Adolescent Rodeo Clown

Last night I was slaving away over my book and I thought  this experience was good enough to pass along here in Cyrsti's Condo. In fact the whole experience was a great lesson of not passing. Simply put, I was barely out of the closet in my early 30's and going through my cross dressing "adolescence" with a passion:

"Unless you happen to be a young cross dresser going through the pains of puberty, my best advice is don’t act like you are. Time and time again I will tell you not to be the big guy in the mall squeezed into a tiny mini, tall heels and big hair. Sure I tried it too and yes it was totally ill advised. Wait, no one did advise me. I screwed this up all by myself. To add insult to just being dumb, I didn't need no "stinkin mall" and just took off out of my house- on a busy street flaunting my latest attempt to be sexy.

If you are “mature” enough, you will remember the “Urban Cowboy” movie and the resultant cowgirl fashion craze Short jean shorts, boots and blouses tied off at the waist was the basic look. So, who was I not to follow the current fashion craze?

Being the fashionista clothing designer I am, I took a pair of my women’s jeans and cut off the legs-really short- butt cheek short. Hey, I was just following a not so smart but all so common cross dressing fashion disaster. Sexy for many women, stupid for me.

I was certainly working on another “can’t miss, guaranteed way to get busted as a man dressed as a woman” fashion mistake! There was a reason for the madness. Not a good one. But a reason.

Most men have a good looking pair of women’s legs. I was no different. Many of my first compliments dressed as a woman at Halloween parties was wow! you have great legs. But when you put the comment into the context it was intended, it comes off something like this: “You do have great legs for a guy dressing as a woman” and oh gee those wonderful legs of your happen to be attached to those big feet, no hips and big shoulders. All we know is our male egos are just going nuts with the praise and if a little leg is good- certainly more leg is better!

If I knew then what I know now, I may have had a chance of not being a rodeo clown in drag by following a few relatively simple steps. A pair of reasonable length boots and a tad longer pair of cut off shorts would have broken the sight pattern from my hips to my feet. A longer short would have also given me a chance to work in the illusion of hips with a couple pieces of foam rubber padding. If I was skillful enough to do all of that, then maybe I could have loosely tied off a shirt at my waist.

Here is the mistake I made with the shirt tail idea. To be semi convincing your hips should roughly equal the span of your shoulders. I thought I was emphasizing a narrower waist when in reality I was not hiding the considerable size of my upper torso. Bottom line was I just didn't have the body to even give the illusion of being able to wear that sort of outfit. There were plenty of genetic women who didn't either and they were smart enough to not try.

The moral to the story is all of us go through this to some extent-even genetic women.  I hear from so many cross dressers or transgender women who bemoan their looks and say I can't get any better. Just remember, can't is a powerful word. Use it and you will be right- it can't happen.