Girl meets boy dressed as girl

I suppose this will be my obligatory Valentine’s Day post about cross-dressing and romance…(nah; not really).

I’ve already talked about how a number of guys have responded to Twist; what about women? I’m a heterosexual guy in a skirt who happens to be engaged. But as ‘Twist’, I’m both more outgoing and rather more coy; I suppose I’d have to say Twist is flertarosexual – nothing more than a flirt.*

I also asked a number of my female friends for their thoughts and opinions; I’ve been swamped with so many nuggets, gems and useful insights I can probably generate three or four posts out of it all. (My thanks to all of them!)

Twist was surprising to my conservative upbringing… with very old-fashioned, strong, gender-stereotypes… The only context in which I would see a man dressed as a women is when they were making fun of women…

I couldn’t quite wrap my head around you at first because, you weren’t gay, you weren’t a drag queen – you were an actual, straight, perfectly regular man who just wanted to dress like a woman, and did it in such a way that it was obvious you weren’t making fun of us… it made me feel amazing in a way I’d never felt before. My femininity was suddenly awesome, not something pathetic for frat boys to parade and degrade themselves with.

Pre-Twistoric relationships

I went to a rather old-fashioned boys-only school in the 80s (pop psychologists are invited to keep their opinions to themselves at this point), which wasn’t really the kind of environment where a boy could express his feminine side, or engage in even the most rudimentary kind of relationship with girls. So when I made friends with girls at university, it seemed a bit mind-blowing at the time.

Happily, I got to know enough girls who were comfortable with the idea of me borrowing their dresses for parties, that I could experiment a bit with cross-dressing. And that’s when I noticed something a bit odd: for some reason, it was easier to hang around women whilst cross-dressed – or was it just me?

I guess when boys dress like girls it makes them kind of more relatable.

As a post-adolescent boy who’d had limited female contact, this was bloody fantastic; if I put on a dress, I’d end up surrounded by girls wanting to doll me up with makeup, lend me bras to be stuffed full of toilet paper, and actually – you know – talk with me. All the guys at these parties would end up on the other side of the room, drinking beer and burning through cigarettes, casting glances at the cross-dresser who’d infiltrated the girls’ corner (cuttlefish do this too, you know).

I can’t quite put my finger on it but it may because with Twist there’s a bit of feminine competitiveness that comes out when I’m in her company, in that she ups the ante to be funny, wild, a bit rude or risqué.

One of them – my psychology lab partner – once said that “if [she] was into girls, [she’d] bang my goddamn brains out” (which was the weirdest and most gratifying compliment I ever received at university, seared into my brain for all time); sadly she wasn’t and didn’t, but one of her friends took me home with her at the end of the party. (Years later, a couple of female friends have joked “dammit, stop turning me gay!”, which I take as the lighthearted compliment it’s intended as.)

Perhaps some bisexual and lesbian women are legitimately attracted to you as Twist, but any straight women (because orientation is not a choice) might simply be saying this because Twist makes you more attractive as a man.

When my improv troupe went to see the then-latest James Bond film, the girls wanted to dress as 007 in tuxedos, and they wanted the guys to dress as Bond girls – because I was the director of the show at that point, they picked out a dress for me (a flirty red minidress, amply padded)… so, as far as cross-dressing went, I think I struck lucky!

You have a very alluring and fascinating character there! Boys and girls are all drawn to Twist…

As for the girlfriends I had back then, some were OK with me cross-dressing, some were weirded out and happy if I didn’t mention it ever again, and one  really liked it. I mean really. (That would have been one of those intense ‘the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long’ kind of relationships.) Yes, I’m glossing over a lot of details; I already told you Twist is coy. Generally speaking, the ones who met me cross-dressed found it easier to deal with than the ones who found out after we started dating.

So, there are women out there who are quite happy to have cross-dressing boyfriends; I’m pretty sure there’s always someone out there who’ll accept you the way you are and the way you want to be. And there are some who’ll positively encourage it…

(From ViaVia, 8 December 1994)

I saw this advert from a newspaper clipping used in a Dutch textbook I read for a university course. It’s asking for women’s summer clothes – “Man must wear girls’ clothes for his girlfriend; therefore looking for a wide range of tight summer dresses, miniskirts, hotpants, blouses, swimsuits…” Forced feminisation is a fantasy for some guys; clearly this dude was living the dream!

…[men who] don’t act like MEN (sports, beer, and misogyny)… are generally sensitive, good listeners, not afraid to display their emotions, etc (‘girlie’ qualities)… and ‘Manly’ men don’t like this.

Cross-dressing is great fun; more so when you can find someone to share it with. But I suspect many of the women who are attracted to it might be just as reluctant to ‘come out’ as the guys who cross-dress.

Once you’re comfortable with your own cross-dressing, you’re more likely to find someone else who’s comfortable with it too. Until you find that special someone, just do it for its own sake.

After all, not all women are into manly men:

from Shortpacked by David Willis:
http://www.shortpacked.com/2011/comic/book-13/05-the-death-of-snkrs/falseequivalence/

*It’s hard finding a phrase that means “my sexuality s nobody else’s business”.
I could describe myself as ‘cryptosexual’ (‘hidden sexuality’), but the illiterates of teh interwebz have gotten there before me and defined it as ‘sexual attraction to mythological creatures’, not realising that that would describe a ‘cryptozoosexual’ (attraction to ‘hidden animals’).
I can’t use ‘idiosexual’ (‘private sexuality’); it’s been hijacked to refer to chronic masturbators (that should be ‘autosexual’).
It’s a matter of some irritation to me that the evolution of language is driven by people who won’t read a bloody dictionary. Yes, I know this makes me a bitter snob; deal with it. 🙂

How to use your looks for mind control

Winners wear red (this may depend on what counts as a ‘win’)…

I’ve often pointed out that if our clothing has an effect on other people, that’s their problem, not ours. I suppose it’s time to science this matter: how can our clothes affect other people?

There are a few brave souls out there who’ve experimented with changing their look and documenting reactions for our edification: for example, trying out goth, vintage and natural looks; or varying levels of makeup on a dating website. While these articles are often quite entertaining and insightful, they suffer from the problem “N=1”; they’re just one-off stories and it’s probably a bad idea to generalise from them, no matter how much we might want to agree with them. The same goes for the ‘common-sense’ ideas about the messages other people pick up in our clothes. As a general rule of thumb, common sense ain’t so common (or sensible, for that matter).

There are a couple of findings I kinda liked:

1) Winners wear red

In a study of Olympic combat events (Hill & Barton, 2005), ž55% of bouts won by competitors in red. Okay, but maybe those competitors just happened to be better fighters? Another study of Taekwondo bouts (Hagemann et al, 2008) used clips of matches in which the competitors wore blue or red. These clips were shown to ž42 referees who would award points. Sneakily, the same clips were shown again, but with the colours digitally swapped over. It turned out that on average, fighters in red were awarded 13% more points than those in blue.

So, it looks like there’s some evidence that the colour of our clothes can affect how other people react to us. Just bear in mind that these studies were in a purely sporting context, and there’s nothing to suggest whether these are innate or biological reactions, or based on cultural cues. And there’s more to winning than simply wearing red (just ask Charlie Sheen).

2) Sexiness is distracting for about half of us

žA study on decision-making and bargaining (Wilson & Daly, 2004) presented (presumably heterosexual) male and female participants with pictures of attractive or plain people of the opposite sex and asked them to rate their attractiveness. Then they would take part in a exercise in which they’d have to divide up sums of money and judge whether to take a small, immediate reward or a larger reward later.

Women will not be distracted by men’s attempts to be sexy.

They found that, generally speaking, women weren’t really affected by the pictures of attractive men and didn’t make poorer choices. However, pictures of attractive women made men perform worse (compared with neutral pictures). The effect is more pronounced in men with higher testosterone levels.

Sexiness makes men stupid. Science says so. So there!

Conclusion?

Even if the way we look affects other people (and remember, these can be very subtle effects in very specific situations), I don’t think this is any reason to dictate what we can wear.  I don’t think any of this has any impact on the principle that if someone else is distracted or made uncomfortable by what they see, that’s their problem not ours…

 

Adventures in Crossdressing (part two): hit’n’miss, hit on Miss Twist

Ciao!

From time to time you have to face the fact that some men will chase anyone in a skirt, quite literally. How should we deal with this? If you do find yourself being hit on whilst cross-dressed, it does help if you have bags of self-confidence. Either that, or fake it well enough that others won’t know the difference.

I once went to a meal out with friends from my writing group, and we’d decided on a general sartorial theme of “something that takes you out of your comfort zone, or other people out of theirs.” This theme was tempered by the fact we were eating in an Italian restaurant in the city centre, so we didn’t go over-the-top or anything; just goth makeup, leather kilts and me in PVC leggings – that sort of thing.

Over the course of the evening, I was hit on by three Italian waiters. I suspect the first tried to set up the other two as a prank, but I’ll never know. I also reckon they told the chef, because every ten minutes or so, a Slavic face popped out from the kitchen door to stare at me. When I tried to avoid laser-eyed Boris, or an ingratiating ‘”Hey, ciaoooo!!!”, I found myself being stared at by a guy I think of as ‘Wistful Dad’, who was eyeing up women at other tables, presumably to take his mind off the wife and kids sitting with him. I was directly opposite him, so caught him looking at me …a bit too frequently. My girlfriend (now fiancee) was sitting next to me and thought it was hilarious. At least it was a controlled environment, surrounded by friends, and we could leave easily.

More recently, I went clubbing for the first time in 20 years (I decided dancing wasn’t my thing when I was a teenager). A friend in York was celebrating his 40th birthday with a fancy dress party. After a few months of watching my diet more carefully than usual, I went as Lara Croft: blue vest, unignorable cleavage, and those tight, nad-mashing leather shorts which make me feel practically functionally female…

Boy, they really like Lara Croft in York! Especially on a Races Night. I think I had a dozen requests for people to have their photo taken with me around the streets – usually after they realised I was a guy…

Anyway, in one pub, a woman approached me and said, “‘ere, you are a bloke, aren’t ya? Me ‘usband’s been starin’ at yer arse fer ‘alf an ‘our! Come with me a minute, will ya, luv?”

She then introduced her husband and I to each other, thusly:
“You’ve been starin’ at a man’s arse, ya silly sod! Go on, tell ‘im!”

I just shrugged.

“Yeah, I’m a 38-year-old man,” I explained, “All it means is you like things that look feminine.”

He didn’t say anything. He just stared, slack-jawed. A couple of groups at the tables behind him applauded and took photos with their phones. I don’t think there’s anything I could’ve said that would make him feel less embarrassed (“Hey, c’mon, don’t be sad – everybody loves buttocks!”). There was simply no way his wife was going to let him forget this. Ever.

After the party a bunch of us went to a newly-opened nightclub, still in costume. As I said, I’m not much of a dancer, but I was up to my eyeballs with Red Bull and I simply thought “fuck it.” On the dancefloor, a drunken racegoer tried grabbing one of the women in the group, going for her wig. Being a wearer of a feminine wig, I’m kind of sensitive about that sort of thing. But mostly, I just couldn’t believe that some prick would do that to someone he doesn’t even know.

“DUDE – NOT COOL!” I barked.

He looked at me and I can only assume his brain did that blue-screen-of-death you get with a crashed computer. I could see the cogs weren’t going around – they were just jammed in a kind of “Lara Croft… but it’s a guy… Lara Croft… but it’s a guy” groove. (The woman he grabbed gave him a fearsome earful. Do not mess with Yorkshire women; they’ve had to deal with Yorkshiremen.)

Going clubbing in a blue vest and tight leather shorts is either very brave or very foolish.

A month later at the end of the Edinburgh Fringe, after emceeing a show on the final night, I was faced with a 45 minute queue for a taxi at about 1.30am. Or, I could walk home in heels in 20mins. I walked. (But not before a random punter asked to take a photo of my chest. I said yeah, sure, whatever floats your boat…)

I made it a less than a couple of minutes down a steep, cobbled street when a guy jumped out, presumably to scare first girl he saw. Except I’m not a girl, nor scared. His brother and brother’s fiance standing nearby pissed themselves laughing. The fiance asked me how I got my tits like that and showed me hers (erm… you don’t have to do that, really!); the brother mocked her for taking fashion tips on how-not-to-be-flat-chested from a guy. I told her to work with what she’s got, which is more than what I have. Then the jumper came out as a closet cross-dresser with a *ton* of questions for me. Feeling charitable, I answered them all (jeeeeeeezuz). Anyway, after a group photo and handshakes and smiles, we went our separate ways.

Five minutes up the road, and a guy in too-tight jeans and a smart shirt, looking like the last dregs of his youth were slipping from his grasp, looked me up and down (I was wearing a rainbow-coloured Space Invaders dress, if that helps explain things).

“Awwight, dahhhlin’? Fancy comin’ back to my place for a pahhhhty?”

I hadn’t taken my heels off*, so my sole tactical manoeuvre (“Run away!“) wasn’t an option. I would have to rely on bravado and hope things didn’t turn nasty.

I sighed.

“Dude. I’m tired, footsore and busting for a piss. I’m in three pairs of Spanx. All I want to do is go home, take all this crap off, have a shower, and sleep. If you’re still interested, you’re out of luck.”

Happily, I appeared to have sassed him into silence/ submission/ mental-bluescreen-of-death. I think my 38-year-old-guy-voice helped. He looked really dopey for a moment (kinda like the buttock-fancier in that York pub) and walked silently away (it was a busy-ish road, thankfully). I was mightily relieved to get home without further incident.

Moral of the story? Well, I don’t have one. These are all just one-off incidents and I’m not going to generalise from them. All I’ll say is that cross-dressing may not let me know what it’s like to be a woman, but I think it gives some fascinating insights into what it’s like to be seen as a woman… and that’s a lesson I think a lot of guys could benefit from.

I had no problem hailing a taxi dressed like this.

*Heel-wearers might question this choice – I can only assume you’ve never seen the state of Edinburgh’s streets on the last night of the Festival…

Crazy, sexy, cool!

“My short skirt, believe it or not, has nothing to do with you.”

(Warning: this is about twice the wordcount of my usual blog entries, so brace yourselves. This took ages to write because it’s a subject I wanted to be very, very careful with. We’ll see…)
*Updated with extra links 17/04/15.

There are certain assumptions made about the way we dress, and some of them bug me. Hopefully, I’ve written enough from a psychological perspective to show that crossdressers aren’t crazy. And I’ve been fairly consistent in saying that if other people read some sort of message in what you’re wearing, that’s their problem, not yours.

I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men. – Marlene Dietrich

For example, I recently wrote about a hipster scientist’s t-shirt covered with cartoon women in tight or skimpy clothing wielding guns. Some of my friends were incredulous that I couldn’t see it as sexualised imagery, objectifying and degrading women. The design wasn’t really my taste, but I didn’t think of the characters as sexy or sexualised – merely cartoony, deliberately trashy, and (to my eye) contrived – which, on a (desperately?) fashion-conscious scientist could only be described as ‘kitsch’.

So my friends saw it as sexualised; I did not. I don’t think any one of us was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’; these are only judgement calls.

Sometimes I’ll decide an image is sexualised and I don’t think there’s anything scientific about it; it’s just an impression I get, and sometimes I’ll change my mind. Even so, I’m bothered by the insistence that some things are ‘sexy’ or ‘sexualised’.

I have no problem with sexiness. The things I find sexy are nobody else’s business; but whatever I find sexy, others might not. Whatever others find sexy, I might not. I think the same holds true for sexualisation, too; sexiness and sexualisation are in the eye of the beholder.

I do wonder if there’s persistent assumption that female clothing is sexy clothing; that women dress to look good (…for the benefit of men); and that if men wear female clothing it’s because they want to look sexy (or that it says something about their sexuality).

It’s the idea of seeing things in a sexual context that bugs me – because I think we all do it, it’s done pretty much all the time, we can’t help it, and I think -somehow- it’s a problem.

I think that sexuality is only attractive when it’s natural and spontaneous. – Marilyn Monroe

Disgusted by ‘sexiness’?

Examples of ‘sexy’ and ‘conservative’ clothing from Vaillancourt & Sharma’s study.

A study by Vaillancourt and Sharma (2013) found women were typically hostile towards to the perceived sexiness/sexualisation of another woman, and suggested female competition for male mates as a reason. Thinking back to some of the religious, cultural influences on clothing (not mention on sexuality), I’d suggest there’s an element of ‘moral disgust’ at work.

Ever hear of short, figure hugging, or skimpy clothes on women being described as ‘slutty’, ‘tarty’, or ‘whore-ish’? I don’t think it matters if it comes from socially-conservative types complaining about women wearing whatever they want, or socially-liberal types complaining about the way female characters are presented in the media (for example). Both strike me as disapproving, censorious attitudes and I don’t care much for either of them.

Whether it’s clothing, costume or art, it’s merely a form of expression, and it shouldn’t matter that not everyone is OK with it – but that’s just my current opinion. (Mind you, if women are presented almost entirely in a particular way in certain media – as busty, pouty-lipped, super-fit, spandex-clad superheroines, for example – then yes, I can easily see how that shit gets old fast. Variety is a good thing, and I like to identify with well-written and interesting characters rather than ‘good-looking’ ones.)

If I don’t see particular imagery as ‘sexualised’ it could be because 1) not everyone will see it as such and that’s fine, or 2) people who don’t see sexualisation are blind to it because they’ve been brainwashed by the media (or for some other reason). The second of these strikes me as one of those unfalsifiable ‘heads-I-win, tails-you-lose’ arguments. This doesn’t mean the idea is wrong as such, just unfalsifiable; but one should never assume one must be right simply because one’s argument can’t be proven wrong.

Is sexy/sexualised imagery harmful?

In a 2009 review of studies into the effects of pornography, Christopher Ferguson found that the effects of pornography “appear negligible, temporary and difficult to generalize to the real world”. As McKee (2007) found, it’s not exposure to pornography that correlates with negative attitudes towards women, but more general things such as being old, or voting for a socially-conservative political party. If anything, all we can say is that there is no demonstrable link between sexualised or pornographic imagery and sex crimes or harmful attitudes towards women.

Porn and sexualised imagery aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’; they just ‘are’. You’re entitled to be attracted, disgusted, offended, or turned on by them as you wish; just don’t expect others to see things the way you do. If you want to find out what drives harmful attitudes, you’re better off looking at the effects of peer groups and social culture, rather than anything that might appear in the media.

Sexy or sexualised clothing?

Say what you want about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins. – Mae West

What do you think when you see someone in tight running gear? Maybe you think they look sexy. But it’s not sexualised clothing, despite the tiresome arguments over yoga pants that have flitted past my attention in recent weeks. The same is true of swimwear and underwear. Fancy dress costumes might be a grey area, but I still think it’s in the eye of the beholder – as are ‘fetish’ materials like latex, rubber, leather and the like.

Maybe, instead of thinking they’re sexy/sexualised, the wearers simply like the look and feel of these clothes? That’s not to say the wearers aren’t putting them on to look or feel sexy, but just to say that there’s a whole range of reasons for wearing what we wear. I think if someone views clothing (or art) only through a prism of how sexy/sexualised it is, and whether it delights or offends their sensibilities as a result, it’s a terribly limited perspective. Sure, they’re entitled to it, but I hope they’ll understand that not everyone has to go along with it.

So what about me?

What about my clothing choices? What motivates me to wear tight catsuits or short dresses? Simple: vanity.

It’s not because I’m slutty, tarty, or whore-ish. It’s not because I want to look sexy or feel sexy. It’s simply that I think the clothes look cool. And I feel that if I want to wear them with any degree of confidence, I have to watch my weight and keep my figure slim (easier said than done). After going to all that effort, you’d better bloody believe I want to show off.

I’ll only show off if I’m feeling confident about myself. And there’s nothing sexier than confidence. (Make of that what you will…)

The notion of seeing clothing as sexy/sexualised does nobody any favours.

While I was putting this blog entry together, my attention was drawn to comments made by Tracy King (15th April 2015):

Men must have a chart somewhere that specifies, in millimetres, the exact size of boobs that crosses from ok to not ok. It’s a sort of weird backwards fat-shaming. Bigger boobs must be hidden not because they’re unattractive, but because they’re attractive. I got street harassed three times yesterday because the weather is warm and I dress appropriately (appropriately for the weather, that is). Wear skimpy clothing, invitation to all men ever to initiate a conversation in the street that usually starts with “hey babe”. I also don’t consider the street harassment I get based on clothing/body to be “victim blaming”. I am not a victim. The men who think women should cover up, THEY are the victims, of toxic masculinity.

Just who in the hell decides what’s ‘appropriate clothing’ or not? And is there anyone out there wearing ‘inappropriate clothing’ telling them where to go? Well, that’s a question I’ll have to tackle next time…

*(NB: The title of this blog entry came from a marketing slogan I kept hearing on New Zealand television many, many years ago. Personally, I have no objections if anyone thinks of me as any of those three things; I know what I’m about, even if they don’t…)

I, object?

Trying to look sexy? Trying to look cool? Dressing your age? Is that how women are ‘supposed’ to look? What do you think you look like anyway?

There’s something that niggles about people’s perceptions of our clothing choices. I want to give it an in-depth take, which has led to a whole bunch of pondering (not always a good sign) and I’m going to have to split this up over a couple of blog posts (at least) – and think very, very carefully about what I want to say and how I say it. Treat this as a work-in-progress; it might not even reflect my current views, let alone my final views.

There are certain cliches, stereotypes and mental shortcuts we use when we think of women (the stick figure in a dress on women’s toilet doors being a clear example). Crossdressing – for whatever motive – will pick up on some or all of these. The way women are treated or represented in culture will no doubt correlate with the way cross-dressers are regarded too. Previously, I’ve wondered if cross-dressing helps reinforce these stereotypes, ‘objectifying’ women in some way – should I feel guilty at all? (And that’s way before we get to our cliches, stereotypes and mental shortcuts of cross-dressers…)

Objects of discussion

Venus de Willendorf (from Wikipedia)

The Venus de Willendorf is one of the oldest representations of a woman in Western European art history; she is naked.

Why was she created? As a toy? Does she represent a goddess? Was she used to instruct people on anatomy or reproduction? Was she created as a symbol of beauty for women to aspire to? Or was she carved by a lonely man desperate for company? Already, based on these ideas, this statue could be a paleolithic version of Barbie, the bible, a biology text book, Cosmopolitan or Playboy, and there’s no way of deciding if any of these interpretations are correct or not.

Whatever answer the observer comes up with will say more about the observer than the creator.

The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, circa 1485 (from Wikipedia).

Sticking with Western art, subsequent representations of women have become more varied and sophisticated (and you can find some great interpretations of what’s going on in them here). Take an obvious example like Botticelli’s The Birth Of Venus. We can say it represents a religious figure; it illustrates a story; she might hint at standards of beauty at the time she was painted, and we can’t rule out that there might be a hint of titillation on the part of the artist (maybe there was; maybe there wasn’t). Some people might like the image, others might be put off by the nudity. I have no problems with someone else’s ‘yuk’ response, as long as they don’t impose it on others; if they don’t like it, they can look the other way. (For some people, the ‘yuk’ response extends to destroying any hint of male genitalia on statues, or disfiguring feminine features on mannequins.)

A much-mimicked image…

Fast forward again to modern culture (yes, I know; but I’m trying to keep this brief and focused). There’s a bit of a backlash against some of the ways women are presented in toys, television, movies, games, comics (such as the Not Safe For Work Spiderwoman – skewered here by theoatmeal.com), men’s magazines and women’s magazines. I’m leaving pornography out of this, since it is made with a specific intent; however, some people may see non-pornographic representations of women as sexualised – something I hope to address in the next blog entry.

Part of the problem is the fact that female characters are presented in unrealistic ways which their male counterparts never are – see, for example, John Scalzi and Jim Hines’ delightful, cross-dressed piss-takes of book covers (I knew I could get cross-dressing in there somewhere!). Are these stereotypes and cliches merely stylistic choices – a visual shorthand to tell the viewer what sort of character they’re looking at? Is it lazy art? Is it cruel, or demeaning? Or is it ironic, kitsch, just for fun? Are those who see problems in these images hypersensitive? Are those who don’t see problems blind to them?

I couldn’t possibly say. But I can say that the notion that poor representations of women in the media will cause them to be poorly regarded in real life does not work (at least, not as simply as you might imagine); ‘Media Effects Theory‘ gets causality the wrong way around.

Audiences… use media in their own way and for whatever purpose.

I’m not about to tell people that their opinions are wrong, but I’m not going to tell them they’re absolutely correct, either. My opinions are my own, and I might disagree with you – and this isn’t a matter of ‘being right or wrong’. As with the Venus de Willendorf, what you think probably says more about you than the image you’re looking at.

I’ll leave you for now with a picture I put together a couple of years ago (in a pose I could hold for 15 seconds, tops).

It seemed like a good idea at the time…

Why did I make it? To look sexy? To look cool? To show off? To make a point about unrealistic poses struck by female action heroes? Because I think this is what women should look like, obviously being a male sexist pig and all? Because I like kitsch action heroine images and wanted to copy them? To give people something to look at while they spank the monkey? Maybe I did it just for a laugh?

You could read all sorts reasons into it. I’m not going to tell you what to think or how to react. Just be aware that you could be wrong about my motives: the truth is, I can’t remember why I did it. All I can tell you is, like the story of the man who took off his clothes and jumped onto a cactus, “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.

I think the same is true any time I cross-dress, no matter what I’m wearing…

(To be continued!)