Posted inCrossdress News
6 Reasons Why We Love To Crossdress!
Why do you love to crossdress? Here is why WE love it..
Posted inCrossdress News
Photo Memories: My First Makeover
As I wrote here Monday, before they deteriorated, I scanned nearly 300 photos from the 1990s for preservation. I had not viewed most of the photos in years and they brought back a flood of memories that I will share in this and future posts.
By January 1995, I had been regularly attending support group meetings for over 5 years, but I was still closeted, that is, not going beyond the safe confines of the support group’s meeting place.
A few gurls in my support group attended First Event, an annual transgender convention held in the Boston area and recommended it to me as a way to expand my horizons. I was ready, so I registered for the convention and when the big day arrived, Elaine, another ham radio gurl who I knew as a ham long before I knew her as a gurl, drove us to the convention hotel in Natick, just west of Boston.
After settling in, I began exploring the hotel and here I am in the photo above, trying out the catwalk that was set up for the First Event fashion show. Wow, my hemline is short! I guess some things never change!
Later that day, I sat in and watched Hollywood makeup artist Jim Bridges perform a makeover on another First Event attendee. The transformation was amazing. I was so impressed that I made an appointment for a makeover late Saturday afternoon, so I would look my best for the Saturday night banquet.
It was my first makeover and I was a little nervous going in. How would I look? Would I be disappointed?
Jim's transformation of me was as impressive as the transformation I witnessed earlier. I literally did not recognize myself when he was finished. "Is that really me?" I wondered when I looked in the mirror for the first time after the makeover.
After the makeover, I returned to my room to get dressed for the banquet. I was anxious to show off the new me and when I finally made my grand entrance, my friends and acquaintances did not recognize me either… in a good way.
By January 1995, I had been regularly attending support group meetings for over 5 years, but I was still closeted, that is, not going beyond the safe confines of the support group’s meeting place.
A few gurls in my support group attended First Event, an annual transgender convention held in the Boston area and recommended it to me as a way to expand my horizons. I was ready, so I registered for the convention and when the big day arrived, Elaine, another ham radio gurl who I knew as a ham long before I knew her as a gurl, drove us to the convention hotel in Natick, just west of Boston.
After settling in, I began exploring the hotel and here I am in the photo above, trying out the catwalk that was set up for the First Event fashion show. Wow, my hemline is short! I guess some things never change!
Later that day, I sat in and watched Hollywood makeup artist Jim Bridges perform a makeover on another First Event attendee. The transformation was amazing. I was so impressed that I made an appointment for a makeover late Saturday afternoon, so I would look my best for the Saturday night banquet.
It was my first makeover and I was a little nervous going in. How would I look? Would I be disappointed?
Jim's transformation of me was as impressive as the transformation I witnessed earlier. I literally did not recognize myself when he was finished. "Is that really me?" I wondered when I looked in the mirror for the first time after the makeover.
After the makeover, I returned to my room to get dressed for the banquet. I was anxious to show off the new me and when I finally made my grand entrance, my friends and acquaintances did not recognize me either… in a good way.
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| Wearing ML Monique Lhuillier. |
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| Singer Jordan Gray |
Posted inCrossdress News
Why Womanless?
By StarlaLong time Femulate readers will recall regular contributor Starla, who perused online high school yearbooks and clipped any womanless events she found memorialized in those volumes. (You can view her collection of clips here.)
Awhile back, I posted Starla's theory regarding her reasoning for the existence and popularity of womanless beauty pageants. In light of Tuesday's post and the on-going interest in womanless events, I thought it apropos to rerun Starla's post for anyone who might have missed it.
Those of you who have followed Stana’s blog for any length of time know that she shares my obsession with “civilian” womanless beauty pageants. It has been fascinating for me to seek out and discover many of these increasingly elaborate events as they have evolved over the last few years.
What has fascinated and intrigued me is that in recent years, the vast majority of the most elaborate and “realistic” pageants (in which the goal is to faithfully mimic girls and not to make fun of them with grotesque parodies), especially at the high school and middle school levels (and even occasionally elementary school), tend to take place in just two states: Alabama and Mississippi.
Yes, in two of the most religious and conservative states in the union, where gays and trans people encounter hostility and harsh judgment, people seem willing and eager to parade their tween and teen sons on a stage in up-to-date gowns, excellent wigs or natural hairstyles, perfect makeup, and high heels, and revel in the event.
Yet the cruel irony is that if any of those same young boys came home one day and announced that they were trans and want to actually become girls, those same parents would probably be horrified!From a purely geographic standpoint, it’s not hard to imagine this phenomenon being concentrated in certain areas. After all, it's not unusual for any school fundraising or spirit building event to spread from school to nearby school. In this case, it’s also telling that while womanless pageants are held throughout the South, the few really top-notch and realistic events outside of Alabama and Mississippi tend to take place in border areas adjacent to those states.
A good example is the annual pageant held at Ernest Ward Middle School, which is in the extreme northwest panhandle of Florida, just a few miles from the Alabama border. (Here in Florida, we tend to say that culturally, everything north of Gainesville is really Georgia and everything west of Tallahassee is really Alabama!)
The degree of attention to detail and realism in some of these pageants is remarkable. One recently discovered Mississippi event (in Kozciusko) had a dress shop owner bragging on her Facebook page that she had supplied dresses to four of the young male entrants in a local pageant (including her own 14-year-old son who, she proudly announced, had won the pageant). No thrift shop bargains or hand-me-downs – these were current fashions.
A good example is the annual pageant held at Ernest Ward Middle School, which is in the extreme northwest panhandle of Florida, just a few miles from the Alabama border. (Here in Florida, we tend to say that culturally, everything north of Gainesville is really Georgia and everything west of Tallahassee is really Alabama!)
The degree of attention to detail and realism in some of these pageants is remarkable. One recently discovered Mississippi event (in Kozciusko) had a dress shop owner bragging on her Facebook page that she had supplied dresses to four of the young male entrants in a local pageant (including her own 14-year-old son who, she proudly announced, had won the pageant). No thrift shop bargains or hand-me-downs – these were current fashions.
In many womanless events elsewhere, footwear tends to be male shoes, flip-flops, or bare feet. In these Deep South pageants, the boys almost uniformly wear stylish high heels and, judging from the ease with which they walk in them, they have practiced in them for some time. We’re talking about 3-to-4 inch heels on some of these! How many 12 to 16-year-old boys do you know who can walk gracefully in heels?
The outfits are nicely accessorized with earrings, necklaces, bracelets, even rings. Not grandma’s old junk jewelry – stuff that would look right at home on any female pageant contestant.
And the parents – these same parents who trash Caitlyn Jenner on their Twitter feeds or fight to keep transgender students from using gender-appropriate bathrooms (if they allow trans kids at all in their schools), or encourage county clerks to ignore the SCOTUS ruling and refuse marriage licenses to gay couples, nevertheless revel proudly (and often, not ironically or jokingly) in their son winning or placing high in a womanless event. They will brag on how pretty their son looked and how they looked totally feminine. While simultaneously, their Facebook accounts feature hunting trips, NASCAR, scripture quotations, and proud, defiant and conspicuous display of the rebel flag.
What’s going on here?
Well, maybe they truly see no irony. For them, dressing in drag for a womanless pageant is a fun frolic, a tradition, an innocent pastime having no relation to those heathen LGBT folks. It’s even a sort of rite of passage – I’ve seen more than one parent or grandparent congratulate their young’un on his “first” womanless pageant. (Implying that there will be more to come.)
But the lengths to which they take these things! I’ve corresponded with a fellow womanless beauty pageant enthusiast who has even attended some of these events and talked to some of the parents. Believe it or not, in the most extreme examples, they have worked for weeks on finding the perfect dress, experimenting with makeup, and drilling their son in pageant deportment. This is not something they throw together two days before the event – this is serious business to many!I strongly suspect that many of the mothers who go all-out for these events are established “pageant Moms” who have daughters who compete. Then when it’s Johnny’s turn to be “prettied up,” they just apply the same level of intensity and attention to detail to their boys as they do to their girls.
Or they may be “wannabes” – I’ve noted a few cases in which a Mom freely admitted that they had no daughters and despaired of ever having the fun of preparing their kin for a pageant – until their son’s school held such an event and they were able to lavish their machinations on him! Beauty pageants, especially child pageants are big in the Deep South – it should perhaps not be surprising that much of this enthusiasm and borderline fanaticism spills over into the womanless pageant world.
As for the realism of the femulations, that, too, may be explainable.
Traditionally, the South has viewed their girls and women with an inordinate degree of chivalry, seeing them as precious gems to be honored and celebrated for their femininity. To lampoon girls in a womanless pageant with an exaggerated and homely burlesque of the “fairer sex” would be anathema to them. If their boys are going to portray girls for an evening, they will do so in a way that honors and celebrates their beauty and special status.What about the young men and boys who don female garb for these events? Well, in the region in question, they seem to enjoy the experience for the most part. This doesn’t necessarily signify anything profound. Dressing up for a womanless pageant is not going to turn a boy trans, though it may help to confirm and solidify an existing propensity or desire to crossdress in someone who’s already wired that way and provides a safe and fun way to indulge those stirrings in a socially acceptable context.
However one theorizes about this phenomenon, it is a fascinating window on the unique and contradictory culture of Dixie!
(A big thank you to Stan Jones for the womanless pageant photos used in this post.)
(A big thank you to Stan Jones for the womanless pageant photos used in this post.)
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| Wearing Keepsake. |
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| A contestant in a recent womanless beauty pageant. |
Posted inCrossdress News
Why to be feminine ?
Stana, 1976Growing up, I was the neighborhood effeminate boy. I did not choose to be feminine; my feminine persona was natural, not an affection.Whenever I acted on the advice to "man up," it felt so unnatural and uncomfortable that I invariably return...
Posted inCrossdress News
Any Womanless Femulators?
Womanless events bring out the curious among us (including myself) who wonder if any of the participants belong to our team.In almost every womanless event, there are one or two "girls" participating who are outstanding... so outstanding that you wonde...
Posted inCrossdress News
Everything you need to know about the transgender bathroom debate
"To paraphrase Denzel Washington’s character in Philadelphia, can someone explain this transgender bathroom controversy to me like I’m a 6-year-old?
"Someone needs to because nothing about the current debate is making any sense."
Gersh Kuntzman did an excellent job making sense of it in the Daily News. Please read what he wrote here.
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| Wearing Zimmerman. |
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| Rocker Pete Doherty |
Posted inCrossdress News
I wish it was me!
Femulating Taylor SwiftBack in January, I mentioned some YouTube femulation videos that impressed me. One in particular, by a tween-aged boy named Rowen, impressed me the most with his enhusiasm and reaction to his transformation; he thought he looked ...
Posted inCrossdress News
Best Gifts for your CD Bestie or Yourself
Time for gifts! There are so many wonderful gifts you can get your TG or CD friends this holiday season that they would absolutely love. Like every CD or TG girl knows, keeping up a feminine image can get expensive. Helping out with maintaining that image would be the most thoughtful holiday gift they could […]
The post Best Gifts for your CD Bestie or Yourself appeared first on Glamour Boutique.
Posted inCrossdress News
Beautiful Holiday Makeup Tutorial for T-girls
Beautiful Holiday Makeup Tutorial for T-girls Holiday glam you won’t be able to get enough of! I absolutely love this time of the year. Not just because you get presents but, because everything just looks so beautiful. Snow, holiday decorations, pine trees, garland, and lights strung up everywhere. Even the smell of the winter holiday […]
The post Beautiful Holiday Makeup Tutorial for T-girls appeared first on Glamour Boutique.
Posted inCrossdress News
The Femulation of a Journalist in London
the full article in german *One of the Girls*