Self-Feminization: Brows

In this post, I continue to write about some of the things I have learned and used to feminize myself.

Uni to Girly

Brows can either make or break your entire look. I had a unibrow when I started to get serious about femulating. I did not have a solid unibrow, but there were enough hairs above the bridge of my nose that it was not very ladylike. So early on, I took a razor to that patch of hair.

In boy mode, nobody noticed that I now had two distinct eyebrows. (Wearing eyeglasses in boy mode also helped to disguise my eyebrow feminization.)

Emboldened, I bought eyebrow tweezers and an eyebrow trimmer. With the tweezers, I attacked the stray hairs and with the trimmer, I shortened any hairs that had grown to unruly lengths. The result was neater and more feminine brows. And in boy mode, nobody noticed.

Further emboldened, I began using the tweezers to thin my brows. I only thinned along the bottoms, never the tops because I had read in a number of places that you should not pluck along the tops of your brows because if you do, the hair will not grow back!

Still nobody noticed, so I kept on thinning and the result was a perfect feminine sweeping curve along the bottom of my brows, while the top was not so perfect.

I was a little frustrated until I visited our public library and took out a book titled Beautiful Brows: The Ultimate Guide to Styling, Shaping, and Maintaining Your Eyebrows by Nancy Parker and Nancy Kalish. The book deflated the advice about not plucking above your eyebrows and said to go ahead and pluck above, as well as below.

Immediately after reading that passage, I dropped the book, went to the bathroom and plucked all the strays above my eyebrows! Now my eyebrows, both tops and bottoms, looked neat and feminine and since then I continued to pluck and thin above and below. (By the way, the hair does indeed grow back above as well as below.)

This is a very tricky business, so take your time and go back and forth between your left and right brows so that they will look alike.

To color and define my brows, I use an Avon eyebrow pencil. Although my natural eyebrow color is light brown, I use a blonde eyebrow pencil because I found that using a brown pencil resulted in a brow that was too dark. Blonde is just right for me, so you too might want to go one shade lighter than your natural brow color.

Using an eyebrow brush, I comb out my brow hairs so they are lined up horizontally and pointing away from my nose.

Next, I sharpen the pencil to a very fine point and draw a line that defines the upper edge of my eyebrow. I start drawing the line above the inner corner of my eye (point A in the accompanying figure), angling upwards to the peak of the arch which is above the outer edge of the pupil of my eye (point B), then drawing the brow out to a point that lines up with my nose and the outer corner of my eye (point C). All the while I draw the line as close as possible to my existing brow hair.

After I define the tops of my eyebrows, I use the pencil to fill in the area below the line where the hair is thin or missing. Then I use the eyebrow brush to brush and even out the color I just applied.

Women generally have higher brow bones than men, resulting in a greater distance between the bottom of the brow and the eyelid. To compensate, use a highlighter to brighten the area under the arch and lift the brow even more.

Any questions? I will try my best to answer them.

Wearing Bebe (Source: Bebe)

Manuel Arte femulates Jane Russell and Frankie Kein femulates Marilyn Monroe in the drag show Faces in Santa Monica, California, 1986 (Source: University of California Calisphere)

SaveSave

Someday Funnies

Wearing Hanes (Source: One Hanes Place)

Femulators arrested during a raid on a house in Los Angeles, November 1927.
(Source: University of California Calisphere)

One Year of Bad News

Trump's War on Transgenders Dept.

45 unconscionable attacks against the LGBTQ community

"GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, today released research on 45 instances where President Donald Trump has selectivity targeted the LGBTQ community during his first year in office.

"Throughout the year, the Trump administration has issued constant attacks on the health and well-being of the LGBTQ community through the creation of one of the most anti-LGBTQ cabinets in recent history, vehement support for religious exemptions that seek to undermine non-discrimination laws and bigoted polices that target the transgender community including a proposed trans military ban."

Read the rest of the story here.

Friday's Brief Femulations

In My Dreams Dept.

Dreamed about my first day at work as a woman. It was an office setting and everyone treated me respectfully.

Last thing I remember was a male co-worker asking me if my voice was the result of a physical problem and me making a mental note to work on my femme voice.

Beyond the Tipping Point Dept.

Juan's blog is now showing the Fall 2018 menswear collection from Palomo Spain. My favorite outfits from the collection are in the two photos below.

Wait 'Til Next Year Dept.

I have been an utter failure at keeping my only New Years resolution, that is, to stop using the F word (and all of its derivations).

Man/Woman at Work Dept.

Except for a few freelance writing jobs, I am pretty much retired and still trying to decide what to do for my encore.

It is not like I am twiddling my thumbs all day long. I am busy at home as Mr. Fix-It and Mrs. Housewife, but I need to get out more, preferably as a woman. Volunteer work is attractive, but it would be nice to bring home a little income, too.

Any ideas?

Wearing Wholesale 7 (Source: Wholesale 7)

Veit Alex, male womenswear model

War on Transgenders Continues

Trump's War on Transgenders continues...

Trump Administration to Shield Workers Who Won’t Treat Transgender Patients

"As part of a proposed rule now under review by the White House, the Trump administration would create a new “division” of the Department of Health and Human Services’ civil-rights office that would enforce protections for health-care workers who refuse to perform abortions or treat transgender patients, Politico reports."

Read the rest of the story here.

Trump Administration Abandons Its Obligations to Trans Students

"Huffington Post reports that it uncovered at least three cases of alleged anti-transgender discrimination that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights dismissed over the past few months. In one case in Texas, a transgender student accused his high school of not allowing him to use the bathroom that corresponds to his gender identity or room with his teammates when they traveled overnight. In response to his complaint, the department’s Office for Civil Rights cited the administration’s rescission of the Obama guidance for its dismissal of the teenager’s complaint."

Read the rest of the story here.

And the beat goes on!

Wearing Olivia Palermo. I love her style — She can dress me when I become rich and famous!

Womanless wedding, circa 1935

My Comic Book Life

My father worked as a printing pressman at Eastern Color Printing, the company that invented the modern comic book.

When I was growing up, the company printed a slew of comic books and the Sunday funnies for about a dozen newspapers in the Northeast.

After work, my father brought home copies of whatever was printed that day.

The comic books were coverless because the glossy covers were printed and stapled to the four-color interior pages at a different plant. Typically, the comic books my father brought home consisted of two sheets of newsprint. Eight pages of the comic book were printed on each side of the two sheets (see photo above of Captain America #101) for a total of 32 pages. The two sheets came off the printing press collated and folded into two-pages flat, ready to be trimmed, covered and bound (stapled) at the other plant. My sister and I quickly learned how to use a table knife to slice open those folded sheets of newsprint so we could read the comic book.

Max Gaines created the modern comic book while working for Eastern Color. About 30 years later, his son, Bill Gaines, co-founded MAD Magazine.

I encountered MAD for the first time when my family piled into the Chevy and drove to Storrs to visit my uncle who was attending UCONN. In his dorm room was the September 1960 issue of MAD, with a cover that suggested that the magazine could be used as a fly swatter.

My 9-year-old mind thought that the idea behind the cover was brilliant and I was hooked. I collected a few back issues that my uncle was ready to discard and I began spending my allowance buying the magazine whenever it appeared on the rack at the Palace News.

(By the way, that trip to UCONN also had a radio angle. In the common area of the dorm building was a radio tuned to the Canadian time signal station, CHU. It piqued my interest that there was a radio station whose "only" purpose was to announce the time every minute.)

Anyway, one day, my father came home from work, handed me a stack of Sunday funny sections and said, "Surprise!"

I was unimpressed. It looked just like the funny sections from the New Haven Register or Hartford Courant that Pop brought home every week. But then I looked closer and realized that this was not your run-of-the-mill Sunday funny section, it was MAD Magazine's Sunday Comic Section! It was the insert for the upcoming issue of The Worst of Mad (#4), one of the annuals that the Usual Gang of Idiots churned out.drew

I assumed, but never could confirm that the Bill Gaines-Max Gaines-Eastern Color connection had something to do with MAD hiring Eastern Color to print the insert. And as it turned out, Eastern Color printed all the subsequent MAD inserts of the four-color newsprint variety including Sing Along With MAD (for More Trash From MAD #4), MAD Protest Signs (for Worst #7) and "A Full-Color 'Pop Art-Op Art' Life-Size Picture of Alfred E. Neuman" (for More Trash #8).

From a very early age, I was fascinated with the product my father brought home. I even tried recreating the four-color printing process by drawing the tiny dots that made up the images in the comic books. I quickly realized that trying to create a comic book by drawing those dots would take forever so I dropped that experiment, but I continued drawing humor in a jugular vein and eventually drew about a dozen issues of my own version of MAD, which I called Crazy.

I can go on and on, so let me know if you want to read more. (I wrote this in response to the positive comments I received regarding Saturday's post about my daily non-femulating life.)

Wearing Self-Portrait (Source: Shopstyle)

Twin Cities' Katie and Hannah

Strike a Pose

How to pose a portrait: 54 creative ideas is an article from Digital Camera Magazine that offers suggestions on how to pose for a portrait.

Below are their suggestions for shooting portraits from high and low camera angles. The article also offers suggestions for full-length portraits, seated portraits and facial expressions.

I know I can certainly add some variety in how I pose for photos and maybe you can use a little variety, too!

Wearing Tory Burch (Source: Tory Burch)

Contestants in the United Way of Scotland County (North Carolina) womanless beauty pageant.

Someday Funnies

Whereas the funnies that usually appear here are parodies that I cook up, today I offer a couple that are genuine femulating-related funnies that were published in the near past.

Wearing Madeleine (Source: Madeleine)

Professional femulators in France, circa 1955

Excuse Me

Excuse me for not posting on a daily basis this week, but life got in the way.

Last Friday, I woke up to 12 inches of new snow on my 120-foot driveway. Not a big deal except that the temperature was hovering around 0 degrees Fahrenheit. So I bundled up and got the job done in less than two hours.

After I got the snowblower and shovels back in the garage, I closed the garage door and (Bang!) the garage door spring broke. It is a two-car wide garage door and weighs so much that it is impossible to raise it without the spring.

My daughter and I managed to raise the door with the assistance of the electric garage door opener so we could get the cars out of the garage, but that was such an intensive two-person operation that we were resigned to not using the garage door until the spring could be replaced. So instead of using the garage door for the majority of our entrances and exits from the house, we had to use the front door.

Saturday was ever colder than Friday and when we returned home after dining with some friends, I snapped the key off in the dead bolt lock when I tried to unlock the front door. We got into the house with a spare key through the back door and I unlocked the dead bolt lock manually from inside. The front door has two locks, so we could still use it the door, but I needed to get the dead bolt lock fixed.

By end of day Saturday, I had three calls into garage door repairmen and one call into a locksmith.

The locksmith showed up early Tuesday morning and spent 45 minutes unsuccessfully trying to remove the broken key from the lock. He figured that it was frozen and suggested that I soak the lock in WD-40, then try to get the key out myself and reassemble the lock. He warned me about being careful if I had to disassemble the lock works in order to get the broken key out because the works might "explode."

Midday Monday, a garage door repairman showed up. He said he had to order a replacement spring and would be back late Tuesday or early Wednesday to install it.

Meanwhile, I had to go out and buy a can of WD-40 because I had used up the last can. About 2 PM, I filled a small cup with WD-40 and began soaking the lock works. At 6 PM, I checked to see how the soaking was going. The lock works still seemed frozen. The broken key did not seem any looser than when I started the soaking.

I figured that the only was to get the key out was to disassemble the works. So I stuck the works in a vise and tried removing the lock works cap with a pair of pliers. It took a few attempts, but I finally got the cap unfrozen. But the key was still not moving, so I slowly removed the cap and the lock works "exploded" with pieces of the works flying all over the garage!

The broken key was now free, but I had to spend the next 90 minutes on my hands and knees in an ice-cold garage gathering up all the pieces of the exploded lock works.

After consulting the Internet, I realized that I could not reassemble the lock works without some sort of jig, so Wednesday morning, I phoned the locksmith and he told me to bring the parts to his shop and he would reassemble the works. I immediately brought the parts to his shop and he reassembled the works. I went home to reassemble the lock in the front door.

Meanwhile, the garage door repairman called and said he would be showing up around noon Wednesday to repair the garage door spring, which he did.

I forgot to mention that our big screen LED TV died a few days earlier!

And so it goes!

Wearing JustFab (Source: JustFab)

Except for the three women in the foreground, all the women in this scene are femulating actors in the 1990 film The Witches. (Thank you, Zoe for this femulation.) 

How to Start

By Paula Gaikowski

As we move into the new year, I remember a resolution I made to write more for Femulate. This also helps justify the luxurious office suite that I occupy here at the sprawling Femulate World Headquarters.

It also compels me to spend less time at the water cooler sharing makeup and fashion tips. Although CEO Stana can be a taskmaster, we keep a close watch on the Dress Barn sales flyers knowing well those days are best for our long lunches.

I am often asked by transgender persons who want to start expressing their femininity, "How do I start?"

Whether you just want to experiment at home or want to go out and about as a woman, being a girl takes work and time and it truly is a lifestyle.

It will take time to find your niche or comfort zone as a woman. It truly is an evolution. It’s important to enjoy the journey, new shoes, a good hair day, perfect eye makeup or your first steps out the door.
I recommend starting with something that interests you, begin small. Maybe you want to get that first wig or start learning makeup skills.

The important part is to start, nothing will happen if you do nothing.

I’ll cover three areas where you can initiate a positive move toward your feminine core.

First is makeup. Back in 2009 I approached the cosmetics counter at Lord and Taylor trembling inside asking for a foundation to provide good coverage. The first woman I spoke with directed me to the NARS counter.

At this point I thought, “Oh no, they are freaking out,” but the young woman I met (Kasey) was polite and helpful. Over the next few months, I would come back to build my needed stock of makeup. Each time, Kasey taught me how to use the cosmetics and also encourage me. We had some in-depth conversations about transgender people and the world. During this time, she would extend the repeated offer of a makeover. I never would have dreamed of going out in public. But over that year I started to get my proverbial transgender wings and started going out regularly.

Kasey worked for NARS and has since moved onto a career in the corporate world. So I became a devoted MAC girl. I cannot recommend them more highly. Other Femulate readers will concur that the policy at MAC is highly inclusive; they have many transgender customers and will treat you with the upmost respect. If you recall, MAC sponsored Caitlyn Jenner’s “Finally Free” lipstick and donated the proceeds to transgender youth.

What you are really looking for as an emerging transgender person is to slowly open yourself up in a positive environment. You will begin to feel good about yourself and in turn, slowly build a collection of makeup and beauty products that will help you with your goals.

The guidance and support you will get from the makeup artists at MAC will surely be worth the added expense of their product.

There is nothing more liberating than telling another woman, "This makeup is for me, I am transgender."

It all flows forward from there.

Next week, we will talk about building a wardrobe.

Wearing Jovani (Source: Edressme)

Jan Cina femulates Madonna on the Czech Republic' version of television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.

Self-Feminization

Recently, I received an e-mail from Miss Z bemoaning the fact that her face is too masculine, so she never presents as a woman in public because she fears being ridiculed as a man in a dress.

Over the years, I have received similar complaints from other readers, for example, Miss K once wrote, "It's easy for you to go out – you are drop-dead gorgeous! But it's not so easy for the rest of us who are not born with gorgeous genes!"

Thank you, but I assure you I was not born with gorgeous genes. In boy mode, no one mistakes me for a woman. Although I don't have a craggy-face like Tommy Lee Jones, I also don't have the beautiful visage of Catherine Zeta-Jones. I just don't slip on a dress and heels and look like Stana – I have to feminize myself before I can approach drop-dead gorgeousness!

In this and near future posts, I plan to write about some of the things I have learned and used to feminize myself.

Day-to-Day Maintenance

I do not present as a female everyday, but I perform maintenance on my body everyday to enhance my female presentation on those days I do.

I shave my face and neck daily with a Philips Norelco rotary electric shaver.

When I am finished with my face and neck, I shave other parts of my body. One day, I do my legs, another day, I do my arms. My breasts, shoulders and back are also part of this daily routine. So over a four- or five-day period, I shave all the parts of my body that may be exposed depending on what I wear as a woman.

Being an Avon lady, I occasionally receive free samples. About 15 years ago, I received a free sample of a product to deal with wrinkles around the eyes. Looking in the mirror at the wrinkles developing around my eyes, I decided to try the free sample.

After a week or so, the wrinkles were less noticeable. After a few weeks, I had to examine my eyes closely to find the wrinkles. So, I was sold on the eye cream and currently use Avon Anew Clinical Eye Lift Pro Dual Eye System every morning.

I also moisturize my face and neck in the morning using Olay Complete All Day Moisturizer. After many, many years of shunning skin care, I began using a moisturizer after my success with eye cream and it made a huge difference. My skin is smoother, more supple, healthier-looking and my makeup goes on easier and looks better.

I also moisturize my feet every morning using Avon Foot Works Intensive Moisture Foot Cream. I began moisturizing my feet about 18 months ago and it has made a big difference. Before I began moisturizing, my feet were drop-dead ugly. There was no confusing my feet for a lady's. Eighteen months later, my feet are actually pretty! My thigh highs and pantyhose slip on and off easily; no longer getting hung up (and running) on a callous or other dry skin anomaly. And my high heels feel more comfortable on my silky, smooth feet.

About six months ago, I received a tube of Avon Foot Works Peppermint Reviving Leg Gel which was bundled with a purchase of the Avon foot cream. Since I was already stripped down to my panties when I moisturize my feet, I decided to try the gel on my legs. The gel's function is to refresh and soothe tired, achy legs with a "cooling gel featuring peppermint oil." I liked the way the gel feels and smells and it feel when I massage the gel into my legs, so it is now a part of my morning routine.

Until last year, I maintained my weight. For about 45 years, I kept my weight within a five-pound range. Whenever it edged up five pounds, I would take measures to bring it back down.

About a year ago, I started a diet. It was simple; nothing drastic. I just cut down on my sugar and bread intake and tried not to eat in between meals and by June, I lost 20 pounds.

I don't have to tell you how that missing 20 pounds improved my female presentation. I dropped two dress sizes, lost my back fat, dropped one shoe size, thinned my face, improved my figure and overall, felt better not to mention, more feminine.

Finally, for what it’s worth, I have never smoked in all my 66 years and I seldom drink alcoholic beverages (I probably average less than one glass of beer per month). I am sure that has contributed to my appearance and enhanced my ability to femulate.

Wearing Catherine Catherine Malandrino (Source: HauteLook)

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis femulating in the 1959 film Some Like It Hot.