Fun Thrifty Shopping!

What is more feminine than a girls day out shopping? Surely very few other expereinces scream "GIRLY GIRL".
Unfortunately, most of us don't have the freedom or the finances to really enjoy a shopping day out!
Fortunately though, there are many ways to start down the road to "shopping till you drop".
I'm going to try to cover a lot of ground here, so stick with me!
First of all, I'm going to rule out Internet shopping in this post. Absolutely no problem with it if you have a fairly decent idea of your size and what you look good in.
If you don't, and are just beginning your quest to build a wardrobe lets start with a very inexpensive way to begin.
In my part of the world, spring produces a profusion of yard and garage sales as plentiful as spring flowers. These sales are wonderful spots to find different sizes and styles of women's fashion for as little as 25 cents per item. These sales are where I learned what size I really wore and was even able to buy more than a few items that I found I should never wear. (I recycled those to a thrift store.)
Now, speaking of thrift stores-that's where the fun begins!
Thrift shopping really began to take hold around my area when the economy went down the tubes.
If you are lucky, you can go with friends and make a fun day of shopping and lunch in several stores. Then judge who found the best bargains. OR, you go can alone and take advantages of benefits such as very unsupervised **dressing rooms to discretely try on your potential purchases and no prying clerks.
(**Dressing rooms are like restrooms. Nothing is ever the same from store to store. It is wise to observe before moving forward.")
Bottom line is you can find classic additions to your wardrobe at a fraction of the price from thrift stores. They are becoming so popular that (of course) a reality show is coming called "Thrift Wars" on the Oxygen Network.
Whatever stage you are transitioning from you can feed your inner girl and have some fun doing it at garage sales or thrift stores!
All the nuances of places you can go would make a small book alone and we will look at more idea's later!

When Fetish Became Style

All the years of looking at women and knowing my reactions were different were obviously very confusing to me.
Most certainly my interest sexually was more fetish than anything else. In my teen years I dated a tall girl who always entranced me with how she slowly crossed her legs in my car. I wondered at the time why I wasn't more into her from a male sexual view point. I wanted those long hose covered legs teasing someone like she teased me.
I know now she had a couple other factors in play other than just "teasing" me.  Fashion in those days was the mini skirt so she was trying to sit in the car as modestly as the skirt would allow.  Add in those long legs and the problem of snagging her hose on something and the process was not so easy for a person who was essentially a farm girl.
As the years progressed panty hose became just an accessory and I'm still working on the smooth all in one motion a woman uses when she slides into a seat and crosses her legs in one motion.
In essence I've really have used hose as one example of a larger process.
Fetish became style for me years ago and  now the first thing I may notice about a woman is the bag she is carrying.
The process carried an understanding of why both genders look at women. Men for obvious reasons and women too.
As with most things in life though,  a woman's view of others is much more complex. Just one is style and many factors go into a woman's sense of style or lack of one. Going through that style process myself has finally led me to a greater understanding of my feelings so many years ago.
I simply was in a struggle to discover my own style in a feminine sense.  In a much deeper sense the whole process could be one of the demarcation points between a cross dresser and a transgender person.
It all boils down to if I only knew then what I know now then life would have been so much simpler.
Then again, I'm sure I would have found something else to stress about!

"Horror Scope"!

Somehow I feel this new "horror scope" from theFrisky is the most fun, entertaining and uniquely feminine one I have seen for a while.
Check it out:
"There’s nothing wrong with telling a few little lies that make you out to be greater than you are right now, as long as you are consistent. After all, no one is the wiser by knowing the truth; why not just put that aphrodisiac out there for that other to sense? Besides, if they want you, they will want you regardless and this little deception will only make them hop to it faster."

A Transgendered "Forward Pass".

I've talked and written often here in the Condo of the benefits of "paying forward" experiences to others in the transgendered culture.
A trans woman who has taken it to a whole different level is Chicago's "Gloria Allen". The Chicago Tribune  has the story of 66 year old Gloria:

"About a year ago, a retired Gloria Allen thought having lunch at the Center on Halsted with other lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender senior citizens was simply one of the highlights of her week.
But while at the center, which offers an array of youth services for the LGBT community, Allen, 66, noticed that some of the young people arrived dressed inappropriately. Young men wore scandalously short shorts; young women sported baggy pants that sagged way below their waists.

"Mama Gloria"

So Allen, a transgender woman, got permission from the center to start a charm school. Allen, who's called "Mama Gloria," teaches youth etiquette along with how to dress and carry themselves — things they might have ordinarily learned at home if their parents understood how to guide their LGBT teens and were supportive enough to do so.
"I may be sounding old-fashioned, but I would see these young people wearing negligee-type clothes on the street and I would say, 'How could they leave the house looking like that?'" Allen said.
She said she felt strongly about helping because she understands how difficult it can be when a person has been socialized to be one gender but feels as though he or she is another. Also, she said she believes they have to set a good example.
"When you're a part of a minority community, what you do reflects the whole," she said. "It may not be fair, but that's reality. There are children out on the street. I don't want kids to say, 'Look Mom, look at that.' I don't want people to look at us like that."

Take a look at the rest of this wonderful look at a woman trying to pay forward in our community. In addition, her "words of wisdom" ring true for all of us!

Shades of Pink

One of my more subtle shifts in thinking suddenly became more apparent to me recently.
Slowly but surely many of my more aggressive thoughts are becoming more mellow.
It's not as if I suddenly became an angel but suddenly I have a tendency to see the other side a little more.  There is not a finality to my angry reactions I used to experience. Let me try to explain it:  Now someone doesn't have to be an idiot-they might be one! Also, of course any confrontation ideas are becoming a thing of the past.
Now, I'm not suggesting genetic women don't have any of the feelings I described. Aggression is just different. In addition, I'm not ignoring the feminine "passive-aggressive" nature which in time I would guess will be a natural progression for me too.

Other changes I'm experiencing  are curious changes in my skin which is definitely softening on my body and drying up on my face. Never in my life has my facial skin been so dry.  It feels as if I just spent a couple unprotected hours in a sub zero wind.
Finally, I think I starting to feel a little extra "padding" in my rear.
So, as impatient as I am. Change seems inevitable as I'm getting closer to four full months on hormones.

How Far We Have Come!

 I have mentioned before some of the amazing research and work "Zagria" does on her blog "A Gender Variance Who's Who".
Here's more of her work which illustrates how far we have come as a transgendered culture.

In most trans histories Virginia Prince and such people tend to be shunted into a separate section.  The gay transvestites, with the notable exception of Stonewall seem to disappear altogether.  As we saw with Susanna Valenti, the reality was that some of the same individuals who attend FPE meetings, would also go to gay bars and the drag balls.  This article is a summary of the various activities in New York City in the 1960s.

Unlike in California and elsewhere in the US, neither cross-dressing nor being homosexual (as opposed to homosexual acts) as such were criminal in New York.  However the New York police regarded homosexuals as morally depraved and arrested persons assumed to be such on whatever grounds that they could.  In particular they used entrapment, and raided clubs and bars and arrested those found within.  By 1966 the NYPD was arresting over 100 men every week on charges of 'homosexual solicitation' -- mainly resulting from entrapment.  The wave of decriminalization of homosexuality that spread across Europe, East and West, and to Canada never reached the US.  In 1953 then President Eisenhower signed a government order adding 'sexual perversion' as a reason for investigation and dismissal.  Police and military records were shared with private employers.  Thousands were dismissed from their jobs with no recourse.  No known 'sexual pervert' could gain or retain a professional license.  Cross-dressing was taken as evidence of homosexuality even when the person was married. The police had an informal rule that you should be wearing at least three items 'appropriate to your sex'.  The New York State Liquor Authority had its own laws: homosexuals and transvestites were decreed to be 'lewd and dissolute' and their presence in a bar made it disorderly and subject to closure.  Because no gay bar could be legal, the mafia ran most of them, not caring about licenses, bribing the police and blackmailing the customers.  The very harshness of the penalties led to many judges being unwilling to sentence gays, lesbians and transsexuals, and giving a fine or probation instead.  However the possibility of getting the wrong judge stifled expression and inhibited lives.

Read more: http://zagria.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-york-city-in-1960s.html#ixzz1s44Q2DiM
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

In the "Passing Lane"!

I ran across a very long and complicated blog post concerning one of our culture's "sacred cows". It has been so long since I have even seen the term used, I almost forgot it existed. Of course I'm referring to "passing" and I thought it had been relegated to the "tranny" pile.
If you have a second to read this article called "Pass/Fail", it does bring up some relevant and long forgotten ideas!

"In the Life of a Transsexual Porn Star"

From the "Huffington Post" comes this interview with transsexual porn star "Madison Montag":
Here's the beginning of the interview by "Jincey Lumpkin":

Madison Montag

"While on the red carpet at the AVN Awards back in January, I couldn't help but notice a cute, petite girl in a mirrored dress coming down the carpet after me. Waiting in line to be interviewed by Showtime, I found out that that the tiny woman was Madison Montag, who was nominated as "Transsexual Performer of the Year." She has a real magnetism and a disarming kind of charm. A few weeks ago, I asked Madison if she would open up about the intimate details of her sex life, her struggles, and what it was like growing up trans. She revealed both titillating secrets and sweet dreams for her future."

Follow the Huffington Post link for more!

Psst! There are Cross Dressers Amoung Us!

This Cyrsti's Condo post comes from 2012 but is still very relevant today:

Over the months and years here in the condo, we have labored over many different labels. Out of pure simplicity I have just decided to stay with a couple main ones such as transgender and transsexual. To take the whole step further the terms "culture and community" have come into discussion too.

Having said all of that, I wonder where all the semantic babble we indulge in leaves the cross dressers who often exist like the "elephant in the corner". First of all, here are some of my ideas of a cross dresser:

In the most basic sense, we are all crossdressers. If you came out of the womb as a male and dress as a female (or vice versa) you are a cross dresser. All the tons of information, ideas and theories why don't matter in this discussion. Where I'm going here is where being a crossdresser may take us-or not.

For a fact I know more than just a few of you who are content to be just a cross dresser  You may love the feeling of the clothes-physically and or sexually. You may not have any desires to experience the world as a female in any sense and that's all good. Then, comes a much bigger cross dresser segment.

I use the term "transition crossdressers". You are the ones who are not certain what all this means. Is a sex change in your future? What about your life as you know it now? The bottom line is you know this is so much more than just putting on women's clothes in the privacy of your home. Exploration begins in so many areas  ranging from attending meetings to going public as a member of your chosen gender. (No matter how successful)

I was a transition crossdresser. What ever sexual thrill I initially experienced from women's clothes went away quickly and I was left wondering what was missing here? Like so many of you, I dug a hole, jumped into it and tried to bury that part of me. I was the crossdressed elephant in the corner of the room.  Silent and largely ignored by the rest of the transgender community and invisible to the transsexuals.

For the most part nothing has changed in our culture for the transition crossdresser except for the enormous amount information available today.

The only positives I can offer here are I know you are sitting in the corner and I remember the enormous struggles I have gone through to arrive at this point in my life. Referencing you becomes the problem because in some senses I believe you are the "silent majority" in the transgender culture because of necessity. Some seem to think if you have not made the blind leap of faith into absolute gender transition it makes you less of a person. I of course do not believe that and in many ways write this blog to provide any insight and help and can provide.

Yes Virginia, there are crossdressers among us!