Make Up Bargains

As we all know, cost does not always equal quality. It's also true in makeup according to Amanda Storey on the Yahoo Fashionate Beauty Blog who writes:


"I am a drugstore beauty product addict. It all started when I began hoarding my lunch money and spending it on fashion magazines instead of pizza slices. I would flip through in amazement at all of the beautiful women and mentally take note of all of their makeup looks. One particular ad featuring, then model-of-the-moment Milla Jovovich, prompted my first makeup purchase ever. L'Oreal Drumbeat Red lipstick. I saved up $7, a lot for a fifteen year old with zero income, and headed to my local drugstore. I had to keep it a secret because my Mom wouldn't approve of me wearing lipstick, especially red. I wore that lipstick to my first school dance and wearing red ever since! Fast forward to my early years of working as a Makeup Artist in a department store. I worked with my best friend and we were surrounded by luxury makeup all day. We would constantly play, tempt each other with new product discoveries and encourage one another to buy things because "you have to have it!" Following a long hard day of prettifying people, we would hop in my car and set out for our secret hideaway, the drugstore beauty department. In a department store $30 might get you a great lipstick, but in a drugstore you'd walk out with a haul of eyeshadows, brushes, lipsticks and foundation. There is something so satisfying about spending a little and getting a lot. It was during this time, the fever-pitch of my bargain makeup addiction, that I discovered some of my "I can't live without" drugstore makeup products."

Read on here for more of her ideas!

Transgender Mothers?

I picked up this interesting story from Monica Roberts TransGriot site:

"Doctors successfully transplanted a donor uterus from a deceased woman into now 22 year old Derya Cert, a Turkish woman born without one but who had functioning ovaries. Being born without a uterus affects one in every 5000 women and until this procedure came along meant that the woman in question would be childless. A uterus transplant has been attempted once before by a medical team in Saudi Arabia back in 2000. The womb came from a live donor but failed after 99 days due to heavy blood clotting and was removed from the patient receiving it. Medical centers in Sweden and the United States are also working on perfecting uterine transplant medical technology and the medical procedures and drugs necessary to prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted organ. Cert became the first woman in the world to have a successful transplant from a deceased woman, which raises the hopes of women that are in a similar situation to hers that they could one day undergo the procedure once the techniques are refined and give birth to their own biological children."


"We've long wistfully expressed the sentiment in transworld if only trans men and trans women could swap body parts. It's becoming increasingly possible that a trans man when having the hysterectomy could designate it be donated to a trans woman for implantation. But if they did so, this is a situation in which cis privilege would aggressively assert itself. If that trans man donated their uterus, it would probably get prioritized toward being given to a cis woman without one. Trans women would be extremely far down the transplant list despite the desires of some of us to be fruitful and multiply. That research is also geared at this time toward helping infertile couples, not giving trans women the ability to give birth to biological children of their own But that shouldn't stop us from doing hard solid thinking about reproductive rights issues, procreation and the potentially game altering way that uterine transplant medical technology that hones its procedures and becomes as common as heart and other organ transplants could one day be applied to trans women. . The trans community definitely needs to be having these conversations about where we fit in this equation and think about what happens if they perfect uterine transplants. Could testicular ones be on the horizon next?"

Opens a lot of potential doors doesn't it?  Go here for more of the story.

Outing Myself

I believe I have mentioned that I finally stepped up and out by joining my local equality LGBT group.  This is huge in the sense those who talked behind my back will have to find someway else to entertain themselves.

Regardless of the outcome for all of them, I had to do what I had to do. Ironically I became involved in an in depth discussion with one of my long time friends who has stayed in the closet. (I do not begrudge him any of that.) All too quickly we jumped into one of my favorite soapbox topics: Stealth in the transgender culture. Here's how it started. I said I was completely surprised this group had no out transgender person, knowledge of our culture and almost no reference to it.


He said: "Okay, here ya go: (1) I believe that transition is about M to F or F to M paths, and if you chose to take that step you should know a little about the difficulty in getting to the end point. (2) I can see that some percentage of newly arrived F's and M's want to do something aligned with their attained gender and not risk that position by entering politics. That's their choice. On the other hand I don't have an issue with providing a little friendly support to someone on the journey, but I also disdain noisy in-your-face political activity completely."

The last reference was in response to my statement I was going to go to meetings and saying something about the lack of representation. Here is an abbreviated version of my response as I ignored the in-your-face comment:

"As far as the "going stealth" deal goes, I can see both sides of the story. Certainly we all know how incredibly difficult it is to switch genders and each is entitled to take their marbles and go home.  I do believe however that stealth is inherently wrong and will become unique to our generation. (Strictly speaking)  I attribute stealth to not risking yourself at all and it's the same as failing to cover another troop on the live BCT (basic training) range in the Army...but I know that is a bit dramatic. (We were both in the Army and I used it as a point of reference.)

You ask why I think the kids are doing it right? My latest big example was "Devon" on the Katie Couric Show.  I think in a couple of years she too will fade into the fiber of society to live as happily ever after as any of us can but she was totally stealth and still took a moment to come out and pay forward. I think the number of YouTube videos and the number of blogs are a sign of how these kids are building a better future for transgender people of the future. Their generation will change stealth to life on their terms and it just will fade away as a outmoded term. If you deal in semantics they will be going stealth and just living life on the same playing field as anyone else which is all we can ask for.

Now, let me point out of why getting surgery and going stealth didn't work for our generation. Did we indeed just jump from one closet to another? Yes! We did as all of the sudden we are waking up and realizing the transgender populace is the most legally discriminated minority in the country."

As the conversation moved on I used an example of an old mutual acquaintance from the mid 80's.  She went through SRS moved out West, married a man and became a very successful business person. Absolutely one of the most exuberant natural women I have ever met. Back to the chat:

"Susan" of course is the classic good transition example of a transsexual person we both know.  But now if she lived in Arizona and not in another state, all of the sudden she may have to produce a female birth certificate to even pee in a women's room.  If she was born here in Ohio she still can't get her birth cert changed by SRS. Was she mandated to make a statement? No. Should have she? Her call. I'm only using her as an example of my perceived epidemic generational transgender stealth problem.

The kids on the other hand, are realizing they better start screaming to get laws changed because no matter how good they look (Devon) a company can just up and fire them for being trans or can't even find a place to pee.

Before you accuse me of throwing huge rocks in glass houses,  I can rationalize my lack of action by saying I started late and didn't know how far I was going with this and then I get really torn by nights like last night. You know I have never felt I could go stealth no matter how hard I tried-but I could have been there last night. So now what do I do?

You are completely right to ask me why would I jeopardize all of that work over the years? The honest answer is at my age I'm in the home stretch of my life and I know due to very unpleasant circumstances in my life, I'm left with less to lose than others.

So bottom line, I should do some public work before I fade into whatever the next reality happens to be.  If I don't and there is another stopping point in eternity I would have to put transgender inaction in the loss column. My blog, Trans Ohio workshop and the Equality group are efforts to soften the defeat.  I will get back to you on the results!"

As you can tell, I flat out wore the "soap box" out!

So Sweet!

Almost had to refill the tissue box in the Cyrsti's Condo screening room today. Earlier I finally came to the conclusion I would have loved to have Humphrey Bogart's baby- then I saw this:

Feminine Privilege

It's just odd to me how some days just get into a karma flow and never seem to change until the sun comes up on a new day. I posted yesterday about how the day just started all warm and fuzzy girl like and then actually finished that way. If I was a surfer I would compare the day to riding a big smooth wave.

Last night I received a coupon on my email for a food item discount at one of my regular "haunts" and decided to use it.  I could eat and watch the Reds baseball game on one of their 2 zillion big screens, come home and get ready to help girlfriend with yard work today...a decidedly  non gender specific project.

Life was good in my girl world as guys opened doors for me and let me go first in narrow spots filled with others celebrating  One even made sure I got his seat as he was leaving with a grand sweep of his hand. (As close as I have ever come to a man pulling out a seat for me.) I thought Wow! I like this.

As all princess stories go though, they loose their buzz like that donut I'm eating will-shortly.

I would be remiss somehow if I labeled this under real female privilege so you notice I tossed it under "feminine privilege".  Just a few warm and fuzzies guys can do to women to make us feel better. Trans woman or not I was basking in the interior glow. Could it be I was becoming my dreaded "stealth" person? BUT: I'm not one to look a "gift horse in the mouth" because I have spent an incredible amount of time looking at or being a accused of being the other end of the horse.

I packed up my warm and fuzzies and headed home knowing I would need them today after a 30 degree temperature drop over the past two days. The "princess" doesn't have enough subjects to help tackle my girlfriend's yard. Such is life!

Japanese Cross Dressing

It's no secret Japanese guys cross dress into knock out women.
There have been several videos out for quite a while from a show featuring Japanese boyfriends being entered into this show by their girlfriends. (I think). At any rate I'm going to pass along this video on the Cysrti's Condo big screen and you can go from there. This is my favorite from the set because it seems the potential for so much more happening is there.
Hats off to the Japanese for having a show like this on television!

New Drag Queen Of Bollywood

Actually this is not so new and I have seen pictures of this actor before.  I have not seem him presented any other way so I thought I would pass this along on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen:




Obviously he is taking advantage of those very expensive breast forms!

Monday Night Highlights?

This morning I played role reversal sports with my girlfriend.  We were exchanging a few morning texts and she was trying to tell me which prime time games the Bengals were playing this upcoming season. However I was as insistent asking her ideas about highlighting my hair.  This coming week is salon hair visit before the Trans Ohio Symposium. The highlighting process is a little more expensive so I was wondering if I had to repeat the whole process on every visit. (No)

She asked was I feeling especially girly this morning since she was talking football and I was talking hair.

Actually I was.  Many of you loyal readers to Cyrsti's Condo know I identify transgender and not transsexual because I don't feel the pressing need for SRS.  Ideally I suppose you could label me as gender fluid too as some days I do feel more girly than others.

Looking back on a rather long and interesting life on the gender frontier, the more things change the more they stay the same. HRT or not, I think I was always very much the same person.  I just crushed the idea of thinking of "girl stuff" before "boy stuff". I dislike dealing in stereotypes but damn I still love my sports but I love them even more when my "girl fluid" is high.

Classic Cross Dressing Clip

Remembering an episode of dual cross dressing on the old "Boy Meets World" television series: