35 years of Cross Dressing Photos

From Behold the Photo Blog comes this very good article about a photographer you may have already heard about or have seen her work:

Kay, ex–Green Beret by Mariette Pathy Allen 

" Mariette Pathy Allen’s 35-year journey documenting the transgender community had a serendipitous beginning. In 1978, Allen and her husband went on a trip to New Orleans and happened to stay in the same inn as a group of cross-dressers. One morning after breakfast, the group began taking pictures by the swimming pool, and Allen, already with her camera equipment, gently asked if she could take a few shots as well. “I lifted the camera to my eye looking at these people and one person standing opposite me looked back at me and I felt I was looking into a soul, not a man, not a woman, but the essence of a human being, and I thought, I have to have this person in my life,” Allen recalled. That person, Vicki West, ended up living about 20 blocks from Allen in Manhattan and started introducing Allen to parties, friends, and conferences of people involved in the cross-dressing community. “I found it beyond fascinating,” Allen said. “I discovered I had something I could contribute. When I started doing portraits of transgender people, no one was doing it and I had to figure out what would be the most helpful way of doing it, what would be the meaning of it?”

To the right is another of Allen's photo's featured in the article which you can see by following the link above.

An interesting sidelight I'm noticing when I feature excerpts from other blogs is I have noticed my Google spell check is now highlighting "transgendered" as a miss spelling.  I took the liberty of correcting it twice in this excerpt.

Drag Out the Tupperware!

Turns out the leading Tupperware salesperson in North America is Aunt Barbra. Plus Barb is a guy.  So when Aunt Barbra is dragging out the plastic at her next party- she isn't kidding.  Yes a drag queen selling Tupperware and it turns out women are turning out in droves with their plastic credit cards to buy Barb's.
I'm fairly certain Aunt Barb isn't the only queen peddling their plastic wares but she was one of the features tonight on Entertainment Tonight who said "Babs" was making in excess of six figures a year in income!
I couldn't find that yet so I'm passing along an older video of Aunt Barb on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen:

Big Day on the "Tube"

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to see a short interview with Jennifer Finney Boylan.  Jennifer is an   author and professor plus one of the best known transgender people in America. She appeared on the NBC Today show with wife Deedie and son Zach and talked about her new book Stuck in The Middle with You: A Memoir of Parenting in Three Genders.

According to TV.Broadwayworld.com  later Friday night, 10p/9c on "Rock Center with Brian Williams," viewers will hear more from Jennifer and her family, including her wife Deedie who opens up about her reaction to the news, how she handled the transition and her fears about how it would affect their sons. A must see!

Jenna Returns!

From the Hollywood Reporter:

" TORONTO – E! Canada has ordered a reality series about the Canadian transgender beauty queen Jenna Talackova. The Toronto-based model -- born as Walter before a sex change -- failed in her bid to compete in the Miss Universe Canada pageant.  But Talackova has secured from Canadian broadcaster Bell Media and producer Peacock Alley Entertainment an eight-episode order for a series, Brave New Girl, about her headline-grabbing effort to work as a model. Joining her for the journey are friends, including a documentary filmmaker, and an outspoken model and student."

I will have to start checking for availability in the United States when it's completed!

Welcome to my World!

Back in my "princess" days , expressing my gender "separation" was simply how good I was looking in the mirror. My cross dressing was new exciting and extremely frustrating.

As I gender evolved and I began to truly understand who I was,  the path I needed to take became clearer. Looking back over the lessons learned and not learned, I sometimes feel I only have enough knowledge to make myself dangerous. For that reason, I'm always on the outlook for more. An example would have been the small all female friend birthday party I was invited to. Why do women do this so much different than men?

One of the biggest problems I have is knowing which of my feminine gender expectations are real or misconceptions. When one of my genetic female friends says "Welcome to my world",  I take for granted the lesson is real. Then I make it my passion to have a better understanding of what "their" world is. Normally the "obvious" isn't the true picture. I know I'm not covering earth shattering ground here. Any of you trans guys reading this are thinking DUH Cyrsti what is ever obvious about a woman? From both sides of the gender fence guys, I can tell you there are reasons all of us feel that way...all three genders.

Here's where I am going with this.  I'm fond of reading and passing along snippets of information from Ginger's Total Image Consultants site. I found the "Lose Your Self-Consciousness" post to be especially relevant. As transgender women or trans men we certainly have every reason in the world to be extra self conscious about our selves.  If women as a gender are more likely to be self conscious, aren't we more likely to be less obvious? As trans women this is a double edged sword because our self image is so important to how we present to the world.

To help, here's a bit of advice from Ginger's blog which is linked above:

"The funny thing about being yourself is that you have to lose your self-consciousness — the habit of judging yourself — in order to do it. You need to become so immersed in the moment and within yourself, that you begin to channel your pure creative spirit. It’s in this empowered state that we’re able to not only do our best work, but also experience the blissful joy of creative expression. As we link up with the Divinity in the present moment, we naturally connect with each other — the greater Oneness of all. That’s when the fun begins. Learning to be fully ourselves without concern for the reactions, judgments, or expectations of others is a life-long journey. Regardless of how confident and self-possessed you are there will always be times in life when you feel vulnerable and afraid to be yourself. That’s called living as a human being on planet earth. The important thing to remember is that self-consciousness is about you – not other people."

At some point of time, I can't wait to say "No! Welcome to my world"!

Nights in Columbus

Getting back to last weekend at the Trans Ohio Symposium, following the mental stress of my workshop my girlfriend and I thought maybe naps would be in order before we hit the streets of Columbus.  As I wrote in a previous post, the mental stress came from both of us listening to me! I also considered I was suffering from the symptoms of "low testosterone" Oh wait-I am according to my endocrinologist.

Saturday evening a show was planned at a venue called Wall Street Nightclub in downtown C-bus.  I have always been fond of Wall Street as it was one of my first places I went coming out of the closet before the days of electric light. Once again, the venue and the show did not disappoint. The acts were creative and crossed all ends of the gender spectrum. In fact sometimes it was difficult to figure out who was who doing what. A real pleasant change from the usual drag show!

Another difference was the timing of the show. It actually started on time at nine and was over by 11 and the club was being transformed into a huge dance floor.

Truthfully, girlfriend and I are not going to be seen on Dancing with the Stars anytime soon, so I suggested we go back to Club Diversity where we went the night before. My idea turned out to be one of the true bright ones I have happened upon in a while.

As in the night before, we found seats towards the end of the bar where the entertainer was just going nuts singing an Elton John medley on a piano. We didn't hesitate and dropped a few sheckles into his tip jar immediately!  Even more impressive was his obvious joy in performing. Then unbelievably,  the music only got better when a guy with a saxophone showed up. He joined in for a few more tunes to delight of all. We were certainly at the right place at the right time!

I figure it's always good to log in a positive score or two in the idea department to go with all those pesky negative's I seem to accumulate at a record pace!

As good times always do though, the two hours of music and fun went by in seemingly two minutes and it was time to go back to the hotel and look forward to the final phase of the weekend!

College was a Drag for F Scott

With the release of The Great Gatsby,

I thought it would be time to post a picture of F Scott Fitzgerald (the subject of the movie) in college drag.
right...

Buzzfeed reported that the photo was snapped in 1916 when the future "Great Gatsby" scribe was in his third year at Princeton University. Fitzgerald was then performing a play called "The Evil Eye," which he also wrote the lyrics for, with a musical-comedy troupe known as the Princeton Triangle Club.

I have no idea if this movie version of Fitzgerald's life covers his college years or female impersonation days but star Leonard DiCaprio just still may be pretty enough to pull it off!

Dookie Woop

Dookie Woop is an androgynous model and entertainer from Brazil.

Here is "Dookie's" YouTube channel.

I LOVE this Video

I respect quite a few video's on YouTube for the amazing transgender changes. Others I respect for the creative ways they are produced and presented. I love this for both.  Pull up a chair and enjoy my latest "discovery" on the Cyrsti's Condo big screen:





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