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| Wearing Venus |
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| Iain Armitage femulating on a 2022 episode of Young Sheldon. |
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Someday Funnies
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No one would ever guess that you’re not a woman
Hard to believe, but one of my favorite Halloweens was five years ago even though it seems like it was just yesterday. I just reread the post describing that outing and I am sharing it with you again.
I slept late (I've been doing that a lot since I retired) and pretty much abandoned my Halloween plans because I would be getting such a late start. So I performed my normal morning routine, then sipped a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper.
My wife and I always read our daily horoscopes to each other for amusement, but when I read mine, I was enthused rather than amused.
So I put down the newspaper, took my cup of coffee to the bathroom, set up my makeup mirror and began doing my makeup. Ninety minutes later, I completed my transition and looked very business-like wearing a vintage pinstripe skirt suit that I bought on eBay over 20 years ago.
Hair Salon
I was on the road at 11 AM and made my first stop only two miles away at the salon where I have been getting my hair done for over 25 years.
Two years ago, I was getting my hair done after Halloween and my hairdresser, Miss D, asked if I did anything for the holiday. So I pulled out my iPhone and showed her my en femme photo. She was floored and could not get over it, so I decided to let her see my femulation in person this year.
I entered the salon and Miss D greeted me without a glimmer of recognition. I played along and said I wanted to make an appointment with my regular hairdresser, Miss K. Miss D opened the appointment book and found an opening that I could fill, then she asked my name (to enter into the book).
When I told her my boy name, her jaw dropped and the “Oh, my God’s” began flowing without interruption. Just then, another hairdresser, Miss C, showed up for work and she was flabbergasted, too.
Miss D had to return to her station to attend to a customer, but Miss C hung back and agreed to take some photos with my iPhone.
Bank
Next stop was my bank, where I usually do my business via the drive-through window. Since I was cashing a check and making a withdrawal, I would have to show my I.D. (my drivers license) and there might be some confusion considering how I appeared, so I went indoors rather than driving through.
As I entered, I saw three women staffing the bank — I have done business with all three of them for a number of years, usually at the drive-through window and occasionally up front and personal.
I greeted the woman who was seated typing away at a computer in the cubicle just inside the bank entrance. She looked up from the computer and was clueless.
I smiled and said, “Happy Halloween! You may know me as [insert my male name].”
I believe she heard me, but I think she could not believe her eyes and asked, “Who?”
I had to repeat my name a couple of times before it sank in and she said, “Wow — you look fabulous!”
“Thank-you,” and I proceeded to get into the line waiting for my turn at the teller, who greeted me with a big smile as I queued up. The third woman was staffing the drive-through window and did not seem to recognize me.
When it was my turn, I walked up to the teller, who greeted me so profusely that I knew she knew who I was.
“You look lovely today,” she said.
“You know who I am, don't you.”
“I recognized you as soon as you walked in.”
There were no other customers in the bank, so my teller called over the other teller and asked her if she recognized me.
The other teller did not have a clue.
My teller tried to clue her in with this hint, “Who has a green car and always uses the drive-through window?”
The other teller was still clueless.
Another clue, “Who has a little friend (my dog) in the passenger seat?”
Still nothing!
My teller finally showed her my drivers license and the other teller shouted out my male name followed by a series of question marks and exclamation points. She was amazed and gushed over my “disguise.”
I asked my teller if she would take my photo and she said she would love to do it, so I handed her my iPhone and she took a half dozen shots including the one above.
I said my goodbyes and as I passed the cubicle where the first woman was working, she stopped me and went on and on about how convincing I looked.
I mentioned how my wife always said that I would never pass because of my large size.
“Oh, no,” she retorted, “No one would ever guess that you’re not a woman.”
And so it goes.
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| Wearing Elisabetta Franchi |
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| Warren Fremming and Chuck Bratton femulating in the 1972 film All About Alice. |
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Someday Funnies: Gowns for Gents
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| Wearing Rago |
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| Robbie Coltrane and Eric Idle femulating in the 1990 British film Nuns on the Run. |
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Bank and Salon Redux
I don’t know what they know. I have not returned en femme, but when I returned after Halloween, I discovered I was the talk of the town.
Bank Redux
I went to my bank to withdraw money to buy groceries after my Halloween en femme visit.
The teller (Miss K) was the first woman I saw walking into the bank on Halloween. The other two women staffing the bank were not working that day. One (Miss C) is the teller I often deal with at the drive-through window. The other (Miss L) is the branch manager, who refinanced my mortgage. So they both know me well as a regular customer.
Miss K handled my withdrawal and then she brought up the topic of Halloween. She said my “costume” was the best she had ever seen. Then she asked me if I had a photo on my iPhone so she could show Miss C.
Of course I did and she called Miss C over to see my photo. Needless to say, she was floored. Then she asked Miss L if she had seen my Halloween costume photo.
Miss L replied, “No, but I heard about it.”
Evidently, my costume was the talk of the bank staff. (I dress to impress!)
I showed Miss L my photo and she was amazed, too.
Salon Redux
I also had an appointment at my hair salon. My hairdresser, Miss K, was off on Halloween, so after she seated me at her station, she said, “I’m sorry I missed you on Tuesday. The girls said you were beautiful.”
So I immediately retrieved my iPhone and showed her my photo that Miss C took on Tuesday.
She took my iPhone, examined the photo closely and remarked, “You look like a businesswoman.”
“That's what I intended.”
“You do look beautiful!”
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| Wearing Joie |
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| Charley Chase (right) femulating in the 1934 film Four Parts. |
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Someday Funnies: Equality En Femme
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| Wearing Ann Taylor |
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| Christopher Morley femulating in the 1972 film All About Alice. |
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Someday Funnies: Miss-Cue
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| Wearing Lafayette 148 |
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| Renato Pozzetto femulating in the 1977 Italian film Gran Bollito (Black Journal). You can view the film on YouTube. |
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Happy Halloween, Girls!
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| Wearing Bebe |
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| Anthony Tyler Quinn femulating on television’s Ask Harriet. |
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The Day After
I woke up Halloween morning, tested my knee and all systems were go. Ate breakfast, filled the bird feeder, shaved, showered, did my makeup, did my hair, got dressed, added jewelry, did my nails, filled my handbag and left the house around noon. My uniform for the day featured a tie-neck sweater dress from Nanette by Nanette Lepore.
The weather forecast was good (partly cloudy, mid 60’s), so I went without outerwear.
Needed money, so my first stop was the bank I wrote about visiting en femme Halloween 2017. I had been a regular at this bank branch for years, but not much lately, so I had no idea if I would know any of the current staff. Any holdovers from 2017 would know me, but any newbies would not. Tired out that none of the current staff were holdovers from 2017. I did not know a soul.
There were no other customers, so I stepped right up to the only teller, who greeted me with a big smile. I don’t know if she read me or if I passed, but the jig was up when I handed her my drivers license in order to complete the withdrawal. She did not react to my decidedly male identification and completed the transaction just as it started – in a friendly and professional manner.
Needed food, so I decided to go to Viron Rondo Osteria, an Italian restaurant in Cheshire. I’ve dined there a number of times in the past and at least once en femme, so I felt comfortable dining there again.
I arrived at the restaurant around 1 PM and was surprised how busy it was. Their large parking lot was almost full and there were lots of people entering and exiting the establishment.
“Table for one” and I was immediately seated in the busy dining room next to a couple of young women. I asked one of them to take my photo. She was happy to do so and you can see the results below.
My waitress was pleasant, took my order and in short order, I was drinking a beverage and dining on a delicious pasta dinner. I noticed some male diners and waiters checking me out, but I just looked away... after all, I am a married woman!
Time flew by quickly and before I knew it, the waitress was packing up my leftovers and presenting me with the bill. I overheard her complimenting a couple at another table about their Halloween costume, so when she returned to collect my payment, I asked, “How do you like my Halloween costume?”
She looked at me with a blank expression and asked, “What is it?”
“I’m a guy.”
She was shocked. She had no idea and began gushing over my “costume,” loved my hairdo (wig) and thought that my nails were “cute.”
Needless to say, I drove home floating on air.
Femulating Notes
I wore a new wig: large cap “Reese” from Noriko in the shade of Creamy Toffee R. I love my new do and it will probably be my go-to wig for the foreseeable future.
I successfully wore fake eyelashes. In the past, I had trouble putting them on and ended up going without. Girls in the know say that often the lashes are too long out of the box and one needs to trim them to fit one’s eyelid. I trimmed about a quarter inch off mine and they went on easily and remained on until I removed them at the end of the day.
I wore a pair of grey Payless Karmen 3-inch heels that I bought years ago, but never wore before. The shoes are very cute with a very fine checkered gray fabric covering the shoe and a jet black 3-inch stiletto heel holding up the works. They looked great with my dress with its grey tie and cuffs. But the longer I wore the heels, the looser they became and by the time I returned home, they were falling off my feet. So I will take them to the shop and add inserts to make them fit tighter.
My knee gave me no problem all day long. No aches and pains despite walking around in heels for five hours.
I was very disappointed in a new eyeshadow that I purchased on QVC. It is a box of eight crayons in eight shades from Mally. You literally draw the eyeshadow with a crayon and you have 45 seconds to smudge the shadow around your eye to your liking. Then the shadow dries in place. I found that the shadow was too thick and the crayon too wide to apply the shadow exactly where you wanted it/didn’t want it. It was a big mess and I had to remove all my eye makeup and start all over again using more traditional (powder) eyeshadow.
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| Source: Rue La La |
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| Yours truly celebrating Halloween by dining out at an Italian restaurant. |
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Forget About It
You are out en femme and everything is going well. No one has addressed you as “Sir” and the competition (cisgender females) smile at you in a pleasant manner as opposed to a smirk that says “I know what you are.” But your gremlin just won’t leave well enough alone.
My gremlin showed up at lunch on Halloween when it compelled me to ask my waitress about my Halloween costume. She was clueless and until my gremlin butted in, she thought I was a cisgender female. That satisfied my gremlin, but I was a little miffed that my gremlin outed me. Especially since I thought I looked spectacular in my new wig and dress.
There are a lot of passing deniers* out there (I’m one myself). But whether we admit it or not, passing is always on our minds to some degree, so it is nice to find out when we do pass to build our confidence. But to do so requires us to out ourselves and when we do that, we just blew our cover!
Unlike us, gender is not constantly on the minds of civilians we encounter. We present as female, they see us as female, accept us female and all is well unless we do something to change their minds (“Where’s the men’s room?”).
Our choices are to never know what civilians think or find out by outing yourself. I have been trying to control my gremlin all my femulating life – I succeed most of the time, but sometimes my gremlin overpowers me.
On the brighter side, I usually find out that I was passing successfully when the gremlin does its thing. This should be a lesson to me: my report card usually gets a passing grade, so I should just assume that I always pass and forget about it.
* Girls like us who reject the belief that passing is important.
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| Wearing Cynthia Rowley |
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| A mid-20th Century womanless beauty pageant. (Miss 14 gets my vote.) |
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Cap It Off
Meg asked if I wear a wig cap. I answered that I do not.
My New Wig
Noriko Reese Large Cap
Creamy Toffee R
As a novice femulator, I always wore a wig cap under my wig. Not sure why. Other wig wearers wore wig caps, so I assumed they knew what they were doing and I just followed their lead. I thought that maybe it helped hide your real hair (if you had any), but I was never sure.
Large cap size head that I have, most wig caps were too tight and often left red welts on my forehead. Occasionally, a tight wig cap would give me a headache, too. Also, wig caps added an extra layer underneath the wig, which cooked my head and resulted in perspiration especially in the warmer weather. Sweat running down my made-up visage did not make for a pretty picture.
The last straw was when a tight wig cap worked its way off my head and ended up all balled-up under my wig! After that, I swore off wig caps and since then, I had no more wig cap welts, headaches and perspiration. And my wigs did not notice the difference – they stayed in place and did not stray from my head.
There are some benefits to wearing a wig cap. You can read about them here, but they do not apply to me and I will remain wig capless ’til the day I dye.
Warning, Will Robinson – This post is an edited rerun!
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| Wearing Theory |
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| Alexander Vlahos (right) femulating in French television’s Versailles |
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Someday Funnies: Father Knows Best
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| Wearing Boston Proper |
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| A lovely group of femulators in Indonesia |
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Someday Funnies: Faux Fanny
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| Wearing New York & Company |
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| Pakistani femulators |
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Someday Funnies: Your Turn
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| Wearing Endless Rose |
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| Femulating in Brazil |
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Gutsy List
Trying to come up with the most unusual thing I have ever done en femme, I revisited my bucket list to see what stood out. I discounted closeted trans items on the list, like “Go to a support group meeting.” Although they are accomplishments, there are safety nets involved and not much interaction, if any, with civilians.
Perusing the remainder of my bucket list, I selected the items that the average person would consider to be “gutsy” (or “nutsy”):
- Attend a school reunion
- Drive cross-country
- Go to a non-transgender convention
- Live full-time for an extended period of time
- Public speaking
Attending my law school reunion was a big deal, but previously doing the other items on my short list prepared me for attending the reunion. (And I still regret not attending my high school reunion en femme. The good news is that there is talk of another high school reunion in 2024, so I may have another opportunity to attend en femme.)
Going to a non-transgender convention (Hamvention) involved the other items on the short list.
Driving cross-country (750 miles) to and from Hamvention involved interacting with a lot of civilians (for example, stopping to purchase gasoline and food, checking in and out of hotels, using public ladies’ restrooms, etc.).
Intermingling with 30,000 civilians (ham radio operators) over a long weekend at the convention, some who knew me as a “legendary” male ham radio author, was a little daunting initially, but became comfortable over time. Along with the cross-country drive, I checked off the “Live full-time for an extended period of time” item on my short list.
Public speaking at the ham convention’s forums to audiences of civilian hams (numbering 400 to 500) was probably the most gutsy thing I ever did. It took eight previous convention visits en femme before I felt comfortable enough to do it. Now I would do it at the drop of a hat. That’s progress!
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| Wearing Bebe |
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| Shemp Howard, Moe Howard and Larry Fine (The Three Stooges) femulating in the 1950 short Self Made Maids. Although this is typical Three Stooges fare filled with slapstick comedy, the boys played it straight when presenting as females. Their voices were convincing and I loved their circa 1950 outfits. You can view this femulation on YouTube. |
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Working Sisters
I was a working stiff for almost 40 years. The companies I worked for employed thousands of people, yet I never encountered another trans sister among my fellow employees.
Admittedly, I kept a lid on my crossdressing the first 30 years, but outed myself with my Halloween femulations the last ten years. Yet, no one ever approached me to introduce themselves as a trans sister, which is understandable.
Most people are more circumspect than me about our “hobby.” I was probably just as careful about my secret identity before I came out and don't know if I would have come out to a sister co-worker if the opportunity arose, which it never did.
After I retired from ARRIS in 2017, I did discover that one of my blog readers worked at a different ARRIS facility and we knew some of the same people.
It’s a small world after all.
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| Wearing Jonathan Simkhai |
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| Rodney Chester, Shaun Earl, Jazzmun and Red Savage femulating in the 2000 film Punks. |
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Someday Funnies: The Emperor’s New Clothes
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| Wearing Ann Taylor |
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Transitioning
In response to my standing offer to answer anything you ask me, Julie Shaw wrote the following:
I'm getting tired of coming up with answers to “well meaning” people asking me when I’m going to start transitioning. I don’t WANT to transition. I’m a heterosexual male-to-female crossdresser and have NO desire to change that.
My question for you is “how would you communicate this to those sisters on social media who all but berate me for not being true to yourself.” I have run out of words.
It seems to me (with emphasis on “to me”) that the meaning of “transition” has changed over time.
In olden days when I still lived in a closet, transition meant that you took hormones, had surgery and did all that the law allowed to officially change your name and sex designation.
Today, the definition of “transition” is a lot looser. You don’t have to take hormones and/or you don’t have to have surgery and/or you don’t have to legally change your name or sex designation. You don’t even have to live full-time in your trans gender.
So I guess I transitioned some time ago and didn’t even know it!
At Fantasia Fair in 2014, I attended Natasha Wilkie’s presentation “Planning Your Transition.” The most important thing I took out of the presentation was that you do it at your own pace... a pace that you are comfortable with.
As the presentation ended, Natasha left us with a metaphor... Transition is like riding a train. You can get off at any stop and you can get back on the train whenever you wish and in some cases, you can go back to a previous stop.
So when quizzed about when am I going to transition, I can honestly say I have transitioned already.
Nota Bene! This post is a re-post.
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| Wearing Boston Proper |
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| Alejandro de Hoyas Parera femulating in an episode of Mexican television‘s Esta Historia Me Suena. |
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Girls Who Wear Glasses
My sister has been getting her eyeglasses online and she is very happy with that arrangement, not to mention that buying eyeglasses online is substantially cheaper than buying from an optometrist.
I decided to try that option myself, so I made an appointment with the local Costco Vision Center to get my eyes checked and obtain a new prescription for $60.
With the new prescription in hand, I visited the online eyeglass purveyor that my sister uses (Zenni). I set up a new account and entered my prescription on their website. Zenni (like other online spectacle sellers) offers the option to upload your photo to their website so that you can try on eyeglasses virtually. So I uploaded my visage and shopped for new eyeglasses.
There were a lot of frames to choose from and I found a nice gender-neutral pair for $52. That is about 12% of what I paid the last time I purchased eyeglasses from my optometrist! At that price, I decided to buy a second girlier pair to wear when I am en femme.
I uploaded my female visage to the Zenni website and shopped for my girly glasses. You can see the pair I selected in the image above. I should have my new eyeglasses in 7 to 10 days and look forward to wearing them out among the civilians real soon now.
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| Wearing Boston Proper |
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| Dave Foley femulating in televisions The Kid In The Hall. |
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Someday Funnies: If You Got ’Em
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| Wearing New York & Company |
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| Santiago Emiliano femulating on an episode of Mexican television’s La Rosa de Guadalupe. |
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Someday Funnies: His and Hers
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| Wearing Donna Morgan |
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| Womanless wedding in Petrograd, Russia, 1921. |
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