My Traditional Halloween

In honor of our favorite holiday on October 31, I am reposting past Halloween posts on Fridays. The following repost is from October 2009.

My Halloween “costumes” in 1983 and 2017

When I attend a civilian Halloween event, I dress like a woman on the street (and I don’t mean a street-walker). For example, when there was a Halloween costume contest at work, I dressed in like an office girl trying to emulate how women typically dress for the office.

On the other hand, when I attend a trans Halloween event (like a support group Halloween party), I dress in a costume that a woman might wear on Halloween. For example, for my support group’s past Halloween parties, I dressed as a school girl, Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy, French maid, bat girl and Playboy bunny, among other things.

Why?

For trans Halloween events, the answer is easy.

I dress in a costume a woman might wear because in the trans world, I normally dress as a woman. As a result, a “woman on the street” costume would not be a costume (unless I dressed like a street-walker).

For civilian Halloween events, the answer is more complicated.

I could dress in a costume a woman might wear for civilian Halloween events, but I never have.

Like many of us, my first forays in public en femme were on Halloween. Just dressing as a woman among civilians was a major accomplishment and the thrill of a lifetime of anticipation.

Dressing like a woman on the street rather than say a Playboy bunny, I might get fewer of those knowing looks that imply that I crossdress more often than just October 31. But I always femulate too well, not like the average guy in drag on Halloween, so I get lots of those knowing looks anyway, but I’m not sensitive about it. If someone confronts me, I come right back with, “Normally, I only crossdress on weekends” and they don’t know what to say.

So dressing like a woman on the street for civilian Halloween events does not buy me much with regard to fooling anyone about my proclivity to crossdress. However, the comment, “who is the woman (referring to me) not wearing a costume” never gets old.

I guess that dressing like a woman on the street for civilian events has become my personal Halloween tradition. That’s my story and I'm sticking to it!

Piotr Gawron-Jedlikowski femulating C.C. Catch on Polish television’s Twoja Twarz Brzmi Znajomo (Your Face Sounds Familiar). You can view this femulation on YouTube.

Someday Funnies: Nobody’s Perfect

Wearing Venus

Sexo Frágil (Fragile Sex) is a television comedy from Brazil. I happened upon an episode on YouTube and I was fascinated with what I saw. All the roles, both male and female, are played by males. Their presentation as females is very good except that most of the girls speak in their boy voice. The four main characters (above) play both male and female roles. The other female roles are played by male actors who do not have a male counterpart like the four above. The program is in Portuguese, which I don’t comprehend, so I missed most of the humor. Despite the language barrier, I enjoyed all the excellent femulations.

High School was a Drag

I went to a Catholic high school in the late 1960s. It was as bad as you can imagine, but there were a few trans moments. 

When teen boys began wearing earrings, our principal, Father B, announced that if any male student showed up wearing an earring, he would insist that that student begin attending school wearing a dress.

During our annual “Irish Minstrel,” the basketball team performed a tune on stage while dressed in Roaring Twenties drag. (They were all civilians in my opinion.) However, a couple of guys performed a tune while dressed as a bride and groom. The bride’s “my girdle is killing me” line did not dissuade me that the bride was one of us.

Fast forward 50 years and a high school in Burlington, Vermont, put on a drag show during its homecoming halftime show. Both students and faculty femulated and the ladies were very presentable. (See for yourself on YouTube.)

I could see Father B letting us do that at old Sacred Heart... NOT!

Wearing Delfi Collective Brooklyn

Martin del Rosario, Paolo Ballesteros and Christian Bables femulating at the premiere of the 2019 Filipino film The Panti Sisters.

You can view the film’s trailer on YouTube.

Someday Funnies: Waiter Spills the Beans

German femulators celebrating Geschlechtertausch.

Where I'm Not

Fantasia Fair, October 2008

I began crossdressing in my teens in the 1960s. Home alone, I dressed, but I was strictly closeted and even missed an opportunity to Halloween crossdress when I refused my best friend’s invitation to be girls for the night.

I continued crossdressing as a 20-something throughout the 1970s. I was still closeted, but got up the nerve to Halloween crossdress on three occasions (and had the time of my life doing so).

Along came the November 1980 issue of Playboy containing an article about Fantasia Fair. The article was intended to be a humorous piece, often at the expense of the folks attending the Fair. Put that aside, I had never heard of Fantasia Fair and the article provided a trans public service by revealing the Fair to me (and to probably hundreds of other girls like me across the USA).

What a dream! And the Fair was on Cape Cod – an easy four-hour drive, so maybe I could attend and live as a woman for a week. But...

👩 It was expensive and I was only making $10,000 per year. 

👩 I was still mostly dressing out of my mother’s closet, so I didn’t have anything close to having a wardrobe for a week (and Mom was not likely to let me borrow hers).

👩 I was scared. Except for a handful of Halloween crossdressings, I had never been out among the civilians and I was ill-prepared to spend a week en femme among the population of Provincetown.

So I did not go. 

Attending Fantasia Fair remained a dream for over a quarter of a century until I finally attended in 2008 (and again in 2010, 2012 and 2014). During the ensuing 25 years, I joined a support group, attended long weekend trans conventions and went out solo en femme among the civilians, so the population of Cape Cod was no longer something to fear. 

I had a fabulous time each time I attended Fantasia Fair. Living 24/7 as a woman was initially thrilling and then became routine, but in a good way. I attended informative workshops, dined on fabulous food, enjoyed beautiful Provincetown and made a lot of friends.

The Fair is this week and I will not be attending, but I have my memories and they are all good.

Wearing Madeleine

Bryce Anderson, model

Someday Funnies: All in the Family

Wearing Elisabetta Franchi

Mickey Rooney femulating in the 1933 film Mickey's Tent Show.

My Flapper Costume

In honor of our favorite holiday later this month, I will repost past Halloween posts on Fridays. The following repost is from October 2009.

I attended a Halloween party last night hosted by Sue Nagle at her Joy of Nails Salon & Spa in Waterbury, Connecticut. There were about 25 trans girls and some of their spouses in attendance. About a third came in costume, as did I. The rest wore little black dresses (costumes, LBDs or little orange dresses were required attire for admittance). There was a ton of food and we had a ton of fun.

Beforehand, I stopped at a local grocery store to buy a dessert for the party. The store was busy with after-work shoppers. One female customer checked me out closely (I figure she was trying to figure out my birth gender), another female customers said “hello” (I figure she thought I was a genetic female), and the high school-aged cashiers seemed bemused and/or amused (they knew).

The costume came together nicely and I received a lot of compliments. The gold sequins tunic was an Avon clearance item that I purchased last year for $20, the fishnets were from Hue*, and the shoes came from eBay. The accessories (beads, headpiece, boa and garter) were from one of those Halloween stores that open up in abandoned storefronts in the strip malls every year.

The shoes were a pair I obtained for a Marilyn Monroe Halloween costume I put together back in 2001. Despite their 3-inch heels and pointy toes, they were very comfortable and I could have worn them forever.

Just a word about the Hue fishnets. I am a big fan of Hue tights, so I decided to try their fishnets. They get my seal of approval because they are the first pair of fishnets that I ever wore that did not tear during their first wearing. It is not that I was more careful than usual; no, I was just as clumsy as usual, but the fishnets held up very nicely.

Anyway Happy Halloween to all of you out there in the blogosphere. And don't eat too much candy!

* An Amazon Associate link

Wearing Venus

Harry S. Franklyn, 1920’s professional femulator

Someday Funnies

Wearing Zimmermann

World-renowned femulator Julian Eltinge

Metamorphosis Balls Revisited

March 2020, I wrote about Catherine the Great's “metamorphosis balls” in which the male and female attendees crossdressed under orders from the Russian empress herself. I researched the subject, but only found an article from Vogue magazine, which was sparked by the metamorphosis ball scene in the HBO series Catherine the Great (photo above).

Yesterday, an article came across the mojo wire via Atlas Obscura, “The Weekly Cross-Dressing Balls of 18th-Century Russian Royalty” by Sarah Durn, which goes into much greater detail than the Vogue article. 

The men would be required to wear the stockings, corsets, petticoats (up to five was customary), ruffled lace sleeves, hoop skirts, and elaborate sack back gowns that, on any other occasion, the women of court would’ve worn. The women, on the other hand, had to wear men’s embroidered waistcoats, full-skirted coats, breeches, white silk stockings, shoes with ostentatious buckles, a powdered wig, and an unwieldy sword.

In the metamorphosis balls, in which both men and women dressed as the opposite gender, there are two power shifts going on. First, Cole says, “there’s the power of somebody making you dress outside your gender.” Second, there’s the power play that “by doing it yourself, you are critiquing the power dynamics of gender and gendered dress.” By forcing their male courtiers to dress as women, Elizabeth and Catherine were reminding everyone who was boss. They made the rules. And even men had to follow them.

It is a fascinating read and I recommend it to all Femulate readers.

Wearing Madeleine.

Femulating Russian nobility in the 2019 Russian television series Ekaterina (Catherine).
You can view the femulation scene from Ekaterina on YouTube.

TV on TV (You know what I mean)

Comedy Central now has the Seinfeld franchise and Saturday evening, they kicked things off with the “fans’” top ten Seinfeld episodes. Here is the top ten list:

#10 – The Contest

#9 – The Hamptons

#8 – The Festivus

#7 – The Boy Friend (Part 1)

#6 – The Close Talker

#5 – The Yada Yada

#4 – The Little Kicks

#3 – The Bizarro Jerry

#2 – The Puffy Shirt

#1 – The Soup Nazi

Seinfeld is my all-time favorite television comedy series and I disagree with some of the top ten choices (numbers 3 and 8, for example) and the numerical order of the top ten. (“The Soup Nazi” is good, but most of the other episodes on the top ten are better than “The Soup Nazi”).  

And how can “The Chinese Restaurant” not be in the top ten?

“The Red Dot” is another episode that is top ten-worthy. Besides the humor of that episode’s plot, it also includes one of the few crossdressing references in the series when Jerry finds himself in the women’s department of a department store and he says, “I never feel comfortable in the women’s department. I feel like I’m just a little too close to trying on a dress.”

👩  👩  👩

Ninety minutes after the Seinfeld top ten, Kim Kardashian guest-hosted Saturday Night Live. 

I am not a Kardashian fan, but she is Femulate Her-worthy and she fills that slot in today’s post primarily because I love her hairdo in the Lotto Drawing segment of Saturday’s broadcast. 

Where can I get a wig like hers?

Kim Kardashian

Saturday Night Live alumnus Terry Sweeney femulating Nancy Reagan at his book party.