To the Vain Center (pun intended)

I have been busy going to doctors and dentists lately. No bad news, but it has affected my blogging time resulting in a scarcity of posts.

I am going to have the varicose veins in my left leg removed today. First time I had this done about 25 years ago, I had to go to the hospital where they put me under and surgically stripped the offending veins. 

Today, they will do it in the doctor's office (called a "vein center") by giving me a local, inserting a catheter into the vein and use radio waves to heat it and close it. Then they will remove the bulging veins using tiny stab incisions that usually do not require sutures to heal. The bulging veins are extracted through the incisions. 

I hope I can watch, but I bet they won't let me.

Wearing Cools

David Guapo femulates Rebeca on Spain's version of television's Your Face Sounds Familiar.

Someday Funnies

Wearing Jovani

Sheet music for "The Fashion Girl" sung by professional femulator Tom Martelle

Big Deal

Crossdressing: Erotic Stories Kindle Edition is available today for $1.99 on Amazon.

(Source: Harper's Bazaar)

Female vs. Woman

Must Read Dept.

My BFF, Cyrsti of Cyrsti's Condo fame, took the words right out of my head when she wrote her Saturday post, Female vs Woman.

Poster Girls Dept.

A recent Moda Operandi e-mail advertisement (see above) can be a poster for us gurls on how not to femulate women.

The young 20-something models in the advertisement may be dressed appropriately for a Saturday girls' night out, but not for a lady's day out or even a lady's night out.

Unless you are very gifted in your appearance, dressing in public like the young women in the advertisement will brand you as something or other and neither is flattering. Someone might even call you (heaven forbid) a "transvestite."

Wearing Dress Barn (Source: Dress Barn)

The Three Stooges (Larry, Moe and Shemp) femulate in the 1950 short Self Made Maids.

Sisters Act

In light of the brouhaha over actress Scarlett Johansson portraying/not portraying a transman in a new film, I am repeating what I wrote (with edits) in March 2015.

That is actor Eddie Redmayne in the photo above femulating in the film The Danish Girl in which he plays Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe, a Danish artist who was an early sex reassignment surgery patient.

As in the past, whenever a non-transgender person gets the role of a transgender person, there is a hue and cry from the transgender community complaining that a transgender actor/actress should have gotten the role. And so it goes with the non-trans Redmayne portraying Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe.

I have no complaint about hiring a non-trans person to play a trans role. If I was casting a film, I would want the best actors/actresses to be in my film whether or not their personal life experience matched that of the film’s characters. If there was a match that would be icing on the cake, but if not, that’s where the ability of an actor to play a role takes over.

And as a member of the audience, I want my money’s worth; I want to see the best performances that money can buy up on the big screen, not an amateurish production featuring authentic transpeople or cowboys or cops or snipers. Have you ever sat through a film featuring any of Warhol’s trans trio, Candy, Holly, and Jackie? I rest my case.

My complaint about the casting of transgender roles is using females to play transwomen and vice versa, using males to play transmen. For the sake of authenticity, male actors should play transwomen and female actresses should play transmen.

Who is a more authentic transwoman: the pretty and petite Felicity Huffman in Transamerica or the large of frame, six-foot-one Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent? The audience has to suspend disbelief, i.e., that Huffman is a cisgender woman in order to accept her as a pre-op transsexual, whereas it is easy for the audience to buy into Tambor’s masculine roots.

And in this day and age, during Trump's War on Transgenders, I think we have bigger fish to fry than something as trivial as who portrays who in movie roles.

Wearing Intermix (Source: Intermix)

Taylor Hawkins femulates a flight attendant in The Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" video.

Someday Funnies

Wearing Pretty One (Source: Pretty One)

Lolita

Friday Footings

If the Shoe Fits Dept.

If you are like me and don't feel completely dressed until you slip into a pair of Louboutin or more likely, Payless high heel pumps, then you will appreciate the High Heel Hacks that Rhonda of Rhonda's Escape fame, posted on her blog yesterday.

He's Got Legs Dept.

Summertime and the living is easy, but for years, I refused to wear shorts in boy mode in even the hottest weather because I worried that people might notice my shaved legs. Well, this summer has been one of the hottest in awhile in this neck of the woods... so hot that I took a pair of scissors to an old pair of jeans and made myself a pair of shorts that I have worn on most hot days this summer.

If anyone noticed, they did not say, not even when I accessorized with a pair of nude pumps (only kidding about the pumps).

She's Got Shoes Dept.

I have so many shoes that I forget what I own. So I took photos of every shoe and created a PowerPoint that groups the collection according to style and height. Now when I put together an outfit, I simply view the PowerPoint to choose a shoe instead of trying to find something among the hundred shoe boxes stacked in my closet.

Wearing Hanes (Source: OnesHanesPlace)

Womanless wedding guests, circa 1979.

Where's Billy?

Billy and I were best friends throughout grammar school. I can't remember how we became friends, but we had a lot in common and that is probably what drew us together. We were both Polish, which was a rare commodity in our neighborhood, we both went to the same church (a Polish parish, needless to say), we were both artists, which put us on the outs with the school's "in crowd," and we both were fascinated in the opposite sex. We had crushes on certain girls, but we both were also scared of them and never did anything about our crushes, at least not in grammar school.

Around puberty, maybe in the 7th or 8th grade, I remember Billy hinting that we dress as girls for Halloween. At that time, I knew something was up with me gender-wise, but I didn't know what. The idea of dressing as a girl for Halloween was very attractive, but I was also in public denial about my gender issues and told Billy that I had no interest in his Halloween costume plans.

I don't remember what I wore for a costume that Halloween, but I do recall that I went out with my usual Halloween trick and treat partner in crime, my other best friend, who lived across the street.

In school the next day, Billy mentioned that he did dress as a girl; he trick and treated at my house and was disappointed that I was not home to see him in his costume. Note that Billy never before trick and treated my house, so he made a special effort that night to show me his girl costume.

Around this same time, I remember that one of us decided that we should adopt girl names (why - I don't know) and for days, he addressed me by my girl name, which was "Susan" and I addressed him by his girl name, which I cannot recall now.

As I mentioned above, we were both artists. He was very good at painting and I was a very good at sketching. As an outlet for my budding trans psyche, I spent a lot of my free time back then sketching males wearing female clothing.  One day, Billy mentioned that he had been doing something similar and another day, he showed me some of his sketches. My reaction was to feign disinterest.

But my real reaction was fear. I was in uncharted waters; I did not know what was going on with him (or me). I had enough trouble sorting out what was going on with me without having to deal with what was going on with my best friend, so I basically ignored him and I think that was the beginning of the end of a beautiful friendship. We hung out less during our last days in grammar school and ended up going to different high schools. After a few years, we were both out of each others' lives.

I think Billy was reaching out to me. He probably was just as confused as I was and maybe he thought we would be better able to work things out as a team rather than solo. If that was the case, he was probably correct and I very much regret not reaching out to him and trying to work out together what the heck was going on. And so it goes.

Over the years, I learned through a mutual friend that Billy got married and lives two towns away, but our mutual friend said nothing about anything trans and I certainly did not ask.

But I often think about Billy and wonder if he really was trans (or was it just my 'magination) and if he ever did anything about it. I often hoped that one day he would show up at my support group and we could become best friends again except that this time we would be girlfriends.

(This post originally appeared in September 2008.) 

Wearing Joie (Source: Joie)

Movie poster for the 1967 double feature She Man and Queens At Heart.

Do you remember the first time?

By Starla Renee Trimm

Do you remember the first time you crossdressed? The first time you furtively slipped on some nylons or a dress or a bra or heels?

Oddly enough, I don't.

I feel like I must be the odd gurl out on this. Countless others over the years have described that first time to me. But I think and think and rummage through the cobwebbed corners of my brain and I got nothin'.

I grew up in New Jersey and my family moved to Florida in 1970 when I was 12. And honestly, I cannot recall a single instance of crossdressing before we made the move.

Thought about it, sure. Browsed the Sears catalog looking at the pictures of smartly-attired lady models and wondered what it was like to dress like that, certainly. Watched stylish actresses on TV and fantasized about wearing that dress or having that hairdo, yes… and often.

But I cannot recall ever actually putting on an article of female clothing until we moved to the Sunshine State. Even then, the memory banks are murky. I know that by the time we had been there for several months, I was regularly "borrowing" my mother's things. (And ashamed to admit, shoplifting wigs to wear – a nasty habit that I regret with shame to this day, yet I am also quite glad I was never caught.)

But I have no recollection of when, why and how I first slipped on her nightie or tried on her bras. Not any memory of anything that might have triggered the shift from fantasizing to femulating. Was it something I read or saw on TV? Or maybe just the fact that I was now old enough to be trusted to spend a few hours home alone giving me a relatively safe window to experiment? I have no idea.

The mind can play tricks on us in regards to memories. Things can be erased from conscious memory due to trauma and false memories can seem very real.

An example of the latter that has nothing to do with crossdressing. I still harbor a vivid memory of reading a magazine article about the Kent State shootings while laying on my bed at my grandparents' cottage in Vermont where I spent my summers growing up. But we never returned to Vermont after the move to Florida in the Spring of 1970 and the Kent State tragedy occurred in May of that year. In fact, 1969 was the last summer we spent in Vermont. Yet I have the strong, legitimate memory of watching the first moon landing that July on my grandmother's ancient DuMont black-and-white television complete with the dead fly permanently stuck between the picture tube and its protective cover.

So, it is impossible for me to have been reading about Kent State in Vermont. As much as my intellect accepts that reality, the false memory persists to this day.

As for trauma and lost memories, maybe I did crossdress in New Jersey and was caught. And the experience was traumatic enough for my brain to hit the erase button.

I don't think so. Because I do remember the first time I was caught in Florida and it was very traumatic. But I still have the memory.

So anyway, how about you? Do you remember your first time? Or are your early memories of femulating lost to the ages like a wiped videotape? Are there more of the former or latter among us?

I'll let y'all figure it out. Right now, thinking about all this, my head hurts.

Wearing Trina Turk (Source: Rent the Runway)

Jannik Schümann femulated in the 2015 German film Mein Sohn Helen (My Son Helen).

Kids

I don't know if you noticed, but femulators are getting younger and younger!

High schools used to be the site of womanless beauty pageants for the under-20 crowd. Over time, middle schools joined the competition and now we are seeing grammar school boys donning dresses, heels, wigs and makeup to see who is the prettiest gurl in the first grade!

Then there is the latest craze: pre-teen drag queens who are emulating RuPaul instead of Roy Rogers.

(Yes, I am so jealous of today's youthful gender benders. If I had the opportunities during my youth that young gurls have today, I am sure I would legally be a Miss today.)

Anyway, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I often feature femulations from the international Your Face Sounds Familiar television franchise in the Femulator slot below. Well I recently discovered that in the Philippines, there is a Kids spin-off of Your Face Sounds Familiar and yes, you guessed it, the kids are femulating, too!

A singing trio, the TNT Boys (Keifer Sanchez, Mackie Empuerto and Francis Concepcion), have femulated on the Kids spin-off a few times and they are very good. But they absolutely blew me away with their femulation of my favorite girl group The Supremes.

Now I am really jealous!

Wearing Boston Proper (Source: Boston Proper)

Jimmy Fay (center) femulates a Shirley Temple wannabe in the 1934 film Million Dollar Baby. (Thanks to Chrissy for the heads-up about this film femulation.)