Happy Thanksgiving

Dolly Parton leading the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2007.

It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen. – Dolly Parton

My feelings exactly. – Staci Lana

my reputation preceded me

Last week, I ordered a pair of shoes from Payless ShoeSource.

Via UPS, I tracked my shoes' progress cross-country to my local Payless store and they arrived midday yesterday. I planned to pick up my shoes today during the lunch hour.

At a quarter past high noon, I drove to the store, parked the car, and walked inside. A woman was at the check-out desk paying for two pairs of shoes. As I waited, I jealously admired her black patent high heel pump purchase in size 8.

When she was done, I approached the check-out desk and the sales rep looked at me and spoke my male name while reaching under the desk to fetch my shoes. I was in boy mode, so using my male name was appropriate, but how did she know I was the person collecting the online shoe order?

I have seen that sales rep in the store a number of times. I believe I purchased women's shoes from her while I was in boy mode on at least one occasion, so maybe she remembered me when she saw my name on the order.

I imagine I am memorable; how many males come into the store, admit they "do drag," and proceed to try on all the woman's shoes in size 11? Not many, I imagine.

The store is on the way to university where I will be doing outreach on Tuesday, so if I have time, maybe I will stop in and let her see how I look wearing the shoes en femme.

By the way, the shoes are very nice and very comfortable. I tried them on when I arrived home and wore them for about a half hour without any foot issues.

younger eyes

I am an Avon lady, so I am very familiar with their products and use some of them regularly.

Avon has just introduced a new product to correct crow’s feet. Their product blurb reads:

The first 2-in-1 treatment to resurface & visibly fill crow's feet… at home. Professional crow’s feet laser treatments can be painful and costly (up to $2000 per treatment). ANEW CLINICAL Crow’s Feet Corrector is a specialized eye treatment system uniquely formulated to smooth out and fill in lines around the delicate eye area — no doctors, no lasers. IN JUST 3 DAYS crow's feet lines look plumped out and leveled. OVER TIME 100% of women showed a reduction in the length, depth and number of crow's feet wrinkles.

Girls my age have crow’s feet, so I was very interested and ordered the product for myself.

After using the crow’s feet corrector for less than two weeks, I have noticed an improvement. My crow’s feet were not that bad, so I did not notice much of a difference in that area, but I did notice a big improvement regarding the wrinkles under my eyes. The corrector removed all the wrinkles and now I have smooth skin under my eyes. So, I can definitely recommend this product with one caveat.

The resurfacer applicator (step 1 of the 2-step process) can clog. If you squeeze too hard trying to unclog the applicator, you may release more of the product than you can use at one time (like I did). To work around this problem, run the applicator under hot water to unclog the clog.

the challenge

I love Thanksgiving for all the following reasons:

• A guaranteed four-day weekend every year
  
• The food
  
• Big balloons bumping down Broadway
  
• The food
  
• The Rockettes*
  
• The food
  
• Sleeping in late on Black Friday
  
• The leftovers
  
• Did I mention the food?

That being said,  I lost ten pounds since mid-September and I want to keep it off, so Thanksgiving will be a challenge for me. Wish me luck!

* Going to New York City the past two years to see Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in person, I sadly discovered that The Radio City Rockettes are not in the parade! They only appear at the end of the parade in front of Macy’s storefront for the television audience.

thanks

We celebrate Thanksgiving Day on Thursday.

"Traditionally, it is a time to give thanks for the harvest and express gratitude in general," according to Wikipedia.

No harvest here, so I guess I express “gratitude in general.”

Mother and Father are deceased, but I know that they are around in a spirit-in-the-sky kind of way, so I want to thank them for raising a beautiful daughter and not interfering with my feminine ways when I was growing up.

Maybe they could have been a little more encouraging by buying me some dresses to wear around the house (so I wouldn’t have to borrow my sister’s) and buying me some dolls of my very own (so I wouldn’t have to borrow my sister’s). It probably would have made my sister happy, too; I wouldn’t be borrowing her stuff and she would have had a sister to play with.

On the other hand, it could have been a lot worse and they could have forced me to be masculine!

So, thank you Mom and Pop for letting me be me.

600 K and counting

Yay... the Femulate hit counter passed the 600,000 mark today!

Thank you all for visiting my blog.

kismet

(updated below)

I like the sweater dress. They cling to my curves and look good on me, so I am always on the outlook for a new sweater dress to add to my wardrobe.

The front page of Kohl's advertisement in today's newspaper features a cute sweater dress, which reminded me that I have $20 credit at Kohl's and a $10 off coupon.

Kismet!

I will definitely visit Kohl's later this week.

Update:

On the day before Thanksgiving, I went to the local Kohl's store and could not find the sweater dresses.

C'est la vie.

transgender awareness: celebrate the living

Helen Boyd celebrates the living transgenders in her blog today.

these days

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. Honor the dead, who have gone before us struggling to find a place in society as a trans-person. But do not forget to celebrate the living, who continue to fight the good fight.

Thursday, I will not be going to NYC to view the Thanksgiving day parade. I went two years ago and it was great, so I went again last year, and it was not as great.

I will probably go again, maybe next year or maybe next next year, but this year, I will watch it on television.

Anyway, in honor of the Thanksgiving day parade, my "Femulate Her" models for the next week will be exclusively from Macy's, the folks responsible for the parade.

Tuesday after Thanksgiving (December 1) is my next day out en femme.

I plan to be dressed to kill in time to be at the mall when it opens to shop for a new winter coat and whatever else strikes my fancy.

After shopping, I will drive to New Haven to do outreach at a pair of human sexuality classes at the state university. One class begins during the noon hour and the other class begins in the mid-afternoon, so during the break, I will have a late light lunch at the student center and chat with the professor and other outreach presenters.

I enjoy doing outreach. Typically, there are three or four other presenters: a mixed bag of post-op, pre-op, no-op, male-to-female or female-to-male transsexuals. We each spend five to ten minutes telling the class who we are (our mini-biographies), then the class asks questions.

I have been doing outreach for 3-1/2 years, so many of the questions I encounter are questions I have heard before, but there are always a few questions that are unique and sometimes so unexpected that they force me to think hard about my answer. Those questions are worth the price of admission.

After outreach, I may call it a day or I may have an early dinner if any of the other presenters are interested in dining with me.

Staci buys new shoes

I needed a pair of brown shoes to go with some earth tone dresses I bought recently.

I checked a few online shoe stores, but nothing caught my eye until I visited Payless ShoeSource and perused their new arrivals. There I found the pictured slingback platform shoe.

Its description reads, “Show off your wild side with this exotic slingback. It features a snake-print patent upper, pretty peep toe, adjustable slingback for a good fit, a padded insole for comfort and a sultry 4" wrapped heel with 1/2" platform. Manmade materials.”

They had my size in stock, so I ordered a pair for $24.99 with free shipping to my local Payless brick and mortar store.

Saturday night photos and Windows Live Writer

CDJanie started using Windows Live Writer to compose posts on her blog.

I was impressed with its image-handling capabilities, so I could not resist trying out the software myself. Downloaded, installed, up and running, I am using Windows Live Writer to compose this post.

To test out its image handling prowess, I have inserted and manipulated two more photos of me from Saturday night.

The software offers some cool imaging options. So I added drop shadows and tilted the photos. That was easy!

Why Men Are Becoming More Like Women

Marcus Buckingham writes in The Huffington Post today:

In its recent special on the State of Women, Time magazine announced that the gender wars were over and declared a tie. "It's no longer a man's world," Time concluded. "Nor is it a woman's nation. It's a cooperative, with bylaws under constant negotiation, and expectations that profits be equally shared."

I'm not so sure. In a war, no matter the outcome of a certain skirmish or battle, the winner is the party whose attitudes, behaviors and preoccupations come to dominate the postwar landscape. By this measure, the outcome of the gender wars, if wars they were, is clear: women won.

Read the rest of the story here.

femulating in the shoe department

Femulators tend to have bigger feet than the females they are femulating. Those of us in double-digit women's sizes discover quickly that the selection of shoes is limited.

Recently, I checked every store in a local mall and only found two stores that carried women's shoes in sizes larger than 10: Payless and Sears.

I had better luck online and here are the stores I found that have larger sizes in women's shoes:

BarefootTess.com: up to size 12 15

DesignerShoes.com: up to size 15

dreamshoes: up to size 16

DSW Shoe Warehouse: their search engine goes up to size 15, but it found no women's shoes in sizes 15 or 14 and only sneakers in size 13. The selection started improving at size 12 and smaller.

Endless: up to size 16

Gwyneth Shoes: up to size 15

outletbuy.com: up to size 17.5

Payless ShoeSource: up to size 13; I have bought a lot of shoes from Payless (online and in store) and some of my purchases are the most comfortable shoes I own.

Zappos: up to size 16; I have made two purchases from Zappos and have no complaints. They are fast and they pick up the tab for shipping in both directions!

(Thank you Paula for a correction and an addition.)

Candy... not so dandy?

Candy is a new fashion magazine "completely dedicated to celebrating transvestism, transexuality, cross dressing and androgyny, in all its manifestations."

The first issue is a limited edition print run of 1000 copies, so I doubt if I will have an opportunity to see the magazine, but here is the contents of its first issue (the Fall/Winter 2009/2010 issue):

"Candy Darling" by Kimball Hastings and Bruce Weber
"Lypsinka, Andre J and Joey Arias" by Bruce Weber
"Smart Style" by Tim Walker
"Tribute to Nico" by Benjamin Alexander Huseby
"Bianca Exotica" by Marcelo Krasilcic and Antonio Frajado
"Rodarte" by David Armstrong
"La Crawford" by Popy Blasco and Daniel Riera
"Kim Ann Foxmann" by Silvia Prada and Daniel Riera
"Casa Susanna" by Dean Mayo Davies
"Tribute to Casa Susanna" by Brett Lloyd and Kim Jones
"Johnny Depp style" by Kira Bunse and Jos van Heel
"Angel Marlowe" by Ariadna Pedret and Terry Richardson
"Christian Lacroix" by Karim Sadli and Robbie Spencer

It's just a list of the contents, so it is hard to tell what the list really represents, but the list itself does not seem very exciting or groundbreaking. Candy Darling, Nico, Casa Susanna? Yes, those are trans fashion icons, but they are ancient history.

And what's with the limited 1000 copy print run?

And worse, what's with the biannual publication schedule?

Nice cover, but I just dunno if this magazine will be successful.

celebrate the living

This is Transgender Awareness Week.

Except for a transgender day of remembrance gathering in Hartford, I am not aware of any other local transgender awareness events. Circumstances at work prevent me from attending that gathering, so what can I do?

Maybe I did my part on Saturday night when I attended a fund raiser en femme. I encountered a lot of civilians at the Hartford Hilton and I am sure some/most/all of them were aware that I was trans-something or other. I hope I left them with a favorable impression.

In my opinion, I don't think that day of remembrance gatherings do much good promoting awareness of the trans-community. I am all in favor of honoring those who were killed because they did not conform to society's expectations gender-wise, but these gatherings get little or no publicity outside the GLBT community. And if any these gatherings do get publicity beyond the GLBT community, the general public does not care much because they perceive it as just another death of a social misfit.

To better achieve transgender awareness, we should celebrate the living. The public would be more impressed with stories about living trans-people and their contributions to society. Being a dead trans-person is not very interesting, but being a living trans-person and all that entails is very interesting (I can attest to that).

Our stories can enlighten the general public and make them aware that we are out there everywhere everyday trying to live our lives day-to-day just like they try to do.

my dream log

I have been documenting all my trans-related dreams here and this is a new entry.

Sunday morning, I dreamed I came home from work and looked in the mirror to discover that there were very obvious traces of makeup on my face (smudged red lipstick and black eye makeup). I assume that the makeup was from an outing en femme the day before.

That is all I remember.

last night

I am not in any pain, but I can feel my calf muscles when I walk today, which is a pleasant reminder that I danced the night away in four-inch heels.

My feet feel fine, but it probably would have been different if I had not made a fashion adjustment before leaving to go out last night to attend One Big Event, the annual fund-raiser for the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective.

I originally planned to wear a pair of strappy sandals. My toes suffered dearly the one time I wore them out a few years ago, so I stretched the toe straps all week long. It did not help.

After wearing them for a half hour before departing last night, my toes were hurting. I took the sandals off and a purple welt was developing near the base of my big toe on my right foot, so I decided to find a different pair of shoes to wear.

I chose my new sling-back open-toe black patent pumps with a four-inch heel that I bought at Payless last month and it was a wise choice. They were comfortable the entire evening and they were nice looking, too.

(The photo above shows me before and after the fashion adjustment.)

I arrived at the Hartford Hilton at 6PM, found the banquet hall and checked in. There were about 300 people in attendance. Males dominated the attendees at about a 5 to 1 ratio. There were about ten trans girls in attendance and most of us sat at the same table with our SOs and allies.

Everyone was dressed to kill. Some women wore evening gowns, but the majority wore dresses in various styles, so I did not feel at all out of place in my cocktail dress.

Except for my trans friends and the couple whose wedding I attended in September, I knew no one else in attendance, so I mingled with the people I knew and people-watched the people I did not know.

I noticed that I was the object of others who were people-watching; that could be a good thing or a bad thing. No one laughed at me or gave me a dirty look, so maybe it was mostly a good thing.

Robin, who convinced me to attend the event, took the nice photo (right) of me seated at our table, where we had salad, a chicken dinner, and dessert. It was the first time I ever had a cupcake for dessert at this sort of event; it was very tasty.

After dining, there was an auction (to which I paid no attention), a comedian, who was amusing, but not laugh-out-loud funny (in my opinion), and then the music began with a great live band. I danced about 1 out of 3 songs, not because I did not want to dance, but because I lacked a partner. Near the end, I just danced with a group of trans girls and had a great time.

During one dance, the event photographer made a special effort to shoot photos of me dancing. I will have to watch the Health Collective's web site for photos.

I had a wonderful time last night and felt very pleased with myself. Did I forget to mention that when I got on the scale yesterday morning, I discovered that I had lost ten pounds during the past two months? I was very pleased indeed.

tonight

I am all dolled up and ready to attend a semi-formal/formal tonight.

The advertisement for the event reads "Formal Attire Encouraged," while a past attendee informed me that it is really a "semi-formal" event, yet all the photos I've seen of the event show women in long formal gowns.

No matter, I am wearing a darling, knee-length sleeveless black A-line cocktail dress with goldtone beading along its wide neckline. Black strappy sandals with 4-inch stiletto heels adorn my feet, a gold bracelet graces my wrist, and gold chandelier earrings hang from my earlobes. A gold sequins purse and a black sheer scarf with gold decor complete my ensemble.

The majority of attendees will be civilians with only a handful of trans-people, so I am looking forward to another new experience en femme.

I promise a full report and photos soon.

vintage femulators

As a child of the 1950s, female fashions of the late '50s and early '60s left a big impression on my developing psyche. As a result, today I favor fashions that recall the styles of that era. I actually own some vintage clothing and have worn some of those items out en femme.

In addition to wearing retro and vintage clothing, I also like to view images of how femulators of that era dressed. The book Casa Susanna is a favorite source for viewing such images.

The book contains a collection of snapshots (like the one to the right) taken during the late '50s and early '60s at a safe house in upstate New York, where femulators met to dress and socialize en femme. Images from Casa Susanna appear on the Internet; a quick Google search will reveal a representative selection of those images.

Another source of images of femulators from that bygone era are periodicals. I have seen sample pages from a variety of femulator magazines on the Internet, but I do not own any because they are not easy to the find and are too pricey when I find them.

However, a publisher has recently been "reprinting" vintage periodicals and books from that era in Adobe .pdf format including long gone back issues of Female Mimics at prices that are a bargain when compared to the prices of vintage copies.

I have purchased all of their Female Mimics offerings and I am very pleased with the purchases. And making a purchase could not be easier: you order online, pay online, and a few minutes later, you download your purchase.

So, you go retro, girl!

my take on the poll results

Again, I thank you all 642 of you who responded to my Who Are You poll.

The Results

Most of you (61%) identified as crossdresser; male-to-female transperson followed at 34%, then came transvestite (23%), transgender (22%), and the relatively new term, femulator (19%).

Thirteen (2%) identified as gender performers with 0.9% in the drag performer category and 1% in the impersonator category.

Ninety-five (15%)identified as transsexual and that broke down to 7% in the pre-op category, 7% in the no-op category, and 0.7% in the post-op category.

Only one person identified as a female-to-male transperson.

Ten percent identified as admirer, 6% as just interested, 5% as just curious, and 2% as other.

One percent identified as being related to a trans-person with 0.6% identifying as a significant other and 0.6% identifying as a other relative (not-SO) of trans-person.

For the full results, go here.

My Comments

There is probably a lot of overlapping between categories, for example, a no-op transexual may also identify as transgender and male-to-female trans-person, etc. Despite the potential for overlapping, the poll results still are valuable.

Surprises

Despite the rumors of the demise of the term transvestite, 23% still identify as such.

The number of admirers, just interested, and just curious (23%) responding to the poll was a little surprising. I am not sure how I intended to differentiate just interested and just curious; it seemed to make sense at the time I composed the poll, but that sense escapes me now.

I was very surprised by the number (19%) who identify as femulator, which is a relatively new term invented here. Your acceptance of that term warms my heart.

The number of relatives of trans-persons responding to the poll (only 1%): I thought/hoped that more relatives came here to be informed about the trans-person in their life, but I guess not.

No Surprises

The dearth of genetic women, female-to-male trans-persons, and post-op transexuals responding to the poll: I just don't cater to those groups.

Conclusions

The poll affirms who reads Femulate and I promise to continue to cater to that audience.

By the way, I welcome your comments on the poll especially if you see something I missed. My head is full of cobwebs this morning after surviving a nasty lay-off at work yesterday, so my thinking is not as acute or cute as usual.