Cyrsti's Condo Fashion Beat

No part of the transgender woman or cross dresser's body can be as frustrating as our arms. By comparison, our legs are usually an asset which can be covered or shaved and covered by pants during our male lives.

Thick wrists, biceps and thick shoulder areas are just problems which just don't easily go away but like in everything else can be camouflaged to an extent. For the longest time, I went about my merry way thinking genetic women don't have much in the way of arm fashion to consider. In true form though, I was wrong. Genetic women have to consider all of their fashion options to present their best look and of course I am considering mine as fashion choices continue to change for me. Now as  I'm able to remove all of my arm hair and HRT is decreasing the size of my biceps, I'm in a whole new ball game.

Now you are not going to confuse me with a pencil thin ballerina but I do have plenty of dilemmas and inherent insecurities with the sleeveless summer fashions. After tons of personal fashion drama, I came to the conclusion I was going to wear most of the summer fashions because I could. Having said that, there are different styles of very feminine tops to choose from. Let's start with sleeveless tops.  Sleeveless in my book could mean no sleeves, sleeves which barely cover the tops of my arms and the traditional t-shirt length sleeves  So some I should wear and some I shouldn't wear,  just because I supposedly can.

To give you an example, I'm adding a picture (left) you probably have seen from last summer when I was still wearing wigs.. I like this top for several reasons. It is soft and feels fun plus shows off my assets. Also, this top is long and comes down nicely over my hips, which is important since a years worth of HRT is actually providing real change in the hip area.  A whole other discussion!

Now, to add some real fashion expertise to the discussion, I recently ran across an article I thought you girls may be interested in from a site called Fabulous after 40 called: "You’re Covered Perfectly with this New Line of 40+ Clothing."

Here's a bit of the "angst" from the genetic angle:"I was looking for something to wear to a party, and nothing was working. There I was standing in front of the mirror, with a pile of clothes on the bed, feeling very frustrated. Then I realized it’s not me, it’s my clothes. The sleeves on my clothes were too short to cover that part of my arms that I’d rather not reveal. The tops weren’t long enough to cover my tummy."

It struck me as ironic that I know most women are paranoid about the jiggly skin under their arms while I am extremely self conscious about what I consider is a weird softening in the middle of my bicep on top of my arm.

Jump on over to the article and check out Pauline Durban who has come to the rescue. At 56 Pauline came up with the brilliant idea for a clothing line called, Covered Perfectly and of course the link is there.

Finally I love to wrap up our little fashion discussions with my little pep talk.

If you want to try to play in the girl's sandbox, you have to do the best you can to do it to the best of your ability!