Blondes and Fun?

We got mail!
 From Stephanie: "I only have Dial-up internet so watching a video is out of the question. But.....if you have doubts that blonds don't have more fun, you being brunette, put on a bright blond wig, some bright red lipstick, and take a drive down the road. There will men hanging out of their trucks to wave at you! ....(someone who's been both blond and brunette!) on Blondes Do Have More Fun!"

Stephanie, I too have been blond and brunette and red! I agree with what you wrote but would like to add my two cents.
I have always thought that blonds do get more attention but how that translates to fun depends on the individuals! Ha!
One of my "best and worst" of all blond worlds is similar to yours. I had a streaked summer blond wig which I ended up naming "suicide blond".
The best of time was driving the interstate in my denim mini with mirror sunglasses distracting guys everywhere. The worst of time was when I stopped anywhere and continually getting busted as a guy. As one of my women bartender friends so "kindly" put it-"aren't you a little over the top?" Very simply I was attracting too much attention. Presenting female was sooo much tougher of course with all the extra scrutiny.

I don't know if there is a scientific reason why blonds naturally do get more attention or if the whole deal is PR motivated. Just a few examples would be classic blond movie stars Jean Harlow or Marilyn Monroe.  Of course there are beautiful women of all hair colors but somehow a blond just seems to stand out more.

Years ago, I did have a "kinder and gentler" long blond wig which I dearly loved and was able to negotiate the public gauntlet quite well in. Now though, my own hair is colored almost as dark as the picture at the top of the blog and is very close to my natural color (without the gray). I prefer to think "dark and mysterious".
My friends though are quite fond of asking me if I'm a natural blond when I go off on some sort of a totally "ditz" binge.

I smile and tell them to lay off the stereotypes...and go back to my own little off the wall padded world!

Horror Scope

Well kids, it's time here in Cyrsti's Condo for the new years second "Horror-Scope"! I have rebounded a bit from the first one:

Libra (September 23 - October 22) Good news is coming, and will make you feel more settled in your life and trust the direction you're taking. So, keep up the momentum and go with it, even if you don’t have all the answers! As long as you keep pace with the the action, everything will fall into place as it needs to.

Yay!!!!

As always, "Horror Scope" is my term and you can go get your own here!

Transgender Law

No it's not a new television show (unfortunately). My friend Bobbie was kind enough to send along this information from a police publication called "Dealing with Transgender Subjects". Here is an excerpt:

"Officers must often protect and serve members of special groups. Providing this service can bring challenges that demand agency guidance or targeted training. One such group that has rarely been seen or contacted by officers in the past has become empowered to step out and live openly in their communities. They are the transgender individuals. On every continent there is at least one culture that gives social recognition to individuals who don't fit the gender binary of male or female. Only until recently has medicine made it possible to match the individual to their appearance with surgical procedures. Our Western societies have forced these individuals underground (into "the closet") to survive by avoiding ridicule and persecution. Being transgender has nothing to do with who you are attracted to for sex; it is not attached to sexual attraction identifiers such as being gay, lesbian, or bi-sexual. You can be transgender and also be gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, straight, or none of the above. Being trans is about your gender identity; it's who you feel and know you are. Our society develops a spectrum of gender possibilities from ultra-masculine to ultra-feminine and every variation in-between."

Obviously it's refreshing to see law enforcement taking a look at the transgender community for what it really is. The huge majority of all of us are not sex workers or some sort of criminal up to no good. Which used to be the norm in how we were presented. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to be treated with respect in my dealings with law enforcement. Perhaps more information such as this will continue that trend for the entire transgender community.

Read more here.

Blondes Do Have More Fun!

I have a friend you sends me YouTube videos which we have a fun time critiqing and everyone in a while I find one out of the transgender transition type and find a drag one like this blond bombshell drag queen:

Male Privilege

Relax, I'm not going into a contrived emotional post concerning "male priviledge".
Talk about a horse that has been beaten into the ground!
Recently I read a article called "Sex change patients are getting younger and are more likely to be women".

That's right. "Transsexuals in Hong Kong are now seeking gender-changing surgery at a much earlier age than two decades ago, and those coming forward are more likely to be women seeking to become men. "It seems that more and more patients are in their 20s," said Dr Albert Yuen Wai-cheung, chief of service at Ruttonjee Hospital's department of surgery and the only specialist performing sex reassignment surgery at the city's public hospitals. "In the past, they were in their 30s. Now they are quite young, still studying," Yuen said. "With more information available, more are willing to see doctors." Also, women undergoing sex change operations to become men now outnumber men wanting to become women."

Granted this is a very small sampling but interesting none the less. I'm fortunate to know two trans men. One is exploring how he can finance his change and the other is in a very exciting exploration phase. Both could speak to this issue much better than I know but it seems to me I see more women where I live who are really masculine in appearance.  I'm not talking about the much maligned idea that women are allowed to wear men's clothes and not vice versa. I'm talking about women who would have given me a run at my masculinity in my macho acting days. Now,  I also know that having a male ready body does not make a person a transgender candidate. Most of you also know I'm a proponent of the increasing blurring of the genders. (Jamie) Is my small local sample an example? The last thing I claim to be is a statistician, so let's just call it an observation and move on.

Regardless of all of this, the true male or female privilege is the ability to change your body to the extent you need to feel comfortable.  If nothing else, new medical advances have the potential to completely blur the genders- if one has the resources to do it.

For more on the article above, go here.

Blond Drag Fun

I have seen a couple of this person's transformation videos and think his friend is just incredible!

Tran "S" Gender Voices

Most of us struggle with feminine vocalization in our transgender journeys.
We learn early on the process involves much more than just pitch.  Many genetic women have sexy lower pitched voices. Famous examples are actresses Lauren Bacall  or Jacqueline Bisset.
I recently came across this study:

"How can you tell if a person is male or female just by their voice? In general, men have deeper voices than women. However, according to a study conducted by Lal Zimman, a doctoral student at The University of Colorado - Boulder at the time of his research, the style of speech can impact perceptions of a person's gender as well, not simply the pitch of his or her voice. In fact, the letter "S" can, on its own, impact people's perception of the speaker's gender."

Read more here. If you are like me you need all the vocal help you can get!

Guide to Becoming More Manly!

Yes girls! A friend sent this to me (not seriously) so I will pass it along in Cyrsti's Condo to you.
Put down that mascara wand and pick up that tire jack! :

Transgender Mirrors

Janie Black recently wrote a post which jogged my sleepy mind called Gender and the Wrong Body.
She wrote a very thought provoking post (here) which basically goes into the much debated ideas of why we transgender or transsexual people feel this way.

I'm going to greatly over simplify this topic by using the "born in the wrong body" argument.  Personally I can't use that as any rationalization for my status as a transgender woman. It could be argued I was born into the wrong body to hit the baseball the way I wanted or to play football the way I thought I should. OK, I can agree with those of you that are thinking "pretty shallow" Cyrsti.  You are right and wrong. Wrong in that those were important to me at the time.  Right, in that I learned to live with reality and they went away.

What never went away was the idea I was somehow living life from the wrong gender perspective. You could argue I was born into the wrong body but you know you have to go with what brought you here. I'm lucky the physical aspect of my body has allowed me to be healthy into my 60's and along the way has been pliable enough to explore the female gender.

Sure, like many of you I have thought of SRS very seriously and of course you know I started HRT sometime ago. So far I'm quite happy where I am although if my finances allow I would certainly be open to some sort of facial hair removal and even facial feminization surgery.  In my own way though, I see those as primarily vanity moves. No different than any other genetic woman. Would either help me to be more stealth than I am now? Possibly but neither would help me feel anymore feminine than I do now. Then, there is that word feminine. It's a stereotype. Right? Who knows if I feel feminine. I'm just being me, reflecting to the world. Which brings me to the word mirror. 

As I progressed down this transgender road, I found how I reflected my inner mirror to the world was much more important than my external mirror. I was lucky enough to cover the basics in public as a woman but just walking through a mall "undetected" just wasn't enough. Which brings me to the point.

No I wasn't born in the wrong body. Sure my mental processes don't match my physical gender but through my feminine socialization process I have been able to bypass the limitations of my physical self. I have been able to redirect a series of inner mirrors to give the public an accurate perception of my inner self.

All of this is a never ending discussion. No easy answer. It's as different and personal to us as life itself. Some of us have to go out and buy a vagina to feel whole. Some don't. Bottom line is though all that really matters is the inside and how you reflect it to the world. It took me years to figure it out. Now it's up to the world to accept it.