Saturday, June 23, 2012

Some Like it Hotter!

Today I saw (again) bits and pieces of the classic film Some Like It Hot.
Without wasting words and time, I still had to pause for a second and marvel at the production.
No matter how you feel about the entire cast of Jack Lemmons, Tony Curtis et all- Marilyn Monroe's casting was the genius move by Director Billy Wilder.
Think about the ramifications for those of us in the transgender community. Two men playing women with one falling in love with Marilyn who was in herself a huge caricature of women; an impossible feminine ideal too strong for even Marilyn herself And how many of us came away from the movie with the yearning to play music in an all girl band?
If all of that wasn't enough, there is always the wonderfully improbable final line in the picture when Jack Lemmon unveils himself as a man to a hopelessly infatuated Joe E. Brown. " I'm gonna level with you. We can't get married at all... I'm a man. 2) Well, nobody's perfect" - the reply. (Joe E. Brown) Ha ha! So cute!!!!
Remember this all took place in 1959 when even dressing as the opposite gender in public in most towns was a crime and of course being gay was unheard of!  Hollywood just had to be the biggest gay closet in the country. Way to go "Billy Wilder"!
All of this was happening ten years before the "Stonewall Uprising" during the summer of 1969 in New York City.

The Stonewall Inn, taken September 1969. The sign in the window reads: "We homosexuals plead with our people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village—Mattachine".[1]

If you haven't had a chance to catch the special  on "PBS" about Stonewall, check it out!

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Justin Vivian Bond

Justin Vivian Bond, in a Maria Cornejo dress and Lanvin shoes and accessories, in Le Petit Versailles Garden in Manhattan.

OMG! You are killing me!!!!

First Monika, Stana, Janie and now Michelleliana!
You simply have to read her "Top Ten Reasons Middle Age Transition Doesn't  Suck!!!! (here)
I'm not worthy!!!!!!!

Classic Female Impersonation History

Ephemeral recently ran a post featuring famous cross dressers.
The post featured one of the all time popular female impersonators and dare I say actresses of his era Julian Eltinge.
Here's an excerpt:
"All but forgotten today, Julian Eltinge was one of the highest paid actors in the early 1900s.
His shtick: He played all his roles in drag.
But unlike most drag queens, who present a caricature of a woman, Eltinge was a “gender illusionist” pretending, with a wink, to actually be a woman." and of course you can go here for more!

A Fantastic Collection

Stana of Femulate fame has done it again.
Check this fantastic collection on men cross dressing as women on the small and big screen by going here.


Just Another Look Boys!


Utopia?

I read posts here and there on the idea of a genderless society. A place where a person is totally free to express their mental gender at will.

In fact Michellelianna recently did her own take on the subject  and you can read it here.
The easy answer of course is clothes don't make the transgender or transsexual woman or man. We all know it's much deeper than that. 
Indirectly my "BFF" took the subject another step when I confided in her my dissatisfaction with my recent male exploits. Basically she asked when was I going to start dressing more completely female as I approach 6 months into HRT.
Good question.  In my current lifestyle, I'm just me without the pronouns. Very little body hair, painted nails and all. I basically run errands in a few of the same places all the time. Since going into semi retirement, I created my own little gender cocoon rather than an utopia. With my thin shaped brows, pony tail and clear nail polish I'm far from being androgynous- yet. Just being me is great for me but the world awaits. You know how the real world wrecks utopia! Dammit!
However I still have a utopian plan for the near future. I call it "hormones phase II".
As I have written a number of times, coming up soon is the big next visit to my "prescribing" doc.  I started on a minimum dose of a form of estrogen and had it doubled a couple months later.  Now I want it doubled again.
So by this fall, I can see me developing a nice little makeup routine in the morning of eye makeup and lip gloss-everyday. Then we will see how my utopia is working for the general public.
Quite truthfully, I don't see how an androgyny phase will work in at all with my utopia if I have a choice. Obviously, I would prefer to be seen as feminine as possible. Some would say I have done some of this a little backward with the amount of time I've spent in a feminine lifestyle without hormones and such. The transformation as you know isn't always the easiest and I will gladly accept any help I can get!
We will see. As with any utopian idea, problems will exist. Those of you who have gone through this process know the ups and downs unique to each one of us.
I can only say I'm surely not expecting any Shangri-la but a plan is very reassuring even if it's not utopian.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

I Couldn't Help Myself!

Another look at Maria Roman...it's Monika's fault.
Not to be selfish...go here for more!

The Breakfast of Non Champions

 From Legislative Queery:

Growing up there were two breakfast cereals available at our house: Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Cheerios. The two options were so ubiquitous on the breakfast tables of my youth that to this day I can't stand to eat either. But I may have to find a way to stomach Cheerios again after the taurus-shaped staple's parent couple, General Mills, came out against a proposed ban on marriage equality in its home state of Minnesota this week.

In contrast, the other purveyor of the processed grains of my youthful mornings, Kellogg's, has pulled its advertizing from the Teen Nick series "Degrassi" over story lines involving transgender youth. "Degrassi" is a long running Canadian television series that since 1979 has taken on a number of difficult teen issues including abortion, drug use, racism, gay teens and eating disorders. But apparently the existence of transgender teenagers is a step too far for Kellogg's.

The ad pulling comes after pressure from the hate group The American Family Association, which characterizes the portrayal of trans teens as promoting "bizarre sexual role-playing with transvestism, [and] homosexuality."

I went right out and outed my Kellogg's to the trash.

What Now? More Steps???

Image from Henri Pham on UnSplash As I view my progression into a transgender lifestyle, I see it as a series of steps. In other words once ...