Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Our feature cover today is Brazil's beautiful transgender woman Luana Cimatti.

Technology and the Trans Woman

The more I bounce around the web, even I am impressed by the sheer numbers of pictures I encounter of all different "flavors" of men dressed as women, from cross dressers,  all the way to transsexual porn stars.

I simply marvel at the individuals who post literally thousands of pictures of themselves on sites such as Flickr as much as I marvel at pictures of transsexual women such as Domino Presley (left). It's no wonder so many so called "hetero" men are "intrigued"  and the majority of other trans women get the ugly "fall out."

Even though we live in an age of unprecedented advances in plastic surgery and HRT advancements, many times I have to look through the smoke and mirrors to see what I'm really looking at.  Domino reportively is an adult film star so her looks are a big part of her business. I assume, she has her peeps who market her in the social media.

On the other hand, there are numerous examples of other MtF video transitions on YouTube which produce equally as dazzling human beings.  And, let's not forget the power of a good picture-again go back to Flickr and notice how many of the "heavy hitters" have paid their way into professional camera/portrait studios. Finally, there are the huge percentage of "impostors" on sites such as Pinterest who aren't trans at all but genetic women.

It's quite the industry we have going here.  .from the lookers to those who are working hard to be looked at. The industry is male dominated and in most cases still has nothing to do with living a life as a transgender woman.  For a person such as me though who grew up in the information "dark ages", all of this is simply amazing!

Nail Failure and the Pretty Princess

I have a tendency to believe one of the least mentioned effects of HRT is what it does to your finger nails- at least to mine.  My nails have become paper thin just at a time in my life I need them to have substance I can style.

One place I have not been for help is a nail salon, yet.  My partner Liz wants to book us together for "mani/pedi's" sometime before summer  Oddly, it's not my feet which are causing me problems with the idea, it's my hands.  Neither are the most feminine in the world but Liz has convinced me my hands and feet are proportioned well for my body.  My hands specifically aren't huge but have and will continue to be subjected to what heavy labor I can still do. (My upper body strength is a fraction of what is was and my arm muscle definition has went with it!)

My fear is having my nails done and doing whatever and trashing them.  I'm working between two homes and yards. Not getting the work done by being the pretty, pretty princess (me) is not an option.

Two certainties in the upcoming months are, to lose weight (which the work will do for me) and to never whine about breaking a nail to any of my women friends. I'm sooooo sick of hearing welcome to our world! I've been here girls! Come on!

I'm not a real goal orientated person but with what's coming up, it is easy to set goals.  The Trans Ohio Symposium is scheduled for the very end of May and it is followed several weeks later by the biggest Pride weekend in the area - Columbus, Ohio.  My goal is simple- get down to my pre HRT weight before then.  I know it will be harder now than during my male life when all I had to do is cut back on a beer or two along with a pizza but I really want to make May/June yet another coming out month for me.

If I set my mind to it. Failure will not be an option.