetter as Carrie is “Body Double 32” and Brice Dellsperger as Angie Dickinson is “Body Double 1”).

Rocking a Stand coat and Intermix dress

Lil Nas X femulated Nicki Minaj for Halloween, 2020

Teri’s Halloween Adventure

By Teri Lynn

Halloween 2004 was a great experience for me. What a stroke of luck! Thursday evening I tried numerous outfits on at home to see what to wear the next day. Several times in the past, I had mentioned to my wife that someday I was going to show up at her staff lunch at work dressed as a woman. She thought that might be risky and the staff would harass her and me forever. 

My wife went to work dressed as a fat male, Western sheriff – fat created by a pillow to hide the boobs. Most of her co-workers did not recognize her. We fixed a mustache for her (with wig hair), she penciled in some bushy eyebrows and even had an old Western hat and sheriff’s badge. 

At lunch, one of the office staff asked, “So what is your husband dressing as for the party – a girl?” 

She replied, “Matter-of-fact, yes.”  

Next thing I know my cell phone is ringing and she told me what happened, then she asked me where I was. I told her I was out shopping close to her school and I asked her whether I should stop by. She said that the girls were curious to see what I looked like, so over I went. 

When I got to her school, I stopped at the office and when the secretary asked if she could help me, I said that my car broke down and could I borrow her phone book to get a tow truck number. She got the phone book for me. Then I asked her if she knew of a good tow company. She did not. 

Then I said, “Well, maybe I could just get the phone number of Joy (my wife) and perhaps she could give me a ride home.’ 

It still didn’t click with her who she was talking to. She said, “Joy?” 

“Yes,” I said and she went to her desk to get the number. 

At that point, in my normal voice, I said, “Sue, it’s me” 

She gasped and said, “I don’t believe it. You look beautiful! Who did you hair like that? You even did your nails. Are you wearing a skirt?” 

Sue came around the counter to get a better look. “I love it. You look better in a skirt than I do!”

She asked whether I had stopped in at my wife’s class yet. I told her I had and added that I had just come from a salon where they made me up for a party tonight. (My wife didn’t want them to think I do this regularly, so I used that for an excuse.) Sue said that I looked marvelous and should have no trouble winning a prize. (Ha ha, if she only knew!)

I left, to continue shopping. The phone rang again and my wife told me that several of the other women heard about me and were disappointed that they missed seeing me. She also said that the secretaries thought I had nice legs. I asked whether I should come back and she suggested I could do that. 

Back I go. This time the secretary and my wife were standing outside waiting for me. I had to trek right past the principal, who was also outside. 

Again Sue commented on how nice I looked. (Well, I didn’t get to this stage overnight, but we won‘t tell her that.) This time, another secretary came over with her camera and took pictures of my wife and I. Wait ‘til that makes the rounds at the school.

The ice is broken and no one died of embarrassment. Who knows, maybe they will insist I come to the annual staff Christmas dinner as Teri. My wife said, “No” to that wishful thought, but maybe she can talk them into a New Year’s party. 

I'm sure it won't be long before my daughter finds out. When she is home on college breaks, she usually spends a day with my wife in class. It won’t take but a second for someone to mention how I looked on Halloween. I hope she is not shocked/repulsed by it all. In the past, when she had seen crossdressers on TV, she made comments that she thought it was crazy. Once she knows, I know we will have our long overdue talk. Then, hopefully, I can get out when she is home for school breaks, especially for events like New Year's Eve. 

I sure hope they at least request that I come back for Halloween as Teri. 

By the way, our daughter only went to the school once or twice to help out, but no one must have said anything – at least she didn’t‘t mention anything about it to me.

Do you have an interesting Halloween story? I’d love to read it and share it with my readers. And don’t forget to send along a photo or two from your holiday in heels.

Wearing Julia Jordan

Huntz Hall, Leo Gorcey, Benny Bartlett, David Gorcey and Gil Stratton (“The Bowery Boys”) femulating in the 1952 film Hold That Line. You can view the film’s trailer on YouTube.