Cyrsti's Condo "Did You Know?"

Here's a real conversation starter-or finisher. Did you know the Dalai Lama follows no one on Twitter? Not even Lebron James?  Source: Ellen Claycomb, Twitter.
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And You Thought You Had This Girl Thing Down!

Stick with me here as I try to "structure" this post.

I'm going to start it with an experience I had 199 years ago as a kid and build from there.  In my youth, every friggin year, our vacation was a two week trip up to the area around Toronto, Ontario - Canada. Dad would rent out a fishing cabin on a lake called "Rice Lake" and we would do our best to fish it out. We caught the fish, cleaned the fish, froze the fish and ate them every Friday for a year until it was time for...you guessed it...fish for more.

One year when I was probably 12 or so, we found enough kids in the camp to form a tackle, no pads football game.  Being the overly compensating male kid I was, my hero was a fullback for The Ohio State University and I wanted the ball.  I got the ball all right and was picked up and slammed down on my shoulder.  My collar bone was broken and my Dad temporarily lost an employee. Ironically,  what sticks with me to this day is when the doctor said to my Mom, "well the collarbone is broken, but he won't have to worry about wearing a strapless dress anytime soon."  He was right in a way- it was several years before I did go strapless.

Then! I read this from the "Fashionista" beauty blog..."Everything You Need to Know About Collarbone Contouring!" Dammit! You mean I spent all those years contouring my collar bone "bump" wrong?  Where was the internet when I was a kid and needed it?

Then! Bobbie sent me a link on Facebook to a Greenville Gazette article where a Tracy Spicer gave a talk about the pressures society puts on women to look a certain way. She explains that women spend an average of 3,276 hours of their lives grooming. Men spend a third of that primping themselves.

“Imagine what we could achieve if we weren't beholden to society’s unreasonable expectations about how we should look,” Spicer says. In the amount of time it takes every year grooming, women could learn another language or get a degree. The sky is the limit to what women could accomplish with that time.   

DUH!

No big surprise there Tracy! What she didn't say was how much of that pressure comes from within the women's sandbox. Who do women dress for first, men or women? Personally, I feel if I present well and blend with the women I'm around I can move around in the world with less potential problems. In other words, I'm passing the girl's "sandbox test".  It's a tough crowd in "the box" though and I'm sure proper contouring of my collar bone would have given me a bit more respect from the "A" listers - if I had only known!

Thanks Bobbie! Here's my second book plug recently (making me feel like Dr. Phil) but there is quite the discussion of the "girl's sandbox" in one of the chapters of "Stiletto's on Thin Ice."

Cyrsti's Condo "Oops!"

My wife said she was out with the girls. Turns out now, she was out with my guy friends and is bringing them home in five minutes!!!

Cyrsti's Condo "Quote of the Day"

I found this on Twitter:

You’ll drown in my depth if you don’t know how to swim. No lifeguard on duty…

@WestofCrazy

Will You Take Half a Man-Part Two

I have received several very good comments to my recent Cyrsti's Condo post concerning a recent coming out to a genetic woman in my family.

The point I don't think she ever really understood- was why I wasn't sexually attracted to men, now or ever. Believe me, I have wondered about that too.  In my past, I have "made out" with guys and kissed a few who bothered not to stand me up on a date...or even didn't spit on the floor after they kissed me...really?  All of that aside, all I can say is-the spark just isn't there. Say what you want (and more than a few will), identifying as a trans lesbian puts me even a notch lower on the mythical "I'm more Trans than you" scale. The fact remains, I'm way past that kind of criticism and I know the rather archaic idea of a man dictating the femininity of a woman wouldn't play well to any of my lesbian and most of my straight women friends. As Marion commented though:

These are questions that many in the cis-gendered world do not have a clue about. They think that gender presentation and identification are related to gender preference. And until they see that these are separate, we have a lot of educating before us....

Education indeed is the key word and it is happening more than we know. In fact, my family friend ( to my surprise) had a real grasp of what a transgender woman was all about, from a couple of television shows she had seen.  More importantly, her grasp wasn't a negative one.  Just because she had problems understanding the gender versus sexuality concept didn't make the experience any worse.  I sometimes don't think many in the transgender - cross dressing community have it figured out either.

So, I think by now all of you know I was happy with the experience. In a future post, I will have to pull a few coming out excerpts from my "Stiletto's on Thin Ice" book .

Speaking of the book, I do have several readers who took the time to leave wonderful reviews such as Don and Mindy.  I'm so insecure, I was afraid to even look!!! If you follow the Amazon link on the upper right hand side of the blog, you can buy it for your Kindle.

Finally, Jen said it best (instead of a half a man)  I think it's more like two for the price of one, or maybe "get this special bonus" if you act before midnight :-)

Cyrsti's Condo "Quote of the Day"

You can't get much more to the point than this:

This was labeled - a cross dresser and a bed.

Seeing In Color

I'm sure many of you regulars here in Cyrsti's Condo don't remember your first look at color television back in the day.  If you do, perhaps you recall the NBC Peacock spreading it's color wings before an episode of Bonanza.  For me at least, it was my first color television show.

The reason I bring it up is, all of the sudden I'm seeing much of the world in color- as my HRT- MtF transition continues to subtly and not so subtly change me.  It's no secret, men see emotions and relationships more or less in black and white and women in color.

It's been interesting to me, it's another of the facets of my transition I can't really talk to a genetic woman about. Why? Because they have lived with the colors their whole life and just don't understand being emotionally color blind.  Increasingly, it's easier to not bring it up at all, than to hear the worn out "welcome to our world."

They need to adjust the colors on their sets! (Yes, you used to had to.)  In the meantime, it's a new and interesting world to me in color!

Will You Take Half a Man?

With the recent health family crisis behind me (and yet another laid to rest),  it's time to backtrack with all of you here in Cyrsti's Condo about how I fared during a recent coming out with a long time female family member.

To start with she is the "double nickle", 55 years old and was a former "wild child" well into her 30's,  married for a short time but for the most part, shopping around.  I always had a real respect for her sense of style and femininity. She was a woman who would always make sure she looked her best in case she met a new man at the store.

It's curious now how the tables have changed, and while I don't think they have to for her, that's her call not mine.  I believe she has more "charge" remaining in the batteries than she thinks.

Coming out to her was simply a matter of being in the right time at the right place-even though for the wrong reason. (The health crisis with her Mom.)  I have written how she took it rather matter of factly, with healthy doses of curiosity.

I am sort of like the dog who has rarely been beat, when it comes to my "Coming Out" experiences. I simply haven't experienced much negativity but then again, I haven't needed to come out to a large group...another story.

So when I came out to her, I just wasn't expecting the shock and awe I have so rarely seen. (Didn't get it again.)  So, being the cynical bitch I can be, when she said yesterday she needed a man to come along with her as she worked on tying up the loose ends of her Mom's final expenses, etc. I said, "will a half a man do?" She laughed with me and started back in on the biggest question she has with me being transgender - why am I with a female partner?  Don't all transgender women want a man and isn't that one of the reasons we transition? Why would I want to be a woman and not want a man? Another story.

I told her while that is true in the majority of the MtF trans cases it seems, as always, I'm destined to walk a slightly different path which we will discuss here later in Cyrsti's Condo.

Vintage- Classic- Androgyny

I couldn't resist passing along this androgynous classic here in Cyrsti's Condo: