Someday Funnies: Crossdressing Truths

Wearing New York & Company

Dave Castiblanco, womenswear model

Good News

Delia on Let’s Make A Deal

Three weeks ago, I mentioned that watching Let’s Make A Deal while I was recuperating from my surgery, “a guy showed up dressed as a drag queen.” I did not know if he was the first contestant in drag to appear on the show, but it was a first for me. [If you are not familiar with Let’s Make A Deal, audience members who participate in making a deal (winning prizes) dress in all sorts of costumes.]

I don’t watch Let’s Make A Deal everyday, but since my first sighting, I have seen another contestant on the show who I believe was trans-something. She used a feminine name (Delia) and looked like a woman, but she was very tall (a few inches taller than the show’s host, Wayne Brady, who is a six-footer) and her voice raised doubts about her birth gender.

When Delia had to make a deal by choosing curtain 1, 2 or 3, she prefaced her selection by saying that she had been married to her wife for 25 years. And when Delia won the “Big Deal,” her wife joined her on the stage and looked like a cisgender woman, just a lot shorter than Delia.

I don’t know if Delia is a crossdresser or transsexual, but my trans radar was sounding loudly and I am sure she is trans-something.

Everyday there is nothing but bad news on the trans front and it is very disheartening. So it did my heart good to see a trans-person appear as a contestant on a popular television show and be treated as just another contestant and not a freak. 

That’s good news!

Wearing Trina Turk

The Flag Sisters

In 1977, a leading Italian television host invited three actors - Tito Le Duc (a Mexican), Mauro Bronchi (an Italian) and Neil Hansen, a boy from Perth, Western Australia - to appear in drag on his new variety show. They thought it would be the end of their acting careers. It wasn't. In a twinkling of the eye, The Flag Sisters were Italy's hottest act. With countless TV appearances, feature films and national tours, they were high flying and adored, the paparazzi forever snap-snapping at their high heels. They brought joy to millions of fans at a time when Italy was on the verge of nervous breakdown, the Red Brigades and other radical groups bringing terror to the streets. (Source: IMDb)

Someday Funnies: Extreme Fashion Forwarding

jerseygirlangie is an expert at recaptioning, that is, borrowing an image and changing its caption. I loved her recaption above and am borrowing it for Femulate.org today. You can see many more of her recaptions on flickr by clicking here. 

Wearing Elisabetta Franchi

Yesterday, I featured the above Before and After image in the Femulator slot. I have no idea about the source, but the femulations intrigued me and I tried to figure out who was who. 

I believe I solved who’s who and annotated the Before and After image accordingly. My solution appears below, but before you look, try and figure it out for yourself and then compare your guesses with mine. 

By the way, my guess is that the cisgender woman in the After image is the makeup artist who performed the makeovers.

Photographing My Self

I take photos of myself nearly every time I present as a woman. I do it for two reasons:

1. To feed this blog. (The blog is hungry for photos and it must be fed.)
2. To see if the outfit I am wearing is good, bad, or ugly. Photos are more revealing than a mirror. What I see in the mirror often looks different in a photograph. Photographing my fashion faux pas allows me to make adjustments, for example, put on a girdle so I don’t look so fat.

Self photography is an art. I probably discard 4 out of 5 of the self-photos I take because there is something technically wrong with them (usually related to focus, framing, lighting, or worse, because I look fat).

I use my iPhone 14 Pro for most of my self-photography. The quality of the iPhone photos is very good in my opinion and it is hard to beat the convenience.

I use the self-timer function in the iPhone’s Camera app for a lot of my self-photography. Set the timer for 10 seconds, click the Camera’s shutter button, walk into the Camera’s field of vision, pose, smile, watch the birdie and wait for the Camera to snap a shot.

In a pinch, I lean the iPhone against something to take a self-timed photo. But most of the time, I use a small tripod designed to hold the iPhone. The tripod has bendable legs, so I can use it in diverse settings.

That covers the hardware, but what about the software, that is, the model in my selfies?

I learned that my best photos are ones in which I smile.

Over the years, I have seen thousands of photos of transgirls and I can never understand why some girls look so unhappy in their photos. They are living their dream, although sometimes only momentarily and they should be very happy about it, yet some of them look like they just downed a spoonful of castor oil!

So, smile and smile naturally, not in a forced manner. I used to have a forced smile in my photos, but I worked on it and now my smiles look natural and the results are much better!

I am also becoming more adept at posing for my photos.

1. I tilt my chin up slightly and extend my neck forward to avoid the double chin.
2. Instead of a straight-on shot, I turn my shoulders slightly to the left or right. And pose with one leg in front of the other, for example, by crossing my legs at the ankle.
3. With legs crossed, sometimes I will put one hand on my hip. This elbow-jut pose results in a ladylike ballerina effect.
4. To accentuate my legs, I thrust one hip to the side, stretch out my opposing leg as far as it will go and point my toes.

Taking selfies as you pose in a mirror is tricky.

1. For starters, shut off the flash, otherwise your selfie will be nothing but flash reflected in the mirror and that is not the result you want unless you are Barry Allen.
2. Take mirror selfies while looking at your reflection in the mirror rather than looking at the trigger button on your smart phone. This is simple with the iPhone because you can shoot a photo by clicking one of the iPhone’s volume buttons, which is a lot easier than trying to click the virtual trigger button on the iPhone’s screen.
3. Before showing off your mirror selfies, use photo-editing software to flip the image horizontally so that you look natural and not the opposite, which is what a mirror displays.

I am a work-in-progress and so is my self-photography, but practice, practice, practice and someday my photos will do justice to a complete woman.

(This post is an update of a post that originally appeared in June 2015.)

Wearing Posse

Before and After

Someday Funnies: A Modern Hallmark

Wearing Chloe

An Irish femulator

Scarfing

The first time I visited a casino en femme was the first time I ever accessorized with a scarf. The scarf I wore was one of my deceased Mother’s scarves; I felt that she was with me throughout the evening and may have brought me some luck at the slot machines. I won $150 on a three quarter play. Thank-you, Mom!

Subsequently, scarves became an integral part of my wardrobe. Whenever I wanted to spiff up my outfit, adding a scarf did the trick. Today, I wear scarves more often than not.

My scarves often garner compliments from other women. En femme at work on Halloween a few years ago, our receptionist complimented my scarf, asked me how I tied it and I gladly showed her.

There are many ways to tie a scarf. Google “tie a scarf” and you will receive many suggestions. I have tried a few different ones, but usually I use the simple loop-n-through method illustrated here.

Besides being stylish, another benefit of wearing a scarf is that it provides a method of covering a prominent Adam’s apple. (Lucky me, I don’t have one.)

I highly recommend accessorizing with a scarf. Wearing a scarf is so ladylike. Don’t leave home without it.

How to tie a scarf – loop-n-through method

Source: Rue La La

British femulators attending Royal Ascot

Someday Funnies: Wife’s Day Out

Wearing Theory

Yet another womanless pageant beauty

Someday Funnies: Where’s Wanda?

Wearing Venus

Bonar Bain femulating on television’s Diff’rent Strokes.

Items of Interest

Pinned Dept.

The • Stana on pinterest link in the sidebar of this blog takes you to a compilation of my images collected by Tricia Anne Fox. (Thank you, Tricia, for collecting my images. It is one less task that I have to do while maintaining my blog.)

In addition to Tricia’s “Stana Stan” Pinterest page, Tricia has amassed an amazing collection of images of attractive women, trans, drag and cis, on her Pinterest website. You can literally spend hours viewing her collection, which you can view by clicking here. Enjoy!

Update: Too many people attempted to access Tricia Anne’s Pinterest pages and Pinterest has deactivated her account. Hopefully, she will be able to reactivate her account soon.

Working Pretty in Texas Dept.

Not in Texas

Going to the office en femme just took a step backwards in the Lone Star State. According to Vice.com, the Texas Department of Agriculture distributed a memo to employees last week informing them that they’re required to dress in a “manner consistent with their biological gender.”

ACLU of Texas attorney Brian Klosterboer told the Texas Tribune that the dress code policy violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which deals with employment discrimination. In 2020, the Supreme Court held that sexual orientation and gender identity are protected classes under the law, in an opinion authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts. 

You can read all about it by clicking here.

Wearing Bebe

Kenyan comedian Eric Omondi femulates while hosting television’s The Divalicious Show. You can view the show on YouTube.

Someday Funnies

Wearing Ann Taylor

“Charlie Watkins“ AKA Angelique Pettyjohn femulating in an episode of television’s Get Smart. (Angelique was a cisgender woman playing a male femulating a woman – the rare female femulator.)