ups and downs, highs and lows

I go out en femme once or twice a month; sometimes less often and seldom more often (unless I am attending an en femme event with an extended schedule like Fantasia Fair).

I seldom femulate unless I am going out. Those non-outing femulations occur when I am trying on newly-purchased clothing, putting together outfits for future outings, or dressing for photoshoots.

The bottom line is that in my opinion, I don't femulate a lot (or not as often as I'd like.)

As a result, I look forward to my outings weeks beforehand and when the big day finally comes, I am ecstatic.

When my outing en femme is over, I am initially happy thinking about the outing, but as hours and days pass, I eventually become sad and depressed.

These highs and lows are not good for my mental health.

In theory, if I went out en femme more often, the highs and lows would be less extreme and that would be an improvement for my mental health. And if I was en femme full-time, the highs and lows would be negligible and my mental state would be very healthy.

But due to circumstances related to my marital state, those options are not possible. So, I am stuck on a merry-go-round, going up and down in an infinite loop.

Thank the Goddess for my blog!

This blog allows me to femulate virtually providing an outlet for my feminine nature that would otherwise be pent up by the stranglehold grip of my so-called life as a American male.

And so it goes.

dial C for crossdressers

As usual, click on the image to magnify it.

my day at the True Colors Conference

Friday, I was part of the True Colors Conference at my alma mater, the University of Connecticut. The annual conference brings together GLBT youth and their adult supporters and/or facilitators (parents, teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, etc.).

Diana L did the driving and we arrived on campus at about 8:30 AM. In deference to my high heels, Diana left me off in front of the Student Union, handed me a box of handouts for our support group's table, and drove off to park her Prius.

I found our table and started setting up for the day.

When Diana arrived, I asked her to take a few photos. She obliged and when I reviewed them through the camera's LCD, I realized that my dress was very short on length. I had worn this dress before and its mini-ness was not as apparent then because I was wearing black tights, but yesterday, wearing brown ("expresso") tights made my legs and lack of skirt more obvious. I felt a little self-conscious about it, but I was not going to let it upset my day.

Lee Anne showed up around 9 AM and we three staffed the table most of the day.

Students and adults came by the table throughout the day and we chatted with everyone who stopped by, fielding their questions, and filling their hands with our handouts.

I believe we were the only trans group at the Conference, an island of T’s surrounded by an ocean of GLB’s, so a number of people who stopped by remarked how glad they were to see T’s represented, too.

I broke for lunch early and bought a yogurt at the food court, and then I prepared for my workshop. The way I prepare is to get nervous for a few hours before my presentation.

After I was appropriately unnerved, I walked to the Math and Science Building where I was presenting my workshop at 1 PM, titled "Femulate: The Art of Becoming Womanly." I found my classroom and waited for my audience.

As 1 PM approached, only five people had shown up. Turns out that folks were held up in the long lunch lines, so most of my audience arrived late. I was unaware of the problem and began at 1 PM sharp. By 1:15 or so, my audience had grown to 25 people.

As usual, once I began, my nervousness evaporated and I was on a roll, telling the short version of my biography and then getting into the main part of my presentation, which was basically an update of my “top 30 things every crossdressing man needs in his wardrobe to emulate a woman.”

The presentation went well. Lots of people asked questions and I tried to answer them all. At the end, I received applause, handshakes, and more questions from members of the audience who hung around afterwords.

I collected their evaluations and read them this morning. I received mostly “Excellent” and “Very Good” evaluations. I also received two ”Goods” and one “Fair,” so I would say I did OK.

The written comments were more revealing. Here is a sample:

"Super Practical. No philosophy, a real how-to, very honest, unpretentious, authentic and real."

"It was a really interesting presentation."

"Well done --- this was awesome"

"Great job, truthful, honest + helpful"

"Great legs, definitely"

"Awesome legs ; ) "

The last two comments made me feel a lot better about wearing a mini yesterday.

After my workshop, I returned to our table and crashed. The afternoon was not as busy as the morning and it dragged a bit, but turned out to be just as rewarding as the morning when a couple of trans people showed up to thank us for being there in the past because it had made a difference in their lives.

Just as we were getting ready to call it a day, somebody noticed a plaque on the wall behind our table. The plaque displayed the title, year, and the name of the artist of the mural on the wall behind us. The name of the piece was Transcendence.

Lee Anne left for home and Diana and I left to dine at Bertucci’s in the Buckland Hills mall in Manchester. Friday night and the place was full. We were escorted to a table at the end of an aisle, so we got to parade by 15 or so tables full of diners, but they were so busy dining that they did not seem to pay us much mind.

Our waitress seemed cool, but I think the server was a little nervous because as she left our table, she said, “I hope you enjoy your folks, meals.”

The rest of the meal was uneventful. We finished eating and I returned home about 7:30 PM very tired, but very happy.

It was another nice day en femme.

White House Council on Woman & Girls invites transwoman

This is great news! According to a posting today on Pam's House Blend, President Obama invited transwoman Mara Keisling of the National Center For Transgender Equality (NCTE) to serve on the White House Council on Woman and Girls.

Read all about it here.

By the way, I heard Ms. Kiesling speak at Fantasia Fair last year and her presentation was informative and inspiring.

a fair return

As my blog postings in October 2008 indicated, I had a great time at Fantasia Fair... probably the time of my life, but I did not plan to go back real soon because of the expense involved.

One of the girls I met at Fantasia Fair (Jan from New York State) e-mailed me that she and another girl from New York were looking for a roommate to share in the rental of a condominium in Provincetown during Fantasia Fair week and was I interested. My share for the week would be about the same as it would cost for a room for one night at one of the Provincetown hotels, inns, or B&Bs. This cut the overall costs by more than half, so I gladly accepted the invitation and will be returning to Fantasia Fair in the Fall.

more womanless

After my blog posting about womanless beauty pageants on February 6, I was curious how often and where such pageants occur. So, I set-up Google Alerts so that I would receive an e-mail me each time Google discovered a new encounter of the term "womanless" on the Internet.

Since then, I have been averaging a womanless alert about once a day. About 25% of the alerts have nothing to do with womanless beauty pageants (or womanless weddings), but the remaining 75% do. Womanless pageants occur regularly, two or three per week, and the vast majority occur in the Deep South of the USA. Only two occurred outside the Deep South: one in the Southwest and the other in the upper Midwest.

a purse by any other name

As usual, click on the image to magnify it.

lay down your arms and put on a dress

I did not serve in the military, so I am not familiar with prisoner of war (POW) camps (except what I have seen in films) and I am clueless on the topic of crossdressing POWs.

Does the Geneva Convention require that every POW facility be stocked with the latest in female clothing, wigs, makeup, etc., to permit the prisoners to dress en femme?

I ask that question (with tongue in cheek) because I have been collecting trans-related images for years and my collection includes many images of POWs in drag putting on stage shows.

These "girls" are not wearing homemade outfits put together from scraps of material that they scrounged up in camp; rather they are dressed as fashionable women of the day would dress in outfits that came off the rack of women's clothier.

Did the POW camp commander ring up his favorite dress shop and order some frocks for the prisoners whenever they wanted to put on a show?

What's the real story?

Please enlighten me if you have any information on this subject.

Meanwhile, enjoy the sample of images (above and below) of POWs en femme. (As usual, click on an image to magnify it.)

Up top is a photo of five German soldiers at an unknown location during an unknown war, but my guess is World War II.

Below we find a group of German soldiers incarcerated at Camp Carson, Colorado, in 1945.

Far below, is another group of POWs of unknown nationality at an unknown location during an unknown was, but my guess is British soldiers during World War I.

crossdressed in the past

A couple crossdressed to kill in the early 20th Century.

showing my true colors

Next Friday (the 13th), I will make my second visit en femme to my alma mater where I will participate in the annual True Colors Conference.

"True Colors works to create a world where youth, adults and families of all sexual orientations and gender identities are valued and affirmed." Their annual conference brings together GLBT youth and their adult supporters and/or facilitators (parents, teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, etc.).

On Friday, I will be staffing my support group's table at the conference.

After lunch on Friday, I will also be presenting a workshop. Here is the description of my workshop from the conference program:

Femulate: The Art Of Becoming Womanly

To “femulate” is to emulate a female. This workshop will assist male-to-female crossdressers to learn the art of becoming womanly and ultimately, to femulate successfully. (Successful femulation is the ability to emulate a female so well that the femulator is accepted, that is, she “passes” in society as a female.) Staci Lana Hunter BA, JD is a male-to-female crossdresser, who began crossdressing at age 12. In her late teens, she took baby steps out of the closet on Halloween. Over the years, she got further out of the closet by honing the skills necessary to allow her to pass as a woman in society (without hormones or surgery). Today, besides shopping and dining out en femme, Ms. Hunter speaks at colleges and universities evangelizing the normality of crossdressing.

This is a different kind of outreach than the kind I do at colleges and universities.

My higher education audience consists of students who are taking a course in which transgender is part of their studies. Usually, they are not trans themselves.

At the True Colors Conference, my outreach audience consists of people who are actually trans or are working with trans. As you can imagine, they have different concerns and questions than the students who are studying the topic as part of a course curriculum.

I look forward to the conference because it makes for a very interesting and rewarding day. As usual, I will have a full report here after the fact.

(That's me in the photo staffing our booth at the conference two years ago.)

because of COS

I have been a member of the Connecticut Outreach Society (COS) ever since it was founded 20 years ago.

When I joined COS, I had never been out en femme except for some Halloween excursions. So, when I attended my first COS meeting, I consider that my real first time out en femme. I recall being very nervous and sweating profusely at the meeting, so much so that I left the meeting early determined that I would never come back.

But, I came back and became active in COS. I edited their annual membership directory for a number of years, organized their annual banquet three years in a row, and manned their telephone help line for a stint. Currently, I do a lot of outreach for COS and I am serving my fourth stint as editor of the COS monthly newsletter.

I enjoy outreach a lot because it allows me to go out and hopefully demonstrate to the civilian population that transpeople are not freaks, but are just like them. I enjoy editing the newsletter because it gives me an outlet to be a little creative in a feminine way. But the main reason I am active in COS is because COS helped me become a better transperson. If not for COS, I would not be me.

COS's annual banquet is on Saturday March 28. It is the biggest trans affair of the year in these parts and attracts attendees from all over the Northeast. It takes place in a hotel in central Connecticut minutes from the intersection of three freeways and is a two-hour drive from New York City and Boston.

COS invites all trans people (and their loved ones) to attend our annual banquet. If you live in the Boston-New York City megalopolis, you won't go wrong attending the COS annual banquet.

For more details and reservation information, visit the COS Web site.

fading fiction sites redux

Three weeks ago, I wondered about the disappearing transgender fiction Web sites fictionmania and Crystal's Story Site.

A couple of days later, Stacy Jacobson e-mailed me about what she had learned about the disappearance. Immediately thereafter, her e-mail was lost in the clutter known as "The Femulate Archives" and I just found it today.

I apologize to Stacy for the delay in posting her reply. The pertinent parts follow:

I found the note below on the Big Closet:

Fictionmania has been offline for a long time now and it looks like it will remain that way for sometime [sic].

Crystal is working hard on rebuilding her site and will not update until she is done. Last update was 10/14/2008. She has a ton of stories backed up in her queue and I mean a ton!

She'll have her work cut out trying to get them posted, but she'll do it eventually.

out on a limb

I am home today watching the snow fall on a bleak Zhivagoesque landscape, while my deskjet prints the income tax forms that I will file tomorrow.

I finished doing our taxes this morning (yay!) and wait to begin my next big task (boo!): digging out from the snow storm. In the meantime, I am considering my particular location on the male-to-female transgender continuum.

At one end of the continuum are the gents who put on dresses, light up cigars, and sit around with the other gents in dresses discussing whatever is the news du jour on ESPN.

At the other end of the continuum are post-op transsexuals, who have completed transition and live their lives as the females they were born to be.

In my neck of the woods on the continuum are the femulators, i.e., transwomen, who present fully female in both dress and manner, but have no plans to surgically modify their bodies in order to augment their femulation. Some are full-time 24/7 femulators and some of them identify as no-op transsexuals. Others are part-time (like me) femulating when they can and some of them also identify as no-op transsexuals (not like me).

I believe that if the circumstances were different, I would femulate full-time without surgery, i.e., be a no-op, but I would not identify as transsexual.

Am I in denial about being transsexual?

I have met many transsexuals over the years and all of them admitted that they longed to be female all their lives. And they hated their male bodies. I never had the longing to be female and I am fairly satisfied with my body (my primary dissatisfaction is related to hair, i.e, too much and not enough in all the wrong places.)

On the other hand, I am not atypical male. In my youth, I enjoyed boy activities... to a point. I was not your typical rough and tumble boy and I did not like to take part in any activities where pain was a possibility. For example, I liked to play football, but I preferred touch football and avoided tackle football. So, I definitely had a sissy streak in me and some of the other youths let me know it by taunting me and calling me names.

I also enjoyed creative activities (writing and drawing) and there were other activities, i.e., some that were downright female that I would have pursued, but I worried what others would think if I followed those girlish activities, so I avoided them.

By the way, I am a heterosexual and never had any inclinations not to be.

All that being said, I believe that I am out on a limb that branches off the male-to-female transgender continuum. I am not sure of the name of that limb*, but it is kind of lonely out here.

And so it snows.

* I had this discussion here a few months ago and I bought into the suggestion that I was a "transgenderist," but after thinking about it, I'm not so sure.

man of the house

still Barbie after all these years

Back when I was a kid, girls played with dolls and boys played with toy soldiers. Only boys like us played with dolls.

To tell you the truth, I do not recall playing with dolls except on one occasion. Home alone and taking a break from crossdressing with Mom's stuff, I got into my sister's doll collection and dressed Ken in a Barbie outfit.

It was an unsatisfying experience because Ken did not wear it well. Ken was made of hard plastic and Barbie's foundation garments could not mold Ken's hard body into a feminine figure (like I was able to use my mother's bra and girdle to mold my own chub-body into a feminine figure featuring a real pair of B-cup breasts... Well, not quite B-cup, but pretty close.)

After that episode, I never bothered crossdressing Ken or playing with Barbie, but Barbie's fashions fascinated me. I wanted to dress like Barbie. And it sure would be nice to look like her, but all the dieting in the world nor the tightest foundation garments in the world would permit me to achieve that status, but a boy can dream, can't he?

Did I ever tell you I'm an Avon saleslady?

I am not very active these days, but I still have a franchise and turn in a new order every two weeks.

Well, in 1998, Avon sold a Barbie Avon representative doll. Her hair and outfit reminded me of the way Nicole Kidman looked in the film To Die For, which is a "look" I felt was definitely worth looking like. I bought one for my daughter and it is around the house somewhere still mint in the box.

So, yesterday, I read on one of the news Web sites that Barbie will celebrate her 50th birthday on March 9, one day after my 58th birthday. (Damn, I wish I looked that good when I was 50!)

So, Happy Birthday, Barbara 'Barbie' Millicent Roberts; you've been an inspiration to femulators everywhere!

well, do ya?

excellence in femulation (partie trois)

Originally, "drag balls" were formal dances sponsored by GLBT organizations (often a college or university GLBT group) in which the attendees crossdressed. Males wore evening gowns and females wore tuxedos or other formal or semi-formal wear.

Google "drag ball" and you will find a few examples.

Some time ago, I did just that and came across unique before and after photographs of drag ball attendees in normal wear and in drag ball wear. The photos were unique because it depicted a group of five males before and after they donned their gay apparel. (You can find a lot of before and after photos of individuals on the Internet, but almost never before and after photos of a group.)

Regrettably, I lost the information concerning who is depicted in the photo and where the drag ball took place. However, I do have the photos and am pleased to display them here and announce that the the Femulate Awards Committee has bestowed the coveted Excellence in Femulation Award upon this group of five unknown femulators.

(As always, click on the photo to magnify it.)

not dressed, too ill

I have a head cold that just won't give up and its timing could not be worse. I had arranged a Very Indulgent Party (VIP) at a local Dress Barn for my support group and I was supposed to host the party on Sunday.

Usually, I dress to kill when I go out en femme. That means a dress, high heels, full makeup, bling, etc.

I felt better on Saturday and I thought I would be healthy enough to wear my hostess outfit the next day, but I had a relapse on Sunday and was in no shape to dress to kill for the party. It takes a lot of energy to dress to kill and my illness had drained most of the energy out of my body.

I thought about hosting the party in boy mode, but I decided that that would not be appropriate. Then, I thought about compromising and dressing androgynously to host the party: just a pair jeans and a top.

But wait; that's my normal boy mode outfit, so I would need to femme it up a bit. I could wear a wig, a little makeup, the dress trousers I bought at Lane Bryant, a pretty top, a little bling, my booties, a purse, etc.

But wait; I will have to wear my waist cincher, panty girdle, and long line bra with that outfit. Now I was on the verge of dressing to kill and I was not up for it. So, I decided to forget about it.

There is no in-between in my female wardrobe. It is either all or nothing. So I need to add a pair of female jeans to my wardrobe. Darn! I could have bought a pair at Dress Barn!

my take on Oscar-wear

I watched the Oscars telecast last night. I am a big movie fan, but my primary interest in watching the Oscars is to see what the actresses wear to the event.

I am still sick with a head cold and I went to bed early. So, I did not see the whole Oscar telecast and I might have missed something. That said, I was not impressed with most of the outfits I did see last night. None of the outfits called my name ("Staci, wear me, wear me").

My favorite was the gown that Tina Fey wore. Ms. Fey is my favorite actress these days and I was happy to see her glam it up for a change. She looked fab and if I had to pick out a gown for myself to wear from all the ones I saw last night, I would likely pick hers.

Caligiuri no friend of Connecticut transpeople

(I originally posted this on my support group's e-mail list, but I also want to post it here for my Connecticut readers who are not members of my support group.)

According to various news reports published late last week, Connecticut State Senator Sam Caligiuri is thinking about running for the US Senate against Senator Chris Dodd in 2010. You can read all about it here.

FYI, Caligiuri has one of the worst voting records in Connecticut when it comes to transgender protection legislation. He is on record for voting against all such legislation whenever he had the opportunity to do so. He is not a friend of the transgendered and I hope you will keep that in mind if you ever have to consider voting for him in the future.