SIZE AND FIT
It is very important to know the size of the dress you are looking to buy. When you go shopping and you are able to ask for something by size, you appear to be shopping for someone. Also, armed with the phrase "I'm looking for this in a size 8," you have something to ask the clerk if they offer their assistance.
The best overall approach is to purchase several pieces of used dresses from a salvation army, oxfam, or used clothing store. They do not have to be the color of what you would want to wear, but they should approximately resemble the style of clothing you plan to buy. What you are trying to do is to get familiar with what size you are. Each style of dress is cut a little differently: A size 8 suit fits differently than a size 8 casual sweater. You want to determine the best fitting size for what you plan to wear. A good starting point for determining your size is a mail order catalog, because they usually provide a measuring chart for body sizes. From that point on, go buy some used rags and find out your size.
This section deals primarily with shopping, in your male mode, for dresses in a clothing store, not through mail order. Because not only is mail order lacking in spontaneity, it increases the chance of every tg-girl's nightmare coming true: showing up at your support group wearing the same outfit as your tg counselor! Let's face it: There's much more choices when you shop at a store, and we can't be wearing the same outfits if we expect to be as fabulous as we are! :)
APPROACH NO. 1 (ill at ease but not nervous)
You can either walk in there sweating, nervous, and stuttering, "I'm buying these for my girlfriend (or wife)" and get laughed at by the salesclerk while she says "Yeah Right." Or you can go in there and look that salesclerk in the eye and say "I'm buying these for myself to wear" with a straight face and raised eyebrows, and most of the time she will say "Yeah Right," and laugh it off like you were the biggest joker in the world. It's very important, especially in completely empty stores, to walk in and initiate eye-contact with the sales people. The moment you walk into a store that you don't belong in, trust me, they are watching you. They may look like they are busy working. But they are not.
So you say "hi," with a big smile to satisfy their curiosity and immediately break the silence. Asking questions will also loosen up the atmosphere and will help dispel the myth of the creep who keeps to himself. Approach no.1 works for middle-age to older folks. Of course, there's a trick to looking a little bit embarrassed, feigning a blush, and using your body language to communicate the fact that you are feeling out of place but not nervous. Asking for assistance will show that you are not trying to avoid them.
IF YOU RUN INTO A FRIEND OR CO-WORKER, and they catch you with a 80% chiffon 20% nylon camisole in your hand, here are some things you can say:
* "Hi Bob, wanna come help me get in touch with my feminine side?"
* "Damn 90's, I can barely keep up with these kids!"
* "Bob, is it just me or do you find your wife wearing your underwear too?"
* "I share everything with my mum!"
* "It's three hundred more days to the superbowl, gotta find something to do."
* or my personal favourite: (in a rough beer buddy voice and a painful nudge in their ribs) "Hey! How about those swedish male synchronised swimmers eh?! Gaddammit!"
After they stop laughing, you just shrug and say, "Yeah, cousin's birthday in Vancouver, doing the whole routine y'know?" You trade nods and say "yeah yeah yeah..." and off you go to continue your shopping spree.
APPROACH NO. 2 (take a rebel along)
We all have that one utterly rebellious friend-you know who I'm talking about. :) You get together with that utterly rebellious friend and you tell him (or her), "I'm going shopping for women's clothes." Let me tell you, any self-respecting rebel will be so excited at a golden opportunity to wreak havoc in public, that they won't even ask you 'who's it for?' However, if he (or she) turns you down, you simply throw your head up in the air and sniff, "I ALWAYS THOUGHT YOU WERE A REBEL, BUT YOU'RE JUST ANOTHER ONE OF *THEM!*" and usually they will be so utterly overcome by a sense of shame and inadequacy, they will immediately follow you on to your shopping caper. In the case of a female shopping companion, all suspicions become null: *It's for her*. In the case of a male companion, two suspicious gents are better than one: They might think it's him. That's 50% load off you. If you are worried about accusations of homosexuality, don't worry doll: Homosexuality has become so normal in the nineties, it's *banal.*
APPROACH NO. 3 (two tv's are better than one)
The third approach is simply bringing another tg friend along. Aside from moral support, it's really lots of fun. You can become the Siskel and Ebert of fashion at every rack, discussing and critique-ing the "beneficial waist-enhancing qualities of the A-Line hem" at the top of your lungs in a manly, factual voice. You could end up sounding like two dressmakers in conversation. More importantly, I've found that when you appear to have nothing to hide, people will immediately ease up on their defenses. For additional dutch-courage, Alcohol helps too, of course.
APPROACH NO. 4 (The Transvestite Freedom Fighter Approach or "The Kick Ass")
You walk in there and you do it. You take as long as you like. And you shop like any other normal human being shops- no sweating, no games, no pretending. I started using this approach when I was 15 years old. When the sales clerk or a fellow shopper looks at you, you look directly back at them. No hostility or defensiveness. You don't stare. You *look* at them. Let me illustrate what I mean: Say you are dead thirsty and you sit down in a public bench and start to drink a glass of water, and someone comes by and tells you can't drink a glass of water; how do you look at them? THAT is the look you give anyone who is glaring at you.
It's *as if* you are saying: "I am who I am and I wear women's clothes. This is what I do and this is my harmless need as a human being. I am going to look at these dresses and then I am going to buy them and after that I am going to put them on in order to live and continue being who I am." THAT is the look you give them.
If you hear people behind you chuckling or giggling at you: Relax and say to yourself: Soooo What? The sales people are working in a mall wearing last week's trendy clothes. They have next to no clue who they are. Are you going to let little clueless teens *run* your life like that? Think about it! They can all laugh as loud as they want, but the truth is you should never let anyone determine your identity with a few intimidating giggles. Especially when they own Spice Girls CD's.
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huggy+kiss
felix
http://www.geocities.com/westhollywood/village/2967
I have just never bought into the idea that you can take a hate filled epithet and "reclaim it" by liberal self-application of the term. Anyone who thinks that calling themselves "Queer" somehow makes the word "acceptable" or a source of pride is kidding themselves. It didn't work for "nigger" and it won't work for "queer" either. As long as there are intolerant bigots out there using a term like that in it's original sense, such self-application will never be anything but a humorous joke to those jerks.
Being stealth also does not make someone "vulnerable". If someone finds out about me, so what, being stealth doesn't mean that people won't sometimes find out (or be told voluntarily). It means you don't trumpet your origins to everyone you come in contact with.
Now, I'm not all that deep yet and a lot of people know about me, but no new acquaintance is told. I build my friendships "woman to woman" and "woman to man" and if the day ever comes when some of them discover my past, I will live with it.
Being "stealth" isn't about "hiding", it's about living your life as a woman without everyone coloring their perceptions of you by identifying you as a "man who is acting like a woman now". It is about interacting with people without constantly sensing that they are being somewhat patronizing by using female gender terms. You can sense the difference and detect the subtle delay as their brain says "wait a minute, be sure to call 'him', 'she'" Thank God, I only have a couple of people like that left who I interact with on a regular basis. It is just so much better to be with people who accept me as a woman without question. I think that's the ultimate end of our transition, not SRS, but true acceptance into the community of women.
Maybe the force behind so much of this endless debating is simply a reflection of the fact that for a lot of non-stealth non-ops, pre-ops (or even post-ops for that matter), they have never experienced that joy of being accepted, of being part of a group of women rather than a "guest" who is politely tolerated. There is also a special quality of interacting with a straight man who doesn't know that you are a TS versus encounters with tranny chasers or gay men who are really thinking of you as a "man with breasts" (and possibly a penis).
Once you've experienced these, making the choice to live as a "Transsexual" for the rest of your life to serve a vague political purpose is like condemning yourself to live "half a life". We could also address the issue of children, sparing them the social stigma of having a TS Dad. They deserve the right to be able to go to school and have a normal childhood without being a target because of their "queer Dad" (my kids have had it both ways and we all prefer me being "Mom" - life is just so much simpler).
Will every TG or TS experience this kind of acceptance? No. I certainly wish everyone could, but it won't happen. So there will always be that large group of "non-stealth" TS's out there. I guess the challenge is for these people to understand what they are asking a passable stealth TS to give up. They see "stealth" as being "hiding" and "running away" and "closeting", while we see it as the ultimate fulfillment of our lives, a positive final step in our personal transformation. I've never met a TS who went "stealth" out of "fear". You don't get this far without having more personal courage than 99% of the population.
Can we be charged with "selfishness"? Well, yes, that may be a valid point. But let's be honest, from one point of view our entire transition is an act of selfishness! We hurt our wives and children, distress our friends and co-workers and employers and all because we want to find that silly little thing called "self-fulfillment" or in many cases "self-preservation".
As I was saying, we are all guilty of being "selfish" to some extent, but there are limits to the good that self-sacrifice can do. We all hit that point where years of hiding out and concealing our transgenderism finally drives us to the breaking point. In my case, I was slowly killing myself with personal neglect of my health. Should I have continued on that path for the "good" of my family and been dead of a heart attack or stroke by now? Was I "selfish" to want to live so that I could be there for my children? My children think I made the right choice, "selfish" as it may have been.
How do they feel about calling me "Mother"? I did that with some reservations, but now it was clearly the right thing to do. Not only from the practical standpoint ("Jim, wanna go rollerblade at the park? Mom will drive us"), but also because it feels "right" to them and we are all comfortable with it. So being a little "selfish" can benefit everyone in the family, ironic as it may seem.
So am I selfish for going "stealth"? Yes. Would I be selfish to become an "activist" to make myself feel righteous regardless of the effects on my children? Yes, that would be selfish also.
Let's face it, it is all in your personal point of view when we start deciding who are the heroes and who are the villains here
So, do what you do for your own reasons and quit trying to impose your values and your priorities on others, but please try to remember that you are hurting others when you build images of a TG community that conform only to your personal view. A lot of TS's are NOT GAY and think twice before you do something that "labels" all of us with your own personal label. If you are going to be an activist, I think you have an obligation to insure that a balanced view is presented and that "stealth" hetero TS's are given as much consideration and courtesy when that image is being projected onto the media and into the political process. When that happens, maybe there is a chance for a "community" to arise that will speak for all, without the backbiting, insults, and posturing over "who's right". When individual sexual preferences and morality become secondary issues of a personal and private nature, rather than becoming a political "platform".
Example: sexual preference is totally irrelevant to the issue of transgenderism. Why should it matter whether I am gay or straight? Why should we be building an image of transgendered individuals as "Gay"? Sexual preference is not a distinguishing characteristic of a transsexual! Neither are your dating habits or personal morality or tastes in clothing! Why then does it always seem that the images that are being portrayed about us always seem to be couched in those terms? I think our "leadership" should be going out of their way to deny such links. The only image of a TG that should be projected is that of gender identification. That is the only thing we really have in common, we were born with the wrong feelings, instincts and thought processes for our birth sex.
And that's it, baby, from that point we diverge.
So let's focus on that basic truth and sell the right of personal self-identification of gender and drop all the arguments over who's gay/straight, passable/non-passable, pre-op/post-op/non-op, sexually active/sexually inactive, stealth/non-stealth, activist/non-activist, and all of the appearance issues (breast size, clothing preferences, makeup skills, voice, physical deportment etc etc etc etc). We are all human beings and that means that we are capable of independent thought and huge range of diversity in thought and behavior.
Can we "clear the decks" and get back to what we have in common? Can we quit bashing everyone who is "different"? Can we have folders like this one that can exist without it becoming a lightning rod to attract critics who want to glorify their own point of view?
Love & Peace,
Rhonda
API- Little Rock AR- In a wave of radical conservatism the Arkansas legislature has passed a law which female sex change surgery is mandatory for men convicted of cross dressing. The new law, which was attached to the end of a bill dealing with intoxicated drivers, will place first offenders on probation. After a second offense the individual will be sentenced to a mandatory sex change in a state hospital. Special interest groups are getting ready to battle each other over the passing of this new law.
Following an idea that was recently parodied in the IXE Newsletter about mandatory sex changes in the state of Arkansas, the U.S. Senate today passed SB 15943 with a bipartisan vote of 78 to 15. The proposed law, which is expected to pass in the House, would require any male found in public dressed in female attire, to under go extensive counseling for a period of not less than 6 months. Second time offenders would, like the Arkansas farce, have to undergo a sex change operation or face a minimum of 5 years in a psychiatric hospital. Said the bill's sponsor, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, "It's time we treat these perverts like the criminals they are! We've got to get them off our streets before the children of this nation come to harm." Washingtonian Post
After a few sessions with on electrolgist, many people begin to wonder if there isn't a quicker and easier way to permanently remove unwanted facial hair. New techniques developed by cosmetic surgeons may provide an alternative method,
The procedure was first used as a part of reconstructive surgery for people born with severe facial defects and victims of burns and other accidents. It is now being tested for use as elective cosmetic surgery. Simply stated, the process is a face transplant -- the individual's dermal and epidermal layers are removed and replaced with those from a donor. Model Laurel Meadows was able to resume her career with the help of a face transplant after a freak explosion permanently changed her skin.
As with other types of transplant surgery, the donor and recipient must be closely matched for blood type. Most face donors are young people who have met a premature death and whose families have granted permission for their body to be used to restore life to another. If you carry an organ donor card, make sure to make a special notation for a face donor.
Because an individuals appearance is determined by bone structure, face transplants will not alter ones appearance. People in the gender community should note that face transplants are only appropriate for post-op transsexuals as testosterone will stimulate the growth of hair on even a female face. Transsexuals will be pleased to learn that a face transplant will restore a receding hairline as the incisions are hidden in the scalp. There are only a couple of surgical teams in the world now using this procedure, but as it becomes better known, it should be available in several hospitals around the country.
Faggot! Pervert! Sissy! These words are adjectives which are used not to describe a person, but to hurt them. It is almost impossible to separate an objective description of the words from their powerful emotional impact - which is why they are used as weapons to hurt and control others. It is possible for a gay individual to be content with his life- style, but to be angered by being called a faggot. People with sexual interests which encompass more than the heterosexual missionary position are not all in the closet, but they would be stung by being defined as perverts. Many males do enjoy and excel in activities traditionally reserved for females, however, I think very few would proudly describe themselves as sissies.
Now think about these words transvestite - transsexual - cross dresser. They carry a lot of negative feelings, even if you are willing to admit you fit into on of these categories. They are labels. To buy into a label means you must also buy into the negative feelings it might evoke. It takes a lot of intellectual and moral honesty to admit you desire to identify with the opposite sex, and no matter what others think, it is OK. This level of self actualization is rarely achieved in childhood, which by the wildest coincidence is the time we start our cross dressing. As children we were in no position to discourse on the pros and cons of different behaviors with authority figures. Our job was to learn the party line and not stand out - and we were very good at our job! Lessons learned are very hard to unlearn. Even if we did not know the meaning of the words, we learned that transvestites were perverts. We learned that transsexuals were sick. We learned that cross dressing is unnatural and should be punished.
We now know better, or do we? When you say you are a transvestite, does a little part of yourself still cringe? When someone asks if you are a transsexual, do you feel even the slightest bit of threat? Do you keep feeling the need to explain cross dressing as a medical necessity instead of as a right?
There is no law we have to accept a label that carries any negative connotation even if it does describe our objective situation. If you must label yourself, give yourself a label with a positive emotional component. Which sounds better? Transsexual or gender identity explorer. Transvestite or gender freedom fighter. Crossdresser or sexual egalitarian. Describe yourself positively and try to get others to accept your definition. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words break hearts. Choose your weapons carefully and avoid those with a double edge. - Sarah