Someday Funnies: The Original Drag Race

The Original Drag Race
Circa 1962
When “femulators” were called “transvestites”

Wearing Venus

Joanne Askew after a fabulous makeover at Arpi‘s Salon on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Friday Femulations: Update

Regarding today’s Friday Femulations post, Fiona commented, “Love the blue, both the color and the cut. You have the figure of a much younger woman. One point - shoes are part of the outfit, and we do not see them...”

So as not to disappoint, here are photos with shoes (Payless Christian Siriano Habit nude pumps).

Friday Femulations

I had a Zoom meeting en femme on Tuesday, so before the meeting, I had an opportunity to model the two dresses I recently Christmas-gifted myself from Venus.

The pleated turtleneck sweater dress is perfect for this time of year in frigid New England and it fits me like a glove. I like it so much that I have the same dress in black, too.

In the past, I avoided turtlenecks because it was difficult to put one on without smudging your makeup. 

One solution is to get dressed first and then do your makeup with a towel or some such over your shoulders to prevent makeup crumbs from messing up your clothing. I tried that once and it worked, but keeping the towel in place while applying makeup was a pain. 

Another solution, which I now use, is to put a plastic bag over your head after applying your makeup and slip your bagged head into the turtleneck. Works like a charm.

The animal print ruched dress is very sexy and shows off all my curves. It is also mid-thigh short, but short hemlines have never stopped me before! I will wear it to the next cocktail party I’m invited to.

And, yes, I am wearing a new hairdo: Maura from Paula Young. 

And, yes, I know it is an inexpensive wig, which runs counter to my recommendation not to go cheap when buying a wig. It was a spur-of-the-moment purchase – what can I say?

Speaking of wigs... 

I was watching Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC yesterday and fell in love with her new hairdo. And I wondered if I could find a wig like her new do. 

After a little Googling, I found a Raquel Welch wig (Upstage) that is a reasonable facsimile of Andrea’s hairdo (see below). Upstage is available in a large cap size, which makes it even more attractive, but I am a little hesitant about making the purchase because it is expensive, but that has never stopped me before! 

And so it goes.

Wearing Bebe

Helene Tagada, a Femulate reader from France

Someday Funnies

Wearing Nine West

Rachel McNeill in Richmond, Virginia, at the “Miss Fisher Con”  (a 1920s cos-play experience for those of us who love Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries on Acorn and PBS), where her and her wife spent three days. Rachel has several 1920s outfits. This one came from Unique Vintage, including the shoes. The cloche-style hat came from Boston Millenary.

Be a Normal Man

“Be a Normal Man” is the subject of a spam e-mail I received yesterday. So, following the advice of that e-mail, I went to Home Depot to do some shopping like a “normal man.”

To my astonishment, there were more women shopping at Home Depot than men. The majority of the Home Depot “associates” were women, too.

I felt a little out of place just like when I go shopping for girly things in a girly store while dressed in boy mode. It felt like every woman in Home Depot was watching me to see what girly product I would fondle. I could read their minds, “What is HE going to do with that Torx screwdriver?”

I was so paranoid that I used the automated self-check-out instead of going to a cashier (who were all women) to avoid the smirks and knowing looks that I was bound to receive while making my girly purchase.

Next time I shop at Home Depot, I will be sure to wear a dress, wig, makeup and heels so I won’t feel out of place.

Anne Hathaway

Diana Hunt is a native of Washington, D.C., but now lives in Rome, Italy, with a wife, who she married twice on the same day – in the morning as a woman and a man, and later in the day as two women. Click here to visit Diana’s Pinterest page.

Someday Funnies: Modern Marriage

Wearing Bebe

The always lovely Janet Mills

All of Me

I appreciate all the thoughtful comments that you readers sent responding to my Unfathomable post on Thursday. They gave me a lot to think about.

If you have been following the blog for awhile, you may recall that my many Halloween workdays en femme outed myself to my co-workers. At the time, I was clueless about my self-outing, although I assumed that some of my co-workers figured me to be trans something or other. Yet, no one ever questioned me about it. It was just common knowledge that I crossdressed (convincingly) on Halloween and whatever will be, will be.

After I retired, I was invited back for the company Christmas party. When I showed up en femme, no one blinked twice and m co-workers treated me as they had always treated me because no matter how I dressed, I was the same person.

Dressing en femme always was a better fit. My speech and mannerisms were always decidedly feminine (without even trying). My thoughts were usually on the feminine side of the street and I outright rejected things I found ill-fitting or downright appalling on the masculine side of the street.

I always felt more comfortable socializing with women. Although, I also socialized with men, and have had many male friends over the years, I always hesitated socializing with males because in the past, males abused and bullied me due to my feminine nature. (With friends like that, who needs... ?)

And there were too many female hormones and the resulting gynecomastia, but I was never tested for either, so who knows? But there is no question that I have always had female-like breasts (just more ammo for the macho mob). 

Finally, regarding sexy time, I was attracted to women, never men (although many men found the en femme me attracted).

So, what does that make me?

A woman, transvestite, female impersonator, transsexual, lady, femulator, girly man, crossdresser, etc.

Labels be damned. I am who I am, that is, uniquely me (just as you are uniquely you).

And so it goes.

Wearing Venus

Virginia, wearing a vintage dress, wrote, “ Congratulations to you who enchants my reading every day with your duper blog for the morale of femulators like mw, who don’t dare to go out in the street. 

Someday Funnies

Wearing StyleWe

Donna Anne viewing photos of herself trying on dresses at Dress Barn a few years ago.

Unfathomable

“I find your approach to trans and even cross-dressing completely unfathomable (you have always really been a woman while the women in your ‘funnies’ are really boys)”

The above comment came my way last week and I asked the commenter to expound on those words.

“In Mother Night Vonnegut notes that ‘You are who you pretend to be, so be very careful about who you pretend to be.’

“One problem with the classic Virginia Prince/FPE/SSS definition of crossdresser is that it demands a kind of schizophrenic performance, being both ‘woman’ and ‘heterosexual male’ at the same time, boundaries enforced by the consensus of the group which says that slipping too far into queer is betraying truth and right.

“When you have Funnies that are based on the joke that one of the women is ‘really’ a boy, you highlight that kind of conflict in policing ourselves intended to enforce social binaries and deny any possibility of transformation. Are we our performance or is that too radical an idea, one that might allow boundary slip and allow us to let go of status and privilege.

“I understand how you feel a need to hold onto your history, onto assumptions placed on your biology, because letting those defences slip feels scary and radical.

“But as Ms. Finney Boylan notes, if trans is just regular on Jeopardy is it really radical anymore? Or is it just scary to those who feel a need to cling to some kind of enforced separation?

“Your own long held and deep trans nature is obvious. So is your need to hang onto habitual handles of self-policing.  

“It’s up to you to find your own balance.

“Just one more point.

“No matter how liminal April Ashley knew herself to be, knowing her birth sex and biology, knowing that she passed between worlds, I bet in her many decades of life she never felt the urge to announce ‘But I'm a boy!’

“Thinking is the only way I have found to move beyond culturally implanted expectations, assumptions and habits.”

So the question for me is: Am I a woman or a female impersonator?

Wearing New York & Company

Andee attending her local support group's holiday party.

The Reality of Dreams

Coincidently, the night before Lisa sent me the following article, I dreamed that I was searching desperately for a red bra. (Why? I don’t know.) I woke up after going through my mother’s bras and coming up empty-handed! Go figure. (By the way, I seldom remember my dreams.)

By Lisa Phelps

When you dream, what do you dream about?

I asked Stana that question back in February. If she doesn’t mind me saying so, she mentioned that now she is typically a woman in her dreams, although that was not always the case. My friend Jocelyn also touched on the question in a recent post on Kandi’s Land.

I had a dream on December 22nd that had me scratching my head at first. In this dream I am with a teenager girl in a small chapel – a place of contemplation. I am definitely male and she is definitely young. She is thin and doesn’t yet have her “womanly” figure, but she has beautiful long blond hair and delicate, porcelain features. It is clear that she will one day be beautiful. 

We sit on a small love seat and I put my arm around her. There are a few other people in the room and they are saying to me, “You know she is only 17 and you are nearly 25, so she is too young for you.” In my dream, I think to myself, “It is only an eight year difference, but you are probably right. She is too young for me.”

When I awoke, I was perplexed. Why would I be so obviously a male in my dream, when I clearly feel feminine far more than masculine these days? Why wasn’t I the girl? Here’s where my dream interpretations took me. 

Before going to bed, I had been thinking about a young lady of about 14 I had seen at church during Advent. She wore a black sparkly short skirt with a white fluffy sweater over it. Her long, blond hair cascaded down her back. I was envious of her because she was so lovely, she was being kind to her younger sister and she seemed to be part of a beautiful family with several girls in it. As I drifted off to sleep, I was thinking that I wanted to have a dream that I was her, so that I could enjoy “her life” (vicariously). 

The other piece of the puzzle is my age in the dream (25). Twenty-five was the adult male me because I reached my adulthood living as a male. But I think it is the dialog which holds the key to interpreting this dream. Those around me, as well as me (the male in the story), were saying she is too young for you. Therefore, I believe that “she” was a me that I could never be – my subconscious brain was saying that I could never go back and be a young woman like the young woman I saw in church. I can’t go back in time and live my life as a cisgender female teenager. Lest you think that idea causes me distress, I must say that it does not because despite the fact that I identified with females as a teenager, I lived a very full life as a male teenager.

Other dreams come to mind that relate to my dysphoria that you may find interesting.

A couple of months ago, I began discussions with my wife about taking female hormones in a small dose to help alleviate my dysphoria. That discussion induced a very interesting dream involving a train. I am standing on a raised bridge in Japan waiting for a train with my wife and a group of people. There is no railing on the raised bridge and I am distracted by a train official who is walking too close to the edge. 

When I look up again, I realize that the group is gone – apparently the train was ready to depart and they have left on it. On the platform below I see a train looking like it is about to depart. As I sprint toward it, I see that the doors are closing and I won’t make it. Undeterred, I notice a bench by the side of one of the carriages that has an open carriage window and decide that I will use it to catch my train. In an incredible, athletic (only to be attempted in a dream!) move, I vault off the bench like a spear, right through the open window. I pull myself together on the floor and realize that I am in the First Class section. I go to the Second Class car to find my wife, but none of my group can be found. I awoke very distressed that I had left my wife behind. I don’t think you need me to interpret that dream!

Back in the summer, as I contemplated the idea of taking hormones, I had a dream that also took place inside a church, where I found myself standing next to a pool of crystal clear water (not unlike a really large baptismal pool). A lad next to me told me that if I could hold my breath for a long time, I could dive deep in the water and reach an opening into another “room” deep under the pool. 

I seized the opportunity and dove down, discovering an opening at the bottom which I could squeeze through. On the other side was an underwater room. I was amazed that my air wasn’t running out. There were others gathered there, enjoying their time by swimming to and fro with great abandon.

After a few minutes, I feared that I might run out of air, so I squeezed back through the opening and went back to the surface. After reaching the top, I missed being in the room and almost immediately yearned to go down again. Breathing in deeply, I took the journey back down in the water to the narrow opening. The doorway (if you could even call it that) wasn’t as big as it had been before, but I wasn’t too worried about that because I could still squeeze through it. I rejoined the group and this time stayed even longer.

After a time, I thought it best to return to “my world,” so I headed back to the opening. It had narrowed even further this time. Once again back on top, I made a great effort to stay away from the pool. Yet, I found that it was calling out to me and it took great effort to stay away.

Eventually, the desire to descend again into the watery depths overcame me. Once again, I dove into the deep pool. This time, however, the opening had narrowed so much that I feared it would be impossible for me to go through it. Yet, when I stuck my hand through the crack that remained, I found that the rest of my body was able to follow. I quickly joined the youthful and fun group in the room – everyone was full of life. I completely lost track of time.

When I finally realized that it was time to return to the surface, the hole was now the size of a softball. It seemed impossible for anyone to get through it. One young boy managed to get through somehow, but by the time I went up to the spot, all that was left was a hole the diameter of a dime. I put my head against it anyway and one of new friends grabbed my feet and gave me a big push, but, nothing happened. The door back to the surface world apparently was now closed for good. Although that thought was unnerving, I realized that although I might not be able to return to the world I had known, this new place was delightful in its own way, so I had nothing to fear.

To me the “other room” is my female side.

Finally, I should also mention the interesting dream I had earlier in the year involving my wonderful spouse (who is “don’t ask, don’t tell” most of the time and never wants to see me as a female) that prompted me to ask Stana about her dreams. In this dream, my wife and I were standing at the top of a high mountain ridge shouting the names of those we love so they would echo off some canyon walls below. We listed all of our children, our now deceased parents and each other and then she yelled, “I love Lisa!” When I turned to her in surprise, she smiled and said, “She [our daughter] told me, and it's OK.”

In reality, my wife doesn’t know my female name and I doubt she would react like that if she knew, but in my dream, she used that occasion to affirm me. It gave me warm fuzzies and I awoke very happy.

Have you had any interesting dreams? Does your brain let you be a female, at least occasionally, in your dreams? Does your subconscious mind give “voice” to your transgender fears? I would love to hear more from others about their experiences dreaming as a crossdresser/transgender person.

Wearing Forte

Long-time German Femulate reader Saskia in March 2021 taken on the last day of a long weekend near Lake Constance... A week before the so-called “lockdown” and the last time she was "away from home" for a long time, because a few days later the requests followed to minimize your contacts, stay at home, etc. And it was connected with a small, unplanned incident: Saskia’s car wouldn’t start due to a battery failure. “So I had to face the breakdown assistant in my Saskia persona. But all went well and after a while, I was able to start my journey home.” Saskia is on the Internet at flickr.

Someday Funnies

Wearing T Tahari

Michelle out amongst the redwoods at a state park.