transretrogurl

I promise I’ll write a proper gushy femmtastic frockingly fun post soon, but following on from my maudlin little wandering into the garden of self-obsession (I always wanted to be a goth girl growing up, guess I’m getting a chance now) I thought I’d write something a bit more useful this time.

For a long time my career was all around security and computers, most importantly security in the good old World Wide Web. As such I was privy to all the naughty little things you can do, the exploits, the pitfalls, etc etc. So it’s taken me a long while to trust the internet with my secret, and once I decided Sarah needed a pink and perfumed presence on the InterWeb I gently eased her into it.

And made lots of mistakes.

Pictured – and not the mistake of ‘forgetting’ my bra to give all the boys a thrill…

Sooo, if you’re a girl who wants, or has, a social media presence, this post is all about what to do and what not to do. Think of it as I’ve graciously made *all* the mistakes myself, and this is a learning process so you don’t the OH DEAR GOD WHAT DID I JUST POST WHERE???!!! moments that I had a number of times……

Understand your audience

Going to be honest here, the stuff I post to the internet I do to give myself a thrill. Not being to dress whenever I want, which is actually a good thing because as I’ve said before, I want the endorphins and love I get from being Sarah to be a fine wine, not a box of house red with thirty more boxes in the cupboard,

But people out there in the wilds of the internet have different takes on what you post – some people who look at the pictures will be exactly like the person who posted it, thrilled by the idea of chucking on a frock, interested in the makeup, wow-ed by the choice of costume or pose. Others could be lonely people looking for a fantasy, using the picture to imagine being with the person in it, how a date would go, how it would be when the lights go out.

Pictured – of course, it helps if the pictures you put up aren’t ones that encourage naughty thoughts.

So, what I do is I make sure I tailor what I post to different social media sites. My Facebook is for retro and friendship, Instagram is pretty pictures, Flickr treads a little closer to the fetish side (I do put some erotica up there with a restricted tag), Fetlife is the Wild West and TVChix, well, that is pretty much what it says on the box.

I can’t help myself when writing captions for the pictures, especially on Fetlife and Flickr, but they are tailored for the people that would see them there.

Pictured – Fetlife is where all my naughtiness goes to hide…

Don’t fall into the trap of putting something sexually provocative on, say Facebook – you’ll go straight to FB jail, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars worth of cosmetics, the usual. And also understand who you are opening yourself up to. Which leads us to….

You will get a lot of dick pics. 

No idea why. I think it’s because the person on the far end knows they are talking to a biological male, at least I hope that is the case because the idea of filling a GG’s mailbox with pictures of genitals is pretty poor. Anyway, it’s kind of a calling card from men who want the thrill of exposure without the thrill of exposure, plus there’s this odd dynamic online between trans-folk and admirers – many admirers cannot except the idea that they are homosexuals, and I’m not criticising them – I have literally no idea where my sexuality is, partly because I’ve not had any for ten years (and you know what, that’s kind of nice), but also because with the resurgence of Sarah, *even* when I’m self-delusionally under the opinion I’m binary, it’s become clear to me that you can be sexually attracted to someone because you are attracted to them, regardless of their gender. The fact that many admirers, and trans girls, are rabidly under the opinion that they are not homosexual is moot – it doesn’t matter. We’re here once, and what happens between two consenting adults is fine.

Pictured – really not helping there, Sarah.

Any thoughts of guilt and immorality come from the almost fascist binary gender lobby. And ironically most of the people shouting for trans to not use women’s bathrooms, for homosexuality to be illegal and all that other crap are doing it for their own twisted reasons.

Anyway, got off topic – I started an Instagram account recently and within a couple of weeks I had a lot of followers and a Direct Message box full of photos of someone else’s junk. Be prepared. Some people see that as flattery. The first thing I do is compare sizes, which is probably not what the person who sent it intended.

Make sure you are at least *four* on the Kevin Bacon scale

You know the game – linking Kevin Bacon to another actor by jumping through films, x was in the film a with y, y was in the film b with g, g was in the film d with Kevin Bacon. Well, for safeties sake, if you are someone who hasn’t announced to the wide world that you love the smell of perfume on you rather than your wife, you need to make sure the linkage from your social media account to your *real* social media accounts is a looong chain.

For example, I have a wonderful friend (you know who you are) and we are friends in the *real* world in terms of FB. I never access the two FB accounts on the same machine, *ever*, just in case, well, let me tell you a quick story.

First time I came back out of the closet I went to a dressing service in London. The night before I rented a hotel room and for the first time in twenty years I shaved my legs. In fact the very first blog post I did was about that experience, if I remember correctly. So, sat in the hotel room, I popped on a lovely floral 1940s day dress, no makeup, and took a picture of my shaved legs in stockings, the bottom fringe of the dress, and the black patent high heels. Loved the picture so much I jumped straight on Facebook and posted it with the tag ‘I *love* the feeling of shaved legs under stockings.

Thing is, because I was giddy with excitement and, back then, using a single machine to do *both* my normal and Sarah’s social media stuff I posted it to my drab Facebook page.

Pictured – this VERY image…..

I cannot describe the cold water rush through my veins as I hit post and realised what I had done. Luckily I had done what I used to do, which was to set the distribution of the picture to just myself at first, to make sure I’d got the picture right, the words correct and all that, so a couple of feverish moments of jumping into the administration of my account, deleting the post, checking carefully to see it wasn’t lingering, and I could start breathing again. My fingers tingled from the adrenaline rush.

That is not a nice feeling.

Anyway, back to my friend – we are close on normal Facebook and closer on our femm Facebook, and the Kevin Bacon distance, luckily, is four – Sarah has a friend who is also a friend of drab me, which is a dangerous way to be but I have some friends who are transitioning who know drab me, in fact knew drab me before Sarah.

But you have to be careful. Someone suggested last time I did this post that you block the people your drab account knows from your femm account, and that’s good advice. I just haven’t done it myself because there’s a teensy weensy little part of me that wants to get caught.

Just be aware that the Internet isn’t completely abstracted from reality

It’s easy to get excited in the spur of the moment. We’ve all done it – it’s past midnight, that last beer hit you like a train, you’re feeling a bit lonely, a bit down, you’re surfing your FB account looking for comments to make you feel better about yourself and a message box pops up from one of the few admirers you’ve allowed into your circle of friends. It starts off as a ‘hi, how are you doing’, couple of casual flirty messages, and suddenly you find yourself escalating into a full blown online virtual sex chat.

Pictured – Call Sexy Sarah today, $1 a minute, local rates apply…..

This might be fine. Going to be brutally honest and say yes, for me it’s a bit of a thrill, quick bit of naughty back and forth, quick bit of personal relief and et voila, time for bed. But just remember it’s a real person on the far side of that chat box. That person has an agenda as well, if you’re lucky it’s just a quick thrill, but they might see it as something else.

Simply put, be aware that if you escalate there may be some blowback, if you’ll pardon the pun. That person may get the wrong message, may see the relationship online as something that could bloom into reality, there may be the offer of a physical meeting, and for some people on both sides of the chat that’s the point. But for others it isn’t, and you can get yourself into a difficult situation, especially if you are not out of the closet and there are ways to track back to your real FB account, should you have one.

I’m not saying be a prude, just be aware that the screen you’re looking at isn’t a shield. Have fun but always have a get out clause.

On the other side of the coin, the people you talk to don’t know *you*

I make this mistake all the time. I’ve been in an amusing level of denial for 45 years as to my gender fluidity, so, as I said in the last post, there’s a lot of ‘nah, I’m not a crossdresser’ silliness going on in the top of my head. When I interact with people through social media I make the false assumption that they know me.

Pictured – hell, at this point I hardly know myself…..

That’s not the case. 99.9% of the people I interact with only know Sarah from her pictures, the blog and the occasionally saucy captions I put on the pictures. And with just those three pieces of info she comes across as somewhat of a, well, girl. And that’s lovely, but I myself forget that when I’m on social media.

I had the wonderful experience of meeting the friend I mentioned earlier in drab mode not too long ago, and it was superb. But we weren’t the people we were on social media – in fact we were better because it was a lovely blending of the mad, self-delusional males and the fun loving girls.

And in a face to face situation that is the case – online, it isn’t. Often I’ll respond to some question from a friend on social media in a way that seems completely at odds with the Sarah persona, and that’s dead on – I forget the people I’m talking to don’t know the miserable, cynical, world-weary idiot and just know the bubbly, retro-frock obsessed girl.

It’s easy to forget who you are online. And oddly enough it’s easier, in the long run, to be honest online as opposed to pretending to be someone you’re not. And that’s not being the crotchety old male fart I’ve been forced to pretend to be for the last x years, that’s being the blend of both.

Anyway, enough of a ramble, I promise something retro-fashiony next, perhaps a good old frock tale or two.

Stay beautiful, stay safe and remember that it’s all meant to be fun and give you pleasure….

Pictured – Fun, And Pleasure. And just a little tweek of naughtiness.