transretrogurl

And another makeover done. This one rocked, if you’ll pardon my 80s speak, but it was bookended by some seriously stressful and hysterically ‘Planes Trains and Automobiles’ frustrating travel.

As I mentioned in the previous blog, I like to prepare. What’s a little sad about it is I can’t find it in myself to look forward to the fun of a makeover session because the logistics are King. So yesterday was stress, relief, stress, relief (I added the extra relief to cater for getting home and giggling at the pictures and, gasp, for the first time, videos from the session.

I’ll gloss over the amusing and frustrating journey – let’s just say that the technology in place at Paddington Station to stop run-away trains was put in place before they upgraded the station to electrified. Put simply a dork driver took an empty two-coach train through a red light and the system automatically derailed it to stop it piling into the terminus. Problem is that since the system was put in place they’ve stuck a load of additional signals and electrification poles and the derailed train slammed into them, screwing two of the six tracks in.

How does this relate to one 47 year old gender confused tech head? Well firstly it delayed my train getting into Paddington, turning a mildly stressful ‘I’ve got a duffle bag full of retro frocks, a waist cincher and padded-hip undies’ trip into a four hour ‘please God let this train get into Paddington so I can scratch my frock-itch’ trip from hell, which ended up dropping me into London at rush hour.

Rather than jump on the Tube, which is packed solid at that time of day and, shaved and externally emasculated, not somewhere I want to be, I grabbed a taxi which was horrendously expensive and, courtesy of traffic, took bleedin ages to get there.

Left the house at 4:30am, got to the makeover session at 10:00am. Due to testosterone that’s five and a half hours of hedgehog stubble. Plus grumpy and dishevelled. So I expected the makeover session to be less than ideal.

Boy was I wrong. Cindy (the magician that runs Boys will be Girls) is a bloody miracle worker, and, after an hour of teasing, painting, sticking (lashes and nails), plastering and hammering Sarah was ‘back in the house’, and I then had the *best* session I’ve had to date.

So, aside from the complaints about public transport and the fact that London is a human-anthill on an open pot of jam, what did I get up to?

Firstly I tried a 1960s mod-dress, something Minnie Mouse would have worn if she was more of a slut (note I said ‘more’, bad mouse). We combined it with an auburn beehive wig, stockings, OTT jewellery and some cheesecake poses. Oddly enough I don’t really get on with short dresses (being 6ft 3inches means that maxi dresses tend to end up being knee-length, and mini-dresses struggle to hide the belly-button) but this one was cute.

Note me desperately trying to lengthen the dress.

Next up was a lot of fun. I found a 1950s style housewife dress, sleeveless (which I find really sexy), with a classic collar and buttons, full skirt and the loveliest floral pattern. Kind of a summer dress for stay-at-home moms. We did a shoot with a woman’s magazine as a prop, and we had to keep stopping because wow, those magazines have a lot of crap in them. The bloke in me peeked out from behind the lashes and tried desperately to find an article that wasn’t vapid to the point of transparency but no joy. Still, it made for some seriously cute pictures.

As I said before I love the idea of playing the housewife, so this outfit really resounded with the base ‘Mrs’ in me. Lots of fun.

Then something different (but not as different as it got later, muwhahaha). I found a 1980s style dress on Amazon. Basically the Koreans and Japanese are seriously into power-dressing for women at the moment, so they have some really retro 80s style dresses. Most are *way* out of my size range, given the disparity in body sizes between here and there, but I found one that was just in the range (UK size 16, *cough*, which I can squeeze into if I don’t fancy breathing for a bit and don’t bend over) and ticked all my 80s fantasy boxes – pink, peplum, buttons, black piping, collar, the works. We squeezed me into it (and you can see a funny cheesecake video of me messing about with poses on Flickr) and had a laugh. Oddly enough most of the women I craved when I was growing up and fighting the ups and downs of an odd puberty tended to dress exactly like this to go to nightclubs. Ahh, the mid-80s, I do miss you.

Next we kinda went into the twilight zone. I’d got a dress on impulse from Lindy Bop which was called a ‘swing dress’ but was blue and white gingham with a collar that really looked like a girl’s summer-school dress (a UK thing I think). So we had some fun with pigtails, ribbons, lovely white stockings with black bows and some props. More about that later….

Anyway this look was a riot to wear. It’s hard not to feel sexual and feminine when wearing it – note that this doesn’t mean I fancy schoolgirls, which is a caveat that really should be implied, but this kind of dressing up/fancy dress is so much fun to wear and mess around in.

And then it got a little deliciously silly.

Last time I did a makeover I had foolhardily persuaded myself that I could retain more of a feminine figure by not eating during the process, which lead to a lot of hilarity when every conversation was punctuated by the roaring sound of an ancient God (i.e. Cthulu) from my stomach for four hours. This time I decided to bring some snacks to tide me over, but not effect the stomach too much.

I brought some bananas.

See where this is going? I now have a hilarious set of photos of said Summer-School Sarah and a banana which I will share at some point on Flickr, probably after I’ve had a couple of glasses of red wine. I know I’ll get slammed with comments about them and it really sends a mixed message on the sexuality of said Sarah but man, it was a laugh and a half to do.

After we finished the set of photos of Sarah purposefully not eating said banana my quote, which made us both laugh, to Cindy was ‘If I wasn’t so comfortable with my sexuality that would have been very confusing’ after which I ate the banana. Because I was starving. And it didn’t have too much lipstick on it.

Finally I had a lovely polkadot frock that I’ve been debating as the outfit I will wear out when I go for a night at the WayOut. Cindy had a new Betty Page style wig she wanted to try, which wouldn’t normally work for me, but we had a bash, combined it with a flower for Sarah’s hair and wow. I could easily have just walked out of the studio wearing that ensemble and been comfortable in the outside world. For a start I was the *spitting* image of my sister and secondly it just seemed to imbue Sarah with an inner confidence I’ve never felt before. Lovely feeling.

Again, seeing a photo like this makes me want to be able to take her for a coffee and a chat which is impossible on the quantum level. Oh well, the least I can do is provide her to the outside world and see what happens.

Then the inevitable moment when the make-up remover strips away Sarah, the putting on of his drab clothing and the march across London to the train station, which was still suffering delays.

But this time I took a little of her with me. For a start I hadn’t cleaned off all the makeup so I looked like a goth wanna-be, but I also had my laptop with all of her pictures on it, and amused myself on the train by going through each of the 702 (!!!!!!) photos and full-screening them on my laptop. In the view of other passengers. Now that’s an interesting rush.

A quiet weekend of come-down, staring at her and letting it sink in, then a month of drab and planning before the big event. I’m doing a two day session, first session involving a single-piece breastplate so she can where some more revealing outfits (I really fancy getting a Dirndl) and the second day an escorted night out, *gasp*, to a proper London trans-nightclub. It’s a month away but I’m terrified already, which is a good and a bad sign.

Anyway, stay beautiful sweeties, be good to one another and let your inner girl breath whenever she needs to.

And because you’ve been good, here’s something a little naughty and amusing 🙂