T-Bits

T Family Law

Transgender Family Law: A Guide to Effective Advocacy by Jennifer L. Levi and Elizabeth E. Monnin-Browderis is now available in Kindle and Nook electronic format.

I love reading, but books and magazines take up space, so I have gone electronic. I am switching all my magazine subscriptions to electronic format as they come up for renewal and I am getting electronic versions of any new text-centric books I purchase (like Transgender Family Law). For the time-being, I am sticking with print editons of any new graphic-centric books I purchase.

I don't own a Kindle or a Nook, but I do have free Kindle readers installed on my Mac laptop and iPod Touch and they work for me.

T Empress

My friend Jila mentioned to me that she heard that a Roman Emperor was transgender. My first thought was Caligula, but after researching the matter, I discovered that Elagabalus was the Emperor in question.

According to Wikipedia, Elagabalus enhanced his natural good looks by the application of cosmetics. He was described as having been "delighted to be called the mistress, the wife, the queen of Hierocle" and was said to have offered vast sums of money to any physician who could equip him with female genitalia.

T Prom Queen

Connor Ferguson, an 18-year-old male-to-female transgender student at Trenton High School in Trenton, Ontario, Canada, says being named prom queen was the cherry on top of her high school education, according to a report in the The Belleville Intelligencer.

Taming Zipper Teardrop Pull Tabs

Dear Stana,

I certainly could use a technical article on methods of zipping up stubborn and hard-to-reach zipper tabs on my dresses and gowns. I think you posted an article containing some tips and makeshift "zipper helper" devices in the past. However, some of my dressier frocks and gowns have those pretty (but annoyingly useless) tiny tear-shape zipper tabs. I haven't figured out any device that works well on those.

If you have nothing to do today (LOL), maybe you could do your first fashion technical writing on this topic. (Of course, I'm just kidding about you having to work on a holiday -- you do SO MUCH wonderful work for all your readers, that you deserve a day off). Thank You.

Love,

Sheila



Hi Sheila,

My zipper helper appeared in the post titled "A Single Girl's Best Friend."

In that post, I described my homemade zipper helper, which is simply a piece of string and a big safety pin. I attach the safety pin to the zipper pull tab, loop the string through the closed safety pin, and pull the string up to close the zipper."

I recommend using thick string or twine. Thin string or thread may break while zipping up.

Also, pull the zipper up slowly to avoid opening the closed safety pin.

Regarding those tiny teardrop zipper pull tabs, the evening gown I wore back in March had a teardrop pull tab, but I was able to use my homemade zipper helper to zip up my gown.

Since a teardrop pull tab has no hole for attaching the safety pin, I attached the safety pin through one of the two "holes" provided by the swivel points of the pull tab (see the accompanying figure). It worked like a charm.

Love,

Stana


Need advice concerning femulation or other crossdressing-related matters, then e-mail me and I will happily give you my opinion on the matter. My e-mail address is stana-stana at sbcglobal.net.

Someday

Independence Day and the Gender Gap

July 4, 1776

Today celebrates the 236th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence of the 13 North American Colonies from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

The 13 colonies were Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay, Maryland, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. At the time of the signing, Vermont was part of New York and Maine was part of Massachusetts.

Vermont declared its own independence on January 15, 1777 and became The Republic of New Connecticut*. Vermont became the 14th United State in 1791

Maine seceded from Massachusetts in 1820 and became the 23rd United State on March 15, 1820.

* Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned something new today.

Gender Gap

The article "10 College Majors With the Biggest Gender Gap," jives with my 34-year work experience as a technical writer in the electrical engineering and computer science fields where males dominate (91% and 85%, respectively).

I wish there was a need for technical writers in the fashion world!  

Interviewed

The Transgender Education Collaboration interviewed me last week and that interview was posted (here) on their website this morning.

I greatly enjoyed being interviewed and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Dear Stana: How Do You Remove Body Hair?

Dear Stana,

Sorry to bother you, but I forgot the name of the body hair remover that you liked so much. I would appreciate  it very much if you could tell me again. Also, where can you buy it?

Thanks so much and thanks for all you do – we all love your blog – you are a blessing to our community.

Gina

 

Hi Gina,

Thank you for the kind words.

I use Nair or Veet. They both work about the same, but I prefer the product in a container with a pump dispenser rather than a squeeze container.

Using the pump dispenser, I have better control of the amount of product I am dispensing, whereas using the squeeze container, I never know how much product each squeeze will dispense.

Also, when I apply the product to my body, my hands become slippery from handling the product. At that point, it is a lot easier to pump additional product out of a container than it is to squeeze it out of the container.

Nair and Veet are usually sold wherever they sell hair and beauty products, for example, Walmart, Target, CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreen all sell Nair and/or Veet. I often find Nair/Veet at half price or less at Big Lots and Ocean State Job Lots.

Whatever you use, don't use the product on sensitive areas of your body. For me, I avoid my underarms, nipples, and neck (your sensitive areas may be different than mine). The product burns those sensitive areas leaving red welts that are painful to the touch.

Also, don't use Nair or Veet immediately after shaving with a razor on any part of your body, not just the sensitive parts. My skin burned the few times I did that.

Being a woman is hard work!

Stana

 

Need advice concerning femulation or other crossdressing-related matters, then e-mail me and I will happily give you my opinion on the matter. My e-mail address is stana-stana at sbcglobal.net.

Womanless Pick of the Week

This week's pick of womanless events is a 1979 beauty pageant at New Plymouth High School in Plymouth, Indiana. The photo is part of a collection of 43 new yearbook femulation images collected by Starla and uploaded to the the Yearbook Femulations collection on flickr.

Girl Talk

After I ate lunch at work on Friday, I went to the kitchen to get a fresh cup of coffee and I found my best female friend preparing a salad for her lunch.

Two years ago, my friend and I had planned a girls' night out, but she cancelled on me at the last minute. I was very disappointed and I was kind of cool towards her for a couple of weeks. I don't know if she noticed, but after the frigid weather, things returned to normal between us more or less. Less because I stopped sharing all my transgender adventures with her as I had in the past.

I had my iPod Touch in hand when I walked into the kitchen, so I decided I would test the waters. I told her I wanted to show her a recent photo and she seemed very interested.

I showed her the photo I had taken before attending my law school reunion. She thought I looked "stunning" and she asked me to e-mail her the photo, which I  proceeded to do.   

We repaired to her office and indulged in about 10 minutes of girl talk until she had to take a business-related phone call.

I told her all about my reunion. Then we got on the subject of aging and she was shocked when I revealed my age to her. She thought I looked younger than my age and I mentioned how I use moisturizer and eye cream. That led to talking about selling Avon.

Then she asked me if I could have one wish granted to me, would I wish to live as a woman the rest of my life? Absolutely, I told her and I added that I would live 24/7 as a woman now if I could.

Then the phone rang.

I am glad that I tested the waters with her and that she was happy to talk to me woman-to-woman.

Found Danny

Reader FJ saved me the trouble of renting the film, Prêt-à-Porter (Ready to Wear). He rented the film, captured screen shots of the transgender dinner-party scenes, and e-mailed them to me yesterday. Thank you, FJ!

I will share three images with you here today. The first image shows Danny Aiello in a Chanel suit and Teri Garr, who plays Danny’s very supportive spouse, seated at the transgender dinner party during fashion week in Paris.

The other images show other transgender women attending the dinner party. Legend has it that they were played by actual transgender women and not actors.

Where's Danny?

Channel surfing last night, I ended up in the middle of a Robert Altman film, Prêt-à-Porter (Ready to Wear).

I don't care much for Altman's films and this one, about fashion week in Paris in 1994, is unappealing to me, but it has one subplot that I found interesting from a femulating perspective.

Danny Aiello plays a a transgender buyer for Marshall Field's. During fashion week, he attends a transgender dinner-party en femme, which, by the way, was populated by real transwoman and not actors. At the party, a photographer snaps a photo of Danny, who gets very upset about being photographed en femme and chases the photographer. End of sub-plot.

I thought it would be cool to add a photo of Danny en femme to The Femulated collection, so I searched the Internet, but I could not find a single image. Perhaps, like the character he played in Prêt-à-Porter, Danny in real life does not want to be photographed when en femme and he has had all such images removed from the Internet (Editor's Note: That's a joke).

To solve the problem, I will rent the film real soon now and capture some images of Ms. Aiello and the other dinner-party attendees.

Since I don't have a photo of Danny Aiello en femme to show you at this time, I will leave you with another Danny in drag: the world famous professional femulator, Danny La Rue, photographed in 1965.

Reality Show Contestant Now Living As A Woman

According to E! Online, Andy South, the “popular Project Runway contestant is currently living life as a woman after recently updating his Facebook profile to read ‘female’ and announcing that he is going by the name Nong Ariyaphon Southiphong.”

A Short Tall List

Jimmy Stewart and Dorothy Ford,
On Our Merry Way, 1948

The monthly update of the Famous Females of Height List is short this time around with only two new entries:

5'9" – Kerri Kenney-Silver – actress – television The State, Reno 911

6'2" – Dorothy Ford – actress – film Love Laughs at Andy Hardy and television The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet

Mixed Up Confusion

When I was paying for the dress I bought at DressBarn last Monday, the saleswoman asked for my telephone number.

Why?

I assume the store wants to know who is buying what so that they can massage their advertising to fit their customers' buying habits. 

Also, I don't recall the details, but the store has a promotion that gets you a discount if you buy so much stuff. So they need to know how much stuff you buy so they can reward you later.

I am all in favor of discounts, so I gave the saleswoman my telephone number.

She typed it in, the system digested it, gave her feedback, and then she said my wife's name with a little question mark at the end.

"No," I responded.

Then she said my male name with a big question mark at the end.

"Yes, that's me, but I'm not really him today."

She was amused.

Thus, I outed myself, but I had passed until then. So everything was right with the world as far as I was concerned.

Yearbook Finds

Starla has collected another stellar batch of high school yearbook femulations (nearly 125 in number) that I have just added to the yearbook femulations collection on flickr.

By the way, if any readers have a femulation that appeared in a a school yearbook, please pass it along to me and I will add it to the collection. (My school femulation yearbook appearances are here and here.)

Womanless Pick of the Week

This week's pick of womanless events is the March 24 beauty pageant held as a fundraiser for the Band Boosters of Cass High School in White, GA. The Band Boosters enlisted local "businesswomen" to compete in the pageant and despite some facial hair, the "gals" did a credible job of displaying their womanly wiles. As usual, the girl I picked to win (see photo), did not.)

Thank you, Aunty Marlena for sending me the link to this event.

Accessorizing

I mentioned here that I bought a new dress at DressBarn that I was attracted to when I walked into the store and saw it on display on a headless mannequin. (The "headless mannequin" also lacked legs and arms and I have since learned that such a mannequin is known as a "torso mannequin.")

Anyway, I forgot to mention that the mannequin was also wearing a beautiful necklace that perfectly accessorized the dress. On my way home after buying the dress, I regretted that I did not purchase the necklace, too.

Today, I had to go to the grocery store to replenish the food stuff that I eat for lunch at work. My favorite DressBarn is next door to the grocery store, so I stopped in to see if they had the necklace. (This was a different DressBarn than the one where I purchased the dress.)

I perused the jewelry racks three times, but could not find the necklace. I gave up looking and asked a saleswoman if they had the necklace in stock, while showing her a picture of the necklace that I had grabbed from the Internet.

She found it buried behind some other necklaces on the jewelry rack and now I have a nice new necklace to go with my nice new dress. Isn't that nice?

Film and Television

Paul Gross

I promised to build an archive of The Femulated images that appear daily in the left sidebar. To properly archive 739-plus images is a big job, so I am doing it in manageable chunks.

The first chunk, The Femulated of Film and Television, is now available for viewing on flickr.

Each image includes the name of the femulator(s), the name of the film or tv show where they femulated, whether the image is a film or tv show, and the year of the femulation. If information is unknown, then it is labeled "unknown." 

By the way, there is also one image from a radio show in the set.

Monday Woman

Besides experiencing my worst nightmare on Monday, the rest of my day out went well.

My 40-minute drive to Southern Connecticut State University was uneventful. I parked my car and met MaryAnn, who had parked her car a few spots just north of my spot. Inside the classroom building, we met up with Professor Schildroth and Michelle, the third part of our trio of presenters.

After the six students showed up, we watched half-hour of a film titled Switch: A Community in Transition. It was a documentary about a woman, who is half of a lesbian couple and has transitioned to male and how that transition affects her "community." It was very interesting and someday, I would like to see the rest of the film.

Professor Schildroth asked me to show the class my blog, which we projected on the big screen (Coming Soon: Femulate: The Movie!) and to talk about my experience at my law school reunion. I also threw in a very short version of my biography. After I was done, MaryAnn and Michelle gave their biographies and we waited for questions from the students.

The jury is still out on my prediction that the students would be less intimidated asking questions because the class was small. Four students asked questions, two did not, but the quality of the questions was better than usual.

One question was a new one for me: When did I know I was trans?

My answer: Growing up, I knew I was different because my peers and adults made it painfully clear that I was different. Basically, they thought I was a sissy and basically, I was just being myself.

Around puberty, I discovered crossdressing and I found it to be a good match for "myself." After that, I considered myself to be "a plain vanilla crossdresser," which in retrospect, was my way of denying that I was transsexual.

After living as a woman in New York City for four-days in June 2009, it was then that I realized that I am a woman.

After class, Professor Schildroth invited us to lunch at a nearby restaurant. Being noon hour, the place was packed, but a table was cleared for us and we were seated among the throng. I noticed a few people checking us out, but there was nothing untoward. It could have been nothing more than people just checking out other people the way people do. The waitstaff (both male and female) referred to us as "ladies" and so it goes.

I was a bit frustrated ordering my meal. The first two things I ordered were not available, so I settled for soup and salad.

We chatted about the class and read the students' comments. I was mentioned specifically in one comment --- something to the effect that I was not as "open" as MaryAnn and Michelle. Go figure?

I said my goodbyes and departed about 2 PM because I thought I had to be home soon, but when I called home from my car, I discovered that I did not need to be home so soon and had more time to be myself. So I went shopping at a nearby DressBarn.

As I walked into  DressBarn, I noticed a dress hanging on a headless mannequin that I thought would be perfect for me (the dress, not the mannequin). The dress on the mannequin was my size, but I could only find larger sizes on the racks, so I asked a saleswoman to get me the dress off the mannequin. I took it and another dreamy dress to the dressing room.

The dress was a "Draped Brooch Shift" that is "Cinched slightly left of center by a slender brooch, this cap-sleeve shift drapes effortlessly. Fixed side wrap detail with brooch."

It fit like a glove, looked nice on me (IMHO), so I bought it. (That's me wearing it in the photo.)

The other dress was a metallic copper-colored shutter pleat cocktail dress from the 70% off clearance rack. I would have bought it if it fit properly. The first one I tried on was too small; I could not zip it up all the way. The second one I tried on was one size larger, but it was too big. Facing front, it looked very nice, but in profile, there was room for a lot more stomach than I ever wanted to be burdened with, so I gave it up.

After DressBarn, I experienced my worst nightmare, which you can read all about in yesterday's post. As it turned out, I passed that test, but there is no need to be tested like that again!

Fashion Note

Monday was the first time I wore thigh high stockings and I was very happy with this new (for me) hosiery option. They stayed high on my thigh the whole day; there was very little slippage.

I had close encounters with objects that often resulted in pulls and runs in my pantyhose. My Berkshire thigh highs had no problems with those same objects.

The only negative thing about wearing thigh highs is that I was very aware of the silicon band that held them up. The bands were not too tight and did not hurt; nor did they leave a mark on my legs after I removed them. But I could feel them on my thighs the whole time I wore the stockings. I imagine that I will get used to the bands after awhile. It certainly is not a show-stopper and I plan to add more thigh highs to my wardrobe real soon now.

My Worst Nightmare

I was out femme all day Monday. (That’s me in the photo before going out.)

In the morning, I did outreach at a Human Sexuality class at Southern Connecticut State University.

After the class, the professor took us out to dine at a local New Haven eatery.

And after dining, I planned to return home. Before starting the car, I called home and discovered that my presence was not required at home as early as I had previously thought, so I had more time to spend out femme.

I pass a DressBarn on the way home, so I decided to stop and shop.

After shopping at DressBarn, I returned to my car and it won't start! The dashboard lights up, the radio plays, but when I turn the key, all I get is a loud ticking noise.

I have AAA, but I am a little concerned about dealing with AAA out femme.

As I am sitting in my car contemplating my next move and occasionally turning the ignition key to no avail, a small red pickup truck parks next to me just as I am cranking the ignition for the umpteenth time.

Two young fellows get out of the truck. They do not ask me if I needed help. Instead the driver walks to the front of my car and signals to me to pop the hood.

I gladly do so and the two of them poke around the engine compartment, but do not find anything amiss.

I have a set of jumper cables, so we tried jump starting the car, but that does not work.

Since my car has a manual transmission, they suggested rolling the car and popping the clutch to start it. (I had not done that in years and had completely forgotten about that trick.)

So they gave my car a little push. The car started rolling across the parking lot and I am trying to pop the clutch, but I am not getting the job done.

Just as I am about to run out of parking lot, I remember that I have to pop it into second gear, not first gear, and as soon as I did, the car started.

I waved my hand out the window to my two "good Samaritans" and headed straight home with my fingers crossed that nothing else would go wrong with my car.

I made it home without issue. This morning, I popped the clutch again to start the car and drove it to my dealer to get it fixed.

I always worried about having car problems when out femme. I thought it could be the worst thing that could happen. Now I am not so sure.

Maybe it is better to be a woman than a man when car problems strike. Would those two fellows be so quick to come to the rescue of a tall middle-aged guy as they were to come to the rescue of a leggy middle-aged blond?

I don't know and I am not anxious to find out again.

Very Comfortable

Today, I will do outreach at a Human Sexuality class at Southern Connecticut State University.

A few days ago, Leeanne commented, "You must feel very comfortable in your skin to be able to go into the situations you go into Stana."

Yes, I am very comfortable.

I admit that before I take that first step out the door en femme, I am a little hesitant. Part of it is due to fear and part of it is due to awe.

 "Fear" that something may go wrong. (Except for an occasional wardrobe malfunction, nothing has ever gone wrong.)

"Awe" that I am actually going out en femme and functioning as a woman in society.

I hesitate for only a moment or two, then push myself out the door.

As soon as I hear the click of my high heels on the floor, pavement, sidewalk, or wherever I take those first steps, I stop thinking about being en femme because at that point, I am femme.