Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Our feature cover today is Brazil's beautiful transgender woman Luana Cimatti.

Technology and the Trans Woman

The more I bounce around the web, even I am impressed by the sheer numbers of pictures I encounter of all different "flavors" of men dressed as women, from cross dressers,  all the way to transsexual porn stars.

I simply marvel at the individuals who post literally thousands of pictures of themselves on sites such as Flickr as much as I marvel at pictures of transsexual women such as Domino Presley (left). It's no wonder so many so called "hetero" men are "intrigued"  and the majority of other trans women get the ugly "fall out."

Even though we live in an age of unprecedented advances in plastic surgery and HRT advancements, many times I have to look through the smoke and mirrors to see what I'm really looking at.  Domino reportively is an adult film star so her looks are a big part of her business. I assume, she has her peeps who market her in the social media.

On the other hand, there are numerous examples of other MtF video transitions on YouTube which produce equally as dazzling human beings.  And, let's not forget the power of a good picture-again go back to Flickr and notice how many of the "heavy hitters" have paid their way into professional camera/portrait studios. Finally, there are the huge percentage of "impostors" on sites such as Pinterest who aren't trans at all but genetic women.

It's quite the industry we have going here.  .from the lookers to those who are working hard to be looked at. The industry is male dominated and in most cases still has nothing to do with living a life as a transgender woman.  For a person such as me though who grew up in the information "dark ages", all of this is simply amazing!

Nail Failure and the Pretty Princess

I have a tendency to believe one of the least mentioned effects of HRT is what it does to your finger nails- at least to mine.  My nails have become paper thin just at a time in my life I need them to have substance I can style.

One place I have not been for help is a nail salon, yet.  My partner Liz wants to book us together for "mani/pedi's" sometime before summer  Oddly, it's not my feet which are causing me problems with the idea, it's my hands.  Neither are the most feminine in the world but Liz has convinced me my hands and feet are proportioned well for my body.  My hands specifically aren't huge but have and will continue to be subjected to what heavy labor I can still do. (My upper body strength is a fraction of what is was and my arm muscle definition has went with it!)

My fear is having my nails done and doing whatever and trashing them.  I'm working between two homes and yards. Not getting the work done by being the pretty, pretty princess (me) is not an option.

Two certainties in the upcoming months are, to lose weight (which the work will do for me) and to never whine about breaking a nail to any of my women friends. I'm sooooo sick of hearing welcome to our world! I've been here girls! Come on!

I'm not a real goal orientated person but with what's coming up, it is easy to set goals.  The Trans Ohio Symposium is scheduled for the very end of May and it is followed several weeks later by the biggest Pride weekend in the area - Columbus, Ohio.  My goal is simple- get down to my pre HRT weight before then.  I know it will be harder now than during my male life when all I had to do is cut back on a beer or two along with a pizza but I really want to make May/June yet another coming out month for me.

If I set my mind to it. Failure will not be an option.

Cyrsti's Condo "Quote of the Day"

Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Our feature cover today is Silver Summers

Cyrsti's Condo "Power Scope"

Well, the stars didn't take long to ground me from last week!

Libra: (September 23-October 22): Forget launching anything new now, because it’ll crash and burn. Not that your ideas or feelings aren’t valid, but timing is going to plague you, as you’ll hardly have any of it in a good way now. Lucky for you, your vivid imagination will be intact and will churn out powerful visions. So, despite the lack of progression, take cues from your creative spirit and flirt with inspiration.

As long as my "vivid imagination" is intact, life is good!
For your "scope" go here to theFrisky.

Whats Important to You?

In a week, I'm attending one of a series of meetings here in Ohio concerning community priorities for trans folks hosted by Trans Ohio.  Truthfully, my immediate reaction was, there are so many, where would you ever start? Plus over the past year or so, I have felt hindered by my age in such groups which are populated by younger people.
I used to do quite a few meetings such as these in other community groups I was in and a huge problem is just deciding on a few places to start. Quickly, I came up with just three:

1.-Visibility
2.-Employment
3.-Health Care

I'm not going into all three here except to say, all affect a transgender person regardless of age. For whatever reason my generation did a remarkable job of not being visible and are paying the price now by facing uncertain senior health care. Employment is a problem for everyone regardless of who you are and don't let the pundits kid you, jobs are still difficult to come by but even more so for transgender women and men. Here's an example from the Daily Nebraskan:

Elle Barts (left) went to her last job interview wearing a men’s suit and tie. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln alumna has applied for 30 jobs since she graduated with a degree in communication studies in August. She’s filled out applications for server positions, working behind a makeup counter and working as a forensics coach at a high school. Her resume – a solid GPA, four years of speech and debate, Big Ten forensics champion – gets her the interviews. But she said her identity as a transgender woman has prevented her from getting a job . She says it’s because she made a mistake. She told the managers she was transgender. “Are you OK with that?” she asked. They said, “We’ve never had one of those before.” 

"THOSE??" really? Unfortuantely I know "those" may be a kind word as compared to others but it does signyfy how far we have to go.  For more of the post go here.

Next week I will let you know how the meeting goes!

"Rockin" the Red!

My partner Liz and I finished out the weekend with her coloring my hair.  It was time!  My natural grays were starting to catch up with me! OK already, they passed me in the dust!

As far as color choices go, I have willingly given up the total decision process, remembering a few of the completely atrocious wigs choices I made. Truthfully, we both were basically on the same color pages. The only compromise I made was putting the box of a streaked ash blond mix back on the shelf-if  I could use similar highlights later this spring or summer with the red color I picked. Then, I was told to get two boxes to treat all the hair I have. Cool!  The color also words for me because red heads do run in my family as I have written here in Cyrsti's Condo. So,  my idea of going back to a deeper red hair is not completely unfounded unlike many of my other ideas.

If you have been through the process,  I think you would agree a home coloring ranks way below the sadistic rituals of waxing body hair and plucking eyebrows.  The process is just a little uncomfortable, even for a whiner like me, unless you screw up and leave the coloring on too long.  I just have a difficult time of sitting still plus I obsess over the treatment rinse and condition timing directions. I have a paranoia of leaving it on too long and my hair falling out!  Luckily, that didn't happen. The end result was I loved the color and softness of my hair. I'm sure you regulars here remember my earlier posts about visiting a salon for professional coloring.  The reasons I don't  now is money plus Liz does a great job and even wants to do it.


Of course I'm figuring  by now, you all are thinking, where the hell is our  "selfie" so we can see if Cyrsti did do something dumb with her hair! Well,  I'm getting a new phone later this week and assuming I can be smarter than the "smart phone", I promise a "seeing red" pix by next Monday at the latest!

Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Our feature cover today is Lorna Vanda in a classic 2005 picture from Puerto Rico.