Cyrsti's Condo "Cover Girl" of the Day

Our Friday feature cover beauty is androgynous model Kim Zuluaga
   

In-Sync

One of our regular contributors here in Cyrsti's Condo, Shelle,  recently sent in this comment:

Indeed waking up each day knowing you mind and body match your correct gender must be a huge blessing to the Cis-gendered world, one I have never known,I wake up each day knowing I will have to convince myself I am who I am,despite seeing things in the mirror that bring me great discomfort.

Thanks Shelle and to use an worn out term, we are talking about "cis priviledge".  The majority of humans do think gender is something to be taken for granted.

I took the concept a step further with a friend I mention many times around here, who is deeply in the closet. So deep he goes into deep rationalizations why. On the other hand though, he is a cis guy who somewhere got his wires crossed and fell into some sort of a interest into cross dressing. That's all good but sometimes he really frustrates me. As hard as I try, I can't seem to ever get the point across to him that just because I may have cross dressed a lot with some sort of minimal success-none of that has anything to do with who I am today.  I keep telling him being a cross dresser was not a gate way to me being transgender, just a band aid to fix the problem. That is how we differ.  I never was a cis guy but a pretender forced to live in their world.

Truly, I don't expect most of the world to understand what took me decades to come to grips with.  My life has very little to do with the fun external girl things (most of them) and everything to do with syncing my soul with the world.  Let's take my hair appointment yesterday for example.  Sure, just the whole feeling of being there and pampered and looking better was great but my soul was on fire with delight.  I "synced" my internal being with how the world was viewing me.

Many ask how does it feel to be feminine and I say, I can only answer to how it feels to be me physically. However, the effects of HRT have given me a point of reference into what a genetic woman's life is like. Examples are hot flashes, emotions, sensitivity to hot and cold, etc. But of course, I will never know the discomfort of a period, giving birth or any of the major "female" operations.

I'm with you Shelle, in that when I look in the mirror, I see a desperate attempt to reshape a 60 something male body into a feminine one for the world to see.  On the other hand, I am done convincing myself who I am. I finally know who that is!

Salon "Selfie"

Hope you can catch the shade of my hair in this selfie I took after my salon visit this afternoon with minimal makeup (as you can see.)

For the second time in a row I had the same guy do it and this time I think he out did himself with the color.  My hair is a bit short on volume to me but most of that has to do with how he flat ironed it because he cut a minimum amount of hair off. Under threat of bodily harm!

Sorry about not smiling, I really don't like to take pictures of myself - as you can see!

Cyrsti's Condo "T-Shirt of the Day"

No kids, one of the very rare times the "T" doesn't refer to transgender, transsexual or transvestite! I couldn't help passing this along:


It's from a shop on Etsy called "Atomic Bliss."

If you don't know it, the show actually refers to a popular American TV show aired from 1957-1963 called "Leave it to Beaver"

An Extra Shot of "E" Please

I'm very excited about this afternoon! Following a long brutal winter, I'm heading back to my hair salon for a "spring/summer" update.

I refer to the experience as being exposed to a "contact" dose of estrogen.  In other words, it's the female equivalent of going into a car parts store with a bunch of guys.  Of course in the salon I go to, there is the occasional guy and several "very pretty" effeminate male stylists but everyone else is genetic or transgender and is engaged in the feminine pursuit of feeling pampered.

On my first visit a year or so ago, the pampering part is what surprised me the most.  Of course I dearly love what a professional can do for my hair, but how they do it is even more fun.

Of course, each time I learn more and can communicate what I want done-rather than sitting in the chair and saying "what do you think?"  It's yet another example of the old "act like you've been there" quote, because I have.

This afternoon, I know I need my split ends cut off, plus some shaping. Plus, I can afford one highlight added to my basic reddish color, so I'm thinking about going with a lighter semi blond for summer. I have a tendency to over think the process and always forget to remember my hair grows rather fast as does it's color-which does a real quick fade to gray.  What ever I do, it won't take long to repair itself- if I screw it up.

Every time I can afford to go to the salon, I do come back with a greater realization of why women consider it a staple of their lives.  Not only do they look better, they get a chance to relax from the world and get back to feminine bonding,  mostly, with others of the same sex.

Professional Women

Many cross dressers in the "community" do an excellent job of "professional office drag".  I used to find the genre useful when I wanted to blend in shopping in upscale malls or stopping to eat in a nice restaurant.
Here are a few examples I found on Pinterest for Cyrsti's Condo.  If one is of you, please tell me and I will gladly give credit where credit is due...

The first is of Katie


The second (bottom right) has no credits:  As always my disclaimer is, on some of these pix, I have no way to know if any of these women are truly genetic-which on Pinterest I feel a high percentage are.








Our third office professional woman is "Carrie" to the left!

Cyrsti's Condo "Quote of the Day"

Trans fat = SRS weight gain?

Cyrsti Hart

"That's So Male!"

This is a cute quick story here in Cyrsti's Condo from an experience I had last night.

One of my genetic girl friends invited me to meet her for a drink and who was I to turn her down?  The place we went to was having live trivia-which I am deceptively good at.  What I mean is, out of ten questions, I get two right, two close and the rest I have no clue. The people around me (if they aren't paying too much attention) then think I'm some sort of savant and want me on their team-the jokes on them!  Plus, I have the attention span of a five year old, so I as go into rounds two or three, my mind is bored and is in another dimension.

You aren't supposed to cheat at this trivia and Google the answers so you can win but that didn't stop my friend and another woman down the bar from doing it.  Naturally, to do this you need to find an answer in a timely manner.  For whatever reason, I knew the place we were in had sketchy WiFi reception to start with, which was slowing the cheaters down. In short order, my friend got frustrated and started pounding her phone into the bar.  Not long after that, the woman down the bar did the same thing.

I was amazed and said to my friend, "that was so male!"  (It was!)  She quickly turned to me and sputtered "how do you sit there with your hair and boobs and all and tell me that?"  I calmly said "because I have been there and can say it."  Conversation over.

I look at it this way, over the years I have been called a "transgender pretender" because of my lack of desire to "purge" all of my masculine past.  To me, pulling a gender card out from the bottom of the deck on occasion, is just pay back for all the hell I went through to get here.

Besides, as I told my friend (who has invited me to lesbian only events over the years), I could have never come close to the innate masculinity in many of those women!  What a wonderful diverse world we humans live in if we could understand and enjoy the show.

Cyrsti's Condo "Quote of the Day"

On transgender hiring:  Why wouldn't an employer want to hire me? I have all of the expertise and experience that was afforded me by being a man, but now I'd only have to be paid 77% of a man's salary.

Connie Malone