Why do you wear high heels?

I receive email advertisements regularly from Abby at Vivian Lou. (I am a very satisfied customer of their weight-shifting insoles for high heels.) The following email ad showed up in my inbox recently and I thought I would share it with you since many of the readers here are high heel fans.

Women wear heels for a variety of reasons.

Dolly Parton has said she wears heels to lift her spirits.

Shoe designer Charlotte Olympia Dellal wears heels to feel taller, sexier, more confident, powerful, and glamorous.

French fashion icon Carine Roitfeld wears heels to move, sit and speak differently.

Fashion designer Monique Lhuillier wears heels to feel empowered. 

Rocker Lita Ford wears heels for attitude.

The former editor-in-chief of British Vogue Alexandra Shulman said, “Wearing a heel gives you a completely different feel about your body. In my case, it makes me feel in control.”

Whatever your reason for wearing high heels, it is our mission to help women like you - and the ones listed above - wear high heels 4x longer without pain so we can focus more on our dreams and less on our feet.

Here's to high heels without the hurt!

Cheers!

Abby

So, why do you wear high heels?

.

Wearing Venus

Tam Williams femulating on British television’s A Touch of Frost.
You can view this episode of A Touch of Frost on YouTube.

Someday Funnies: Ours were longer in my day

Wearing Elisabetta Franchi

British soldiers femulating on stage in a German prison camp during World War II.

Got Reddit?

By Paula Gaikowski

There’s been a lot of talk here lately about Reddit.

So, what exactly is Reddit? Essentially, it’s a huge collection of forums where people can share news and content or comment on other people’s posts. Here’s everything you need to know.

Reddit is broken up into more than a million communities known as “subreddits,” each covers a different topic. The name of a subreddit begins with r/, which is part of the URL that Reddit uses. For example, r/nba is a subreddit where people talk about the National Basketball Association, while r/boardgames is a subreddit for people to discuss board games.

You can search and read through all of Reddit without an account. To comment or post a message, you need an account. That’s easy enough and can be done using a gmail address. Many people have multiple accounts and you will notice usernames like “throwaway1234” – an account that someone wants to use to make a post or comment without referencing their user account. You can have multiple usernames tied to an email address so you could have one username boxing_bob99 and another roberta_flowers98 to avoid the collision of your two worlds.

The search bar can help you find subs. However, I will go over a few of the more popular subs that I believe will interest our Femulate community. This is only a small sample of all of the different transgender related subreddits.

r/crossdressing – A place to post photos and comments, mostly a young crowd here. Pictures and language here has to be wholesome. This is meant as a non-sexual place where younger and older persons can feel safe.

r/crossdressed50 – A place for older gals

r/CrossDressedRealism – A place to develop your out in the world look.

r/Crossdress_Expression – A place for sexy, artistic, a little bit naughty photos

r/transpassing – A place to post photos of yourself and ask if you pass and receive kind constructive advice.

r/asktransgender – Questions and discussions about, for, to or from the Reddit transgender community. Things here can get very political and it seems someone always get offended. For example, I consider myself transgender but also use the term “crossdresser” to describe myself. Oh well, not good.

r/transpostive – A place to share positive news about being transgender. This is an active sub with a laid back attitude; a lot of people in transition sharing first times and new outfits.

r/transgender – An aggregation of transgender news stories.

r/transtimelines – A place where people post before and after photos

r/TransLater  – Older transgender persons, very open non-sexual atmosphere with transgender persons sharing with each other.

r/Transgender_Classics – The over 60 transgender crowd. 

See you on Reddit!

Don’t Miss Miss on YouTube

The film a lot of us have been waiting for is now on YouTube with English subtitles. The plot: A young man, played by Alexandre Wetter, seeking his gender identity decides to take part in the Miss France beauty pageant. 

Click here to view the film. 

Thank you, Jenn Monk, for alerting me about Miss.

Wearing Venus

UK femulator Priscilla Collins

Someday Funnies: Unsuitable

Wearing Bebe

Antti Vare femulating on Finnish television’s Uusi Päivä

Office Girl Review

I have been retired for five years. I don’t miss work much, but I do miss going to work as an office girl on Halloween. 

I did it seven times. The first two times (2000 and 2003), the company sponsored a costume contest. (I won both times.) The last five times (2012 to 2016), there was no contest – I just used the holiday as an excuse to crossdress in public (among the civilians).

With only six weeks left to do your Halloween shopping, I decided to review my seven appearances at work as my real self. As a bonus, I also included my office girl appearances at the company Christmas parties in 2017 and 2018 (I was retired by then, but was invited back for the parties).

Halloween at work in 2000, 2003 and 2012

Halloween at work in 2013, 2014 and 2015

Halloween at work in 2016. Christmas party in 2017 and 2018.

Wearing Ann Taylor

Thiago Fragoso femulating on Brazil television’s Sexo Fragil

Someday Funnies: Did He Forgo Panties, Too?

Femulating in plain sight
Male modeling in the Paloma Spain menswear collection

Someday Funnies: Loophole

Wearing Boston Proper

Artyom Suchkov, Dmitriy Vlaskin and Roman Popov femulating in the 2019 Russian film Girls Are Different. You can view the film on YouTube.

Got Balance?

In light of my ever advancing age, my love of four-inch stilettos and my recent tumble down the stairs in heels, I am rerunning this story about the benefits of wearing high heels.

According to a story in the Daily Mail, “When it comes to high heels, surprisingly, experts believe that wearing them into our 70s may actually help protect us from falls, by maintaining our sense of balance.

“‘Most high heels have a very small surface area to walk on, so you need a good sense of balance and proprioception [a sense of how various parts of the body move relative to each other] to be able to walk in them,’ explains Christopher Walker, a consultant in trauma and orthopaedic surgery at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

“‘This means that because of wearing high heels, women have a very good sense of balance.’

“Balance involves the brain processing vast amounts of information from different areas, including the eyes, muscles and balance mechanisms in the ear.

“Heels challenge your sense of balance which, over years, hones these mechanisms.

“If women stop wearing heels, their sense of balance can actually deteriorate, adds Mr Walker, who also works at the Bone and Joint Centre, Spire Liverpool Hospital.”

Read the rest the Daily Mail story here.

Wearing ROCOCO SAND

Femulating men at work, circa 1955

Someday Funnies: Next Time Call “Shotgun”

Wearing Boston Proper

Nino Manfredi femulating in the 1966 Italian film Adulterio all‘italiana.
You can view the film on YouTube.

Susanna’s Casa is Our Casa

I’ve written here about Casa Susanna many times. (Just use the Search Femulate option to see how many times.) 

In case you missed what I wrote, “Casa Susanna was a popular weekend destination in Jewett, NY for cross-dressing men and transgender women in the early 1960s. The bungalow camp was run by Susanna Valenti and her wife Marie, who also ran a wig store in town.” (Source: Wikipedia)

Casa Susanna, a documentary by French filmmaker Sebastien Lifshitz, vividly brings the past to life through archival footage, photographs and the memories of those who stayed at Casa Susanna.

Click here to view the film’s trailer, click here to view Cineuropa’s clips from the film and click here to read IndieWire’s review of the documentary.

The film is “in production” according to the PBS International. Since it is a PBS International production, I hope that means it will appear on television via PBS. In any case, this is a film I will not miss. 

(Thank you, Gary, for alerting me about the film.)

Femulate reader Jim O. dress shopping at Macy’s last Wednesday