A Leg Up

Unlike the laddies, ladies have many hosiery options (unless of course, you are a laddy who dresses like a lady).

I started femulating when ladies wore stockings with seams that were suspended by garters, typically, the garters built-into the girdles they wore.

That's how I started, but shortly thereafter, my hosiery supplier (Mom) switched to a new type of hosiery: stockings without seams. Since Mom switched, I also switched to stockings without seams, which were still suspended by "my" panty girdle ("my" because my girdle was "borrowed" from Mom).

A few years later, Mom switched again --- to a another new type of hosiery: pantyhose. I switched too and wore pantyhose for over 35 years.

About two years ago, I switched to thigh high stockings with built-in stay-up support. In general, I am very happy with the switch. During warm weather, they are cooler than pantyhose. In all weather, they are sexier than pantyhose and when nature calls, thigh highs are a non-issue unlike pantyhose.

My only complaint with thigh highs is that sometimes there is slippage and I have to find a ladies' room to pull them back up, although I do admit to sneaking a surreptitious thigh high adjustment outside the confines of the ladies' room if the coast is clear.

To prevent slippage, I bought a set of garters. Maybe I am taking coals to Newcastle, but I am willing to try the garters and avoid going back to pantyhose.

I am curious.

What type of hosiery do you girls wear when you are dressing up?

Leave a comment or e-mail me with your answers.

Actor Julian Eltinge (right) femulating for a performance by the Dominos Club,
November 25, 1935, chats with actors Pat Collins (left) and Edgar G. Robinson (center).

 

Wearing T. Tahari (jacket).

Inspirational

While waiting to wait on my wife, I sat down in front of the telly, smoothed out the skirts of my maid's uniform and turned on the set to see what I could see. I came upon Heartbreakers, a film about a mother and daughter team of gold diggers. It is an amusing film and features some delicious outfits worn by the gold diggers, Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt. And Ms. Weaver's rendition of Back in the U.S.S.R. is worth the price of admission.

Sigourney Weaver has always been an inspiration to me because we have some things in common.

She is two years older and two inches shorter than me, and like me, she is not exactly waif-like. Her measurements and mine are exactly the same proportionally when I am girded properly. And although she is a senior citizen like me, she does not dress like a senior citizen, nor look like one.

I know I will never be mistaken for Sigourney Weaver, but she is someone worth femulating for big girls like me.

Professional femulator Michelle DuBarry (left) poses with The Gream Imposters,
one of Toronto's original professional femulator troupes (circa 1970).

 

Wearing Wow Couture.

Mad Drag

This bit appears in the current issue of Mad (#525 - February 2014).  I was  very impressed that the usual gang of idiots knew their drag queens!

Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye in Film

White Christmas, 1954.

High Times, 1960.

On the Double, 1961.

8 Million

Wow!

The blog's hit counter climbed past the 8 million mark Friday evening.

Thank you for visiting and I hope you will keep coming back.

My My My

My Wife

Many of you have passed along positive thoughts concerning my wife’s surgery. I thank you for that and wanted to pass along a progress report. She is doing very well and is transitioning from using a walker to a cane.

My Blog

Nursing her back to health has taken its toll on this blog. I barely manage to publish a new post every day. I probably missed a few days and would have missed more, but the always lovely Paula Gaikowski filled in and provided three posts where there might have been none.

My E-Mail

Responding to e-mails has taken a back seat and I am way behind, but promise to catch up as soon as possible.

My Favorite Womanless Beauty Pageant

In case you don’t read the comments to the posts here, I just wanted to pass along Tampa Sheila’s comment to the recent Miss Eng’g 2013 post in which she explains that you don’t need a Facebook account to view Facebook pages and images.

For example, click on this link to the Miss Eng’g Facebook page and when your browser opens the page, click on the Photos link to access individual photos and albums containing more photos.

Caveat Emptor: There are a LOT of photos on the Miss Eng’g Facebook page, probably numbering in the thousands.

My Sources

Readers occasionally suggest that I indicate the sources of the images I use in the blog.

If I know the source, mousing over the image will reveal the source. If I don’t know the source, “Femulate Archives” will appear as the source. Problem is that I have been collecting these images for nearly 15 years and the collection contains nearly 65,000 items, so please forgive me for not remembering where they all came from.

Actors Peter Capaldi and Craig Ferguson femulating as the Ugly Sisters, December 1981.

Wearing Halston.

My Little Fashionista

My son Cameron found me in the kitchen washing the breakfast dishes and began complaining, "Daddy --- look how Mommy had me dress today!"

I looked up from the sink full of dishes to see how my husband had outfitted our son.

A short-sleeve floral print knit skater dress with elasticized waist adorned his body and white skimmers adorned his feet. White tights encased his legs and his short haircut was brushed forward to give him bangs that were held in place with a pair of white barrettes. A white purse, slung over his shoulder, completed the outfit.

His eyes were lightly made up --- just a touch of liner and mascara and a hint of eyeshadow. Pink lip gloss highlighted his lips and he might have had a light touch of blush, too, but I wasn't sure. Either way, his makeup, as well as his whole presentation was befitting a 12-year-old.

"What's the matter, Cammi? You look very pretty," I replied.

"Thank you, Daddy, but I can't go to school dressed like this," he whined.

"Why not?" I asked.

"The other boys will make fun of me," he replied.

"I don't understand why they would," was my perplexed retort.

"White --- after Labor Day!"  he exclaimed anxiously.

Father and son, circa 1930.

 

Wearing Jump.

Snowed Out

I was disappointed that the weather ruined my plans to attend the local Avon representatives holiday party last night.

The snow stopped falling at 4 PM. I finished removing the snow from my driveway and sidewalks at 5:30 PM. The town removed the snow off the street at 7 PM; black ice was scheduled to begin forming soon at 7:30 PM. The party started at 6:30 PM.

I was surprised that the party was not postponed considering the weather and road conditions, but at 4:30 PM, an e-mail arrived informing me that the party was still on. I imagine that the headcount at the party was lower than usual… at least by one.

I had a cute outfit picked out and ready to wear. I hope I will have another opportunity to wear it out real soon now.

By the way, the photo above was taken exactly one year ago when I was getting ready to go to last year’s Avon rep holiday party.

 

 

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi femulating in the 1949 British film Kind Hearts and Coronets.

 

 

 

Wearing Single Plus.

Miss Eng'g 2013

Miss Engineering 2013 will be selected in the ultimate womanless beauty pageant on December 19 at the College of Engineering, University of Philippines-Diliman. Although the pageant is next Thursday, the Miss Engineering Facebook page already has hundreds of photographs (with more to come) documenting the pageant and its preliminary events.

It is still snowing here as I type this and I have pretty much abandoned any hope of going to the Avon representatives holiday party tonight.

Thank you, Juliet Ventura for alerting me about Miss Eng'g 2013.

 

 

 

Actor Raul Gonzalez femulating in television’s Desplerta America, 2013.

 

 

 

Wearing Diana von Furstenberg.

Avon Reps and Valley Girly Boys

Tuesday evening is the holiday party for the local Avon representatives. I have attended the party in the past and on those occasions, I was the only male Avon rep en femme. Yet, the female Avon reps treated me just like one of the girls and I always had a wonderful time.

This year the party venue is nearby and very convenient, but the weather forecast is not good. The latest from the National Weather Service calls for snow between noon and 7 PM; the party starts at 6:30 PM. Nuts!

I don’t like driving in a snowstorm especially at night. I hope the forecast is wrong.

In case you missed it, I just wanted to let you know that the feminization of males continues. A report released last week by the Acoustical Society of America revealed that "more young men in California rise in pitch at the end of their sentences when talking."

According to BBC, "This process is known as 'uptalk' or 'valleygirl speak' and has in the past been associated with young females, typically from California or Australia. But now a team says that this way of speaking is becoming more frequent among men."  

Thank you, Gwen and Jaye Anne for alerting me to this news.

Japanese femulator Mimo-Momo. 

Wearing Madeleine.

Did You Get My Message?

By Paula Gaikowski

In the transgender community, the use of the terms “pass” or “passing” is controversial.  What’s ironic is that we all use it in one form or another, but camouflage it with politically correct language. What’s even more interesting is if you ever go to Reddit’s  Transpassing or any one of the other related sub Reddits you would discover that the younger members of our community didn’t get the memo and talk about passing all day long.

I prefer to use the phrase “present as a woman."  If I am looking for a comment, I’ll ask how was my presentation.  With all that being said, we all have some very definite opinions about the issue. Before you click the comment link below, let me say a few things first.

What made the subject very clear and even defined for me the why we do this was something my wife said to me a few weeks ago. Having recently traded in her shoulder length hair for a pixie cut, she was still getting comfortable with such short hair. While we were getting ready for a Saturday morning of fellowship and brush-cutting at the church picnic grove, she put on blue jeans and a flannel shirt. I’ll admit discreetly to the 5000 or so readers of Femulate that she did look a bit boyish.

One look in the mirror brought about a shriek. Not expecting this response, I looked over and asked, “What’s the matter, honey?”

“Oh my gosh, I look like a man!” she blustered as she headed for her closet.

After 29 years of marriage, I came back with a practiced response that I learned before my first anniversary, “Sweetheart, you look beautiful.”

As she positioned herself in front of the mirror, this time in a jean skirt and scalloped linen top, she breathed a sigh of relief,  “There, I at least want the people to know that I am a woman!”

Wow, Bam, Bazinga! Yes read it again ladies: “There, I at least want the people to know that I am a woman!”

Transgender women just want the human race to know that we are women!

The hair, the makeup, clothes, lingerie, voice lessons, and of course, shoes are all gestures to the world that we are women. Just like the jean skirt and scalloped top that was nowhere near as practical for clearing brush that morning, they served a vital purpose for my wife; they signaled the world that she was a woman and validated her identity. It brought her appearance more in line with who she felt she was.

Just like the cowboy who wears his hat, jeans and boots in the airport, he is saying to the world, "These clothes reflect who I am, a culture that I belong to, a philosophy that I adhere too, and a vocation that I perform."

The banker, the rocker, and the professor --- they all send a message with their clothes.
That is the reason we do this --- we want people to know who we are. That deep down, under the five o'clock shadow and receding hairline, we all have to some varying extent the hearts and souls of feminine beings.

That’s why we so often ask about passing, presenting or how do I look? It is the reason why in the transgender community, we take more pictures than most tourists. Ever notice that you are the only person at the family reunion that knows exactly how to work the self-timer on the camera! We want acknowledgement, we are sending radio waves out into the Universe and listening, searching, longing to know if we are being heard.

With that in mind, instead of asking “Do I pass?”

Let’s try asking, "Did you get my message?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

Actor Guillaume Gallienne femulates as his mother in the
2013 French film Les Garçons et Guillaume, à-table!

Wearing ECI.

Snowball

In my opinion, as more males dress up as females, it encourages other males who are on the cusp to dress up as females. It is a snowball effect.

In the early 1960s, I was on the cusp. I was a feminine boy, but I had never dressed. Except for comics on television and actors in films, males dressing as females was unheard of in my little world.  Dressing as a female myself never even crossed my mind… until one Halloween.

I recall visiting my aunts' house on Halloween dressed as the Frankenstein Monster. My aunts were all aflutter about a neighborhood boy who had visited them earlier that evening dressed as a girl. He even wore stockings and high heels! Suddenly, dressing as a female myself crossed my mind.

Another Halloween, Billy, my best friend in grammar school urged me to join him trick-or-treating that year. He told me that he dressed as a girl the previous Halloween, planned to dress as a girl again this Halloween and suggested that I dress as a girl, too. I was intrigued, but as feminine as I was, I was not ready to dress as a female because I feared what people would think if I did dress up. (By the way, after adding a lot of twos and twos together, I am certain that Billy was transgender.)

About this time, I was exposed to female impersonators.

My father bought the New York Daily News every day and I noticed that at the end of the week, probably in the Thursday or Friday edition of the News, there would be a thumbnail-sized ad in the back pages of the paper that caught my eye. The ad always consisted of a photo of a gorgeous showgirl that was captioned "Who's No Lady?"

The gorgeous showgirl was no lady, but a female impersonator and the ad was for the 82 Club in New York City, a nightclub that featured female impersonators. I was amazed that males could look like the showgirls featured in those ads. I was so fascinated with the transformation that I began cutting out the ads from the newspaper and collecting them with a paperclip.

Then home alone one day, I started on a voyage that has never ended. I went to my parents' bedroom, found a pair of my my mother's nylon stockings and tried them on. This was so long ago that the stockings had seams (all stockings had seams back then) and my legs were still hairless.

After I slipped on the stockings, I opened my mother's closet to see how my legs looked in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door. My legs still looked like my own legs except now they were covered by nylon.

Then it occurred to me that my mother's shoe collection was at my disposal inside the closet. I slipped on a pair of her high heel pumps and examined myself in the mirror again. My legs were no  longer boys'  legs encased in nylon; they had been transformed into a pair of shapely legs that any woman would die for!

After that eye-opener, I experimented with my mother's girdles, bras, dresses, hats, gloves, lipstick, rouge, etc. and got caught up in a snowball that has never stopped growing.

 

 

 

A postcard depicting the professional femulators of
New York City’s 82 Club (also known as “Club 82”), circa 1965.

 

 

 

Wearing Costa Blanca (skirt).