an extended weekend

I am enjoying an extended weekend.

We visited northern Vermont and New Hampshire Saturday and Sunday where snow is still on the ground in many places. I took Monday off to recuperate from Saturday and Sunday and I am taking Tuesday off to spend the day femulating to do outreach for two classes at Southern Connecticut State University.

The weather forecast is rain, rain, and more rain, but as I always say, "A bad day femulating beats a good day at work!"

Paltrow receives Femulate Fashion Seal of Approval

Earlier today, I bestowed my coveted Femulate Fashion Seal of Approval on Gwyneth Paltrow, who has donned mini-skirts and kinky heels on "Iron Man" Tour.

The Radicalguy

Recently, Ethan St. Pierre interviewed my friend Jamie Dailey on his TransFM Internet "radio" program. As you may recall, Jamie is the femulator I outreached with last week.

I missed the live Internet broadcast, but I downloaded its podcast to my iPod and listened to the interview during my daily commute.

The interview was wonderful. It was my first encounter with Ethan St. Pierre, "The Radicalguy," and I was very impressed. He is a superb interviewer with a great sense of humor. He seemed very familiar with Jamie and their interview was more like a conversation between old friends.

I wanted to hear more, so I commanded iTunes on my MacBook Pro to download a directory of all the Radicalguy interviews that were available. I selected a couple of interviews from the directory (the Jennifer Finney Boylan interview and the Helen Boyd and Betty Crow interview) to download to my iPod and I have been listening to those podcasts the past few days.

I have not been disappointed. Those interviews are as good as Jamie's interview and I will likely download all of Ethan's podcasts to my iPod.

By the way, Ethan is a female-to-male trans and his spouse if male-to-female, so he is very familiar with our area of endeavor. Visit his Web site for more information.

shopping

During lunch, I drove to the grocery store to buy food for lunch and stopped at PayLess, which is on the way. I bought two pairs of shoes: black oxfords for boy mode and flower pumps for girl mode. The pumps are the shoes I blogged about last week ("my Mother's pumps") and I was pleased that they had a pair in my size.

I wonder what went through the cashier's mind while she rang up my diverse gendered purchase, which, by the way, was a real good deal. Payless is having their "buy one and get the second half-off" sale, so my purchase cost only $35.

Now, I have to find something to wear to go with my new shoes!

towering Tyra

During dinner, the television is usually on and tuned to the local news. During commercials, I usually switch to the channel that broadcasts the Tyra Banks show in the 5-6 PM time slot.

I check out her show because sometimes the topic of the show is related to my fashionista side and sometimes to my trans side. I also check out her show to check out Tyra to see what wig and outfit she is wearing. She always looks gorgeous and is an inspiration to this little old femulator. (Here is a link to see what Tyra and some of her guests have worn on past shows.)

She is also tall. On yesterday's show, she towered over everyone, male and female. The high heels she wore had something to do with her towering height, but I was curious as to how tall she really is.

So, after dinner, I searched the Internet and found that she is 5'10" or 5'11" depending on who you believe. Either way, she is tall.

a pageant for the third sex

"A pageant for the third sex" describes a recent beauty pageant for our trans-sisters in India. Read the whole story here.

"Girl With A Hoop" is a boy

Renoir’s Daughters: How Renoir Feminized His Sons by Cara Healey is an interesting piece about French artist Pierre August Renoir and how he used his three sons to pose as girls for his paintings.

What would Jesus do?

I recommend reading Just Like Jesus on Jess and T's Our Life in Pink blog.

my Mother's pumps

Today, I received an e-mail from Payless announcing a shoe sale. I checked out the sale because I like their shoes (they are inexpensive and there usually is a nice selection in my size).

While browsing their shoes, I had déjà vu when I saw this high heel pump that they call "Hilt." It is a dead ringer for the first woman's shoe I ever wore.

When I was about 12 years old, my experiments with femulation began one day when an inner voice convinced me to try on a pair of my mother's stockings while I was home alone.

I had seen my mother put on her stockings more than once, so I had a pretty good idea on how to do it and I emulated her successfully, i.e., I got them on without running them.

I then checked out my pre-pubescent hairless stockinged legs in my mother's full length mirror. Wow – they were as shapely as the legs of a woman!

My inner voice convinced me that they might look even more shapely if I slipped on a pair of my mother's high heels. So, I found a pair of her high heel pumps, ones that look just like Payless's Hilts, and slipped them on my feet.

I checked out my legs in the mirror again and again was impressed how shapely and womanly my legs appeared.

That was the beginning. The rest was her-story, specifically Staci's story.

Whenever I dressed secretly at home, I always favored that pair of my mother's pumps. They were so pretty and they were also the highest high heels she owned.

Her pumps are long gone, but I plan to go shopping at Payless real soon now and buy a pair of my own.

my day at Wesleyan University

Tuesday, I went to Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, to do outreach for a class on 21st Century sexuality.

For the first time, I wore the "royal purple" zip-front V-neck dress that I bought from Newport-News in December. It is from their Shape FX collection, which they claim are "designed to make the body you have, look like the body you want."

I'm not sure how they do it, but every Shape FX outfit I own improves my figure and the dress I wore yesterday was no exception. In my notes from yesterday, I wrote that I thought I looked "fab."

By the time I was ready to go out, it was 10:45 AM. Since I was not sure how long it would take to drive to Wesleyan and find a parking space, instead of shopping before going to the school, I drove directly to Wesleyan and found a parking spot across the street from the classroom building where I was doing outreach.

I was 90 minutes early! I sat in the car for awhile taking in the beautiful scenery, then decided to get out in the fresh air. I walked to the entrance of the classroom building where there were benches and I sat there until the class began.

I did not take a coat of jacket with me and I thought that might be a mistake because the temperature was in the low 30s early on, but by the time I arrived on campus, the temperature was about 60 and perfect for what I was wearing.

The classroom building has a cornerstone dated 1903. I wonder how many crossdressers were doing outreach at Wesleyan 105 years ago!

Thinking about my own life, when I stepped out en femme for the first time to attend my first support group meeting, I would never have imagined that 20 years later, I would be out and about freely femulating in public and speaking about it to a college class. (You've come a long way, baby!)

And, although I am 20 years older, my presentation as a woman is much better today. I mastered a lot of the "tricks of the trade" and I think I pass some of the time. My penchant for high heels does not help me pass, but like I've said before, at 6'2", my height is already a show-stopper, so what difference will high heels make.

Jamie, the other crossdresser who was doing outreach with me, showed up and a few minutes later, Maureen Sullivan, the professor showed up and escorted us to the classroom.

It was a small class: about 15 students, about half female and half male. I went first and talked for about 15 minutes, basically reciting my biography. Jamie spoke after me and covered more generic trans subject matter. Then, we took questions from the students.

We did not get a lot of questions and the only unique question I received had nothing to do with trans matters; the student asked me about the books I had written in boy mode.

After class, we three walked three blocks to Main Street to dine at the First and Last Tavern. I'm glad I brought a second pair of shoes, otherwise the walk might have been unbearable in the 3½” platform pumps I was wearing. Switching to a 3” non-platform pump made a big difference.

I don't think anyone paid much attention to us until we got to the restaurant, where I noticed some of the staff checking us out more closely. Our waiter was respectful and treated us like ladies.

The food was good and the conversation was excellent. We dined alfresco, which was very nice for a change.

We finished around 4 PM, walked back to the campus, split up, and drove home.

It was another excellent day out en femme, but I was exhausted by the time I arrived home and went to bed earlier than usual.

fallen limbs = shapely limbs

Muscles ache today that normally don't because I did the dreaded spring yard clean-up Saturday and Sunday.

This year, it was particularly onerous because during the winter, a huge branch broke from a tree and landed in the back yard. Normally, I would just drag it into the woods, but this one was so big that I could barely move it. So, I had to get out the chain saw and cut it down to more manageable pieces that I could drag into the woods along with the 50 or so other branches that were kind enough to break off in manageable chunks.

When I got on the scale this morning, I was happy to see that I weighed one pound less than the day I got married 25 years ago. Except for raking leaves in the fall, I do all my own yard work and it helps me to maintain my figure. All those fallen limbs make for shapely limbs!

males modeling dresses

I was looking at the spring fashions on the Internet today and I noticed what I believe were males modeling dresses. Here are two examples; you be the judge.

reaching further

This is going to be a busy month for me on the outreach front.

Last night, I received a call asking if I would do outreach for two Human Sexuality classes at Southern Connecticut State University on April 29. These are the classes I have been outreaching every semester for the past few years and I gladly accepted the assignment.

This is in addition to the outreach I will be doing at Wesleyan University on Tuesday, so, as a result, I will be out for the day en femme twice this month.

Fantastic!

just my style

I try not to watch too much television because I get hooked on the better stuff (like The Sopranos, John Adams, 30 Rock) and when I get hooked, I can't miss an episode.

I saw the ads for AMC's Mad Men, but avoided it because it seemed like just another prime time soap.

The show received good reviews and I will probably check it out in reruns, but not because of the good reviews, but rather because of the costume design.

"Set in 1960 New York, the daring new series is about the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell while their private world gets sold."

Yeah, it sounds like a soap, but the clothing is just my style!

best deal in bras

Twenty-two percent of women in a new Consumer Reports survey said they always or often regret bra purchases. That's especially annoying when some bras cost more than $100. But does a woman or a crossdresser need to pay that much for a well-made bra that fits?

The answer is a resounding "no" and the details are here.

never worn out

This photo shows me in the spring of 1995 modeling a cocktail dress that I never wore in public. I love the dress and I think it looked lovely on me, but for one reason or another, I never wore it out en femme.

I still have the dress and it is in pristine condition. I believe it is still stylish enough to wear today, don't you?

So, I think it is time to take it out of storage and wear it to the next special occasion I attend. (It would be the perfect thing to wear to my cousin's wedding in June, but I don't think the family would agree with my wardrobe selection.)

next outing/outreach

The plans are set and I will be out en femme next Tuesday, which will include doing outreach at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. Specifically, I will be doing outreach with another crossdresser for a class dealing with 21st Century sexuality; sounds interesting!

The class is in the early afternoon, so I will have time to do other things. I will probably do some shopping at the mall and have lunch somewhere... maybe on campus.

It should be a nice day out femulating and I am looking forward to it.

kindred spirit

Surfing the net today, I came across the blog of a kindred spirit, Vickie Davis, who you might enjoy reading.

not sisters

Everyone thinks we're sisters, but we're actually mother and son.

(from a recent issue of The New Yorker)

just reward

I finished doing my taxes today. I don't usually wait this late, but I use tax software and my computer was in the shop during most of March in the repair queue waiting for a part.

It was worth the wait because after waiting so long, Apple decided to send me a new computer rather than make me wait any longer for mine to be fixed. This was a real sweet deal because my broken computer was over three years old, while its replacement is a brand new model, just released in January!

Anyway, I finished my taxes and I am getting the biggest refund I have ever received. And as a reward, I treated myself and bought this dress from Metrostyle 30% off list.