transretrogurl

Thought I’d try something a bit fun – I’m in the middle of my latest mega-session with the delectable Cindy at Boys Will Be Girls and I thought I’d do a, err, ‘warts-and-all’ set of blog posts straight after each of the days.

Today was a quick three hour warmup for the main event in which we tried something…….different. I tend to tend towards the ‘fabulous’, the glamorous, the retro. I’ve shied away from the normal look because, well, I was always terrified I’d see myself too much.

Sound mad? Well, let’s have a think about that.

Aside from the ‘squeee’ factor, why do I embrace Sarah so much? Is it because she is everything I can’t be? Possibly. Is she a manifestation of my love of the feminine? Most probably. Is she me in a frock? No.

OK, technically she is, but I *love* it when I see a picture of her and I can’t see anything of the morose, grumpy, irritable, clumsy, muddle-aged muppet in her pose, her looks, her fashion. To do a normal look, where there was the possibility of seeing myself in her, was actually a worry.

And then there’s the question – would I see a passable woman? Not trying to go too deep (it’s 1:40am in the morning, my eyes sting from make-up cleanser and tomorrow we’re doing glamour so I need to have some beauty sleep at some point) but if I saw a passable woman and associated that with me, would that be that one breaking moment when all the facade of a male existence crumbled and the realisation that re-assignment of gender was something on the table despite my loud protestations.

But it was nothing like that. I had a couple of, well, interesting moments when something clicked when staring at the girl in the mirror, but that was good old fashion male lust (yeah, go figure). I genuinely enjoyed the looks we tried, I didn’t collapse into a sobbing mass of wanna-be female hormones. It was fun, and the looks were something to be proud of.

As always, they didn’t come without a price. in this case, bloody London traffic. I came into the city massively early, arriving at 15:15 when the session was to be 19:30. I chilled in the hotel, shaved my face one last time, pulled some nose-hairs I’d missed when using toe-clippers to remove the pesky little bits of razor-wire the day before yesterday (and was very lucky – a nail-clipper is not a precision instrument and I managed to clip the inside of my nose enough to turn the bottom of my face into a passable (sic) impression of a crimson tidal wave) and all-in-all tried to relax and quell my anxiety. I left it until I knew that I could just grab a taxi and arrive one or two minutes fashionably late but, when leaving the hotel with the very heavy bag of frocks in one hand, found that the traffic was gridlocked.

Now I’ve got a damaged back at the moment, so the daftest thing to do at that point would be to swap my light personal backpack (with Sarah’s laptop in it) with the 65L military backpack filled with 20 (!!!!) outfits, my special corset and a 2.5K pair of false breasts and yomp the 1.5 miles to Cindy’s place. That would have been seriously stupid with the back damage.

So I did it. And got there two minutes fashionably late. Idiot.

Anyway, time for bed – it’s almost 2:00am and tomorrow, which will be documented straight after the event again, will be a full-on glamour, retro, kinky costume day. But you know what? I’ll be thinking soft and tender thoughts about ‘normal’ Sarah.

Stay beautiful and true to your natural selves.