transretrogurl

Ahh, writing a blog post about the joys of wearing women’s clothing at 4:00am in the middle of an ongoing historical event that has taken a year so far, removed civil rights in a way that no-one could have predicted (it is currently illegal to walk in the mountains I live ten miles from, how did that happen?). I would ask how we got here but given I’m sat in bed with a laptop cooking my upper thighs (thank goodness I don’t want nor have ever wanted to have children) as the temperature outside is a balmy -7C, a cupboard full of glorious and gorgeous female attire that I won’t get to enjoy until probably Spring at the earliest and I’m tottering on a daily basis between fighting to stop myself laughing out loud hysterically at the sheer madness of the situation and sticking my face into a pillow and screaming until I’m hoarse, I think ‘how we got here’ is a four volume set of books waiting to be written, so let’s talk frocks instead….

Perusing my imported photos on the Mac I noticed I had talked a little about the sessions I squeezed in between fluctuated R-values; so I’ll stick to the looks I somehow forgot. This quick post is about two of those; a lovely 1950’s Ditzy housewife look, petticoats and vapid looks, and the same housewife twenty years later in a gorgeously 1970’s dress and corresponding post-feminism cynicism.

But both wonderfully fun looks.

The 1950’s Ditzy Housewife

First, the usual caveats; it may come across that I am a little, well, sexist. Drab me isn’t, but the looks I put Sarah through sometimes can have a ‘TradWife’ slant to them. I justify it because a: the idea of being a traditional submissive housewife is a huge turn on for me, don’t ask me why, and b: the looks are just so much fun to wear. Take this one for instance; a seriously cute little dress I found on Amazon (and very inexpensive) but it ticks all of my inner-housewife boxes. Polkadots, swing skirt, cute little buttons up the front, white collar, short sleeves with cute little cuffs with buttons, the works.

It’s the kind of dress every woman seemed to be wearing in 1950’s America, a place people look back at with rose-tinted spectacles without asking why every woman was dressed like a red-blooded American man’s ideal vision of a stay-at-home woman. The thing is, post-feminism, woman very rarely wear this kind of dress unless in an ironic way; whereas women like me, and the idea of classing myself as a woman from the perspective of talking about the pros and cons of feminine fashion really gives me that dark and delicious little stirring in the soul, absolutely adore the idea of flouncing around a house wearing them.

And back to my point; yes, it’s sexist but it’s me I am forcing into the role and look of the submissive housewife. Call it self-abuse if you want, I can’t explain nor will I apologise for being completely smitten by the idea of *being* that ditzy 1950’s wife.

A quick little mention of the third-person hilarity. Depending on my mood I will and do switch between referring to the woman in the photos as ‘me’ and ‘her’. There’s a reason for that; sometimes it is glorious to say ‘me’ when presenting a photo of a pretty woman in a dress. And sometimes it is even more thrilling to call her ‘her’; for some reason my overly complicated fetish is actually a large number of different fetishes, and one of them happens to get a kick from talking about ‘her’ as a separate person. Again, part of the submissive slant I guess. But anyway….

I *love* this style of dress. It has that prissy cuteness that oozes restrained sex appeal; you can never go wrong with a red frock but chuck in white polkadots and it’s divine. We combined the look with a full petticoat to fluff out the skirt, a red flower in her hair because she loves to wear flowers, copious pearls and a little crucifix because she’s a good little Catholic girl. The standard 1950’s fun-loving ‘her indoors’.

On the practical side there were a couple of interesting things with the outfit; the buttons are purely cosmetic and there’s a zip at the back, *but* the collar is fixed so to put it on, without smearing one’s lipstick, was an exercise in contortion. Again, harking back to another of the complicated fetishes, the idea of being zipped into a frock with a tightish collar was another of those ‘if I have to get out of this outfit quick I won’t be able to’ moments. Plus the whole feel of the outfit, which to be honest screamed compliant Stepford Wife, meant I had to work hard to keep a constant wide red-lipsticked smile off of my face.

And that’s a great place to be. If you’re anything like me as a forty-year repressed crossdresser who spend all of his time consciously not being happy because the minute he smiles his face looks very feminine, the freedom of just being able to genuinely smile. albeit with a face full of beautiful makeup, is a blessing.

We did a load of pictures with this outfit including some hysterical ‘woman in the kitchen’ ones which again gave me that indescribable dark thrill that I can’t put into words. The feeling of kneeling in front of an oven, working the dials with long red nails, feeling the petticoat bunch up around the top of my stockings, the thin silver chain with the cross around my neck against the bare flesh of my chest, the pressure and weight of earrings moving beneath my blonde hair; indescribable is a very good description.

I’ve always thought about how much fun it would be to do a photoshoot with a male prop; the idea of counterpointing the highly feminized housewife look with a husband is a strong, if you don’t mind me using the phrase, aphrodisiac. There are some very good reasons I haven’t; the fact I’m tall would spoil the illusion unless I found a willing gentleman who was at least four inches taller than me is one for a start. But the other is an interesting one; I genuinely don’t know how I would behave when placed into that role.

See, and I hate to break illusions, when I’m doing these photoshoots, between the photos, I tend to mess about. It’s a nervous reaction thing; I love being dressed as a woman but fifty years of gruff practice in being a bloke means I defer to joking about the absurdity of the situation, which is a little sad and I wish I didn’t do it.

If I was posing with my ‘husband’ I am 99% certain I would instantly snap into the submissive role of the woman. And that would be divine from the perspective of my fetishes but potentially very odd. I imagine I would throw myself 100% into the role and perhaps would not be able to come back from that; acting completely in the female role might snap something inside.

Delicious to think about it though….

Twenty Years Later; the 1970’s

A completely different look at the same session, this was the combination of a beautiful Mandarin collared patterned dress from the superb Lux Fix boutique that just reminded me of all those 1970’s BBC programs, both comedy and not, about the long suffering wife and her absent, golf-playing husband. The simmering resentment, the smouldering unresolved sexuality, all those odd things going on in the world (I have a theory but this is a fashion post – suffice to say when they started to removed leaded petrol the instances of serial killers, random violence, insurrection, nasty sexual deviancy (the Saville years) and such wound down; you’d be surprised and appalled just how much lead we absorbed in that and preceding decades and lead does some seriously nasty things to your brain).

The dress was a great fabric as well; man-made but very comfortable. This is something women don’t actually realise; male clothing isn’t, or at least until the turn of the century wasn’t, comfortable at all. I’m still constantly amazed at the softness and delicateness of the feel of most dresses; again, another fetish I think.

Anyway, I loved this look; the little tie belt is so seventies, the little frilled cuffs, the pattern itself. A complete opposite to the ditzy girl in the other outfit, but as attractive I think. When you actively grow up in an era you get imprinted with things, and this style of fabric, pattern and seventies attitude does it for me big time.

Right, it’s turning 5:00am and I have a long day being locked in my house ahead, so until next time…

Stay beautiful and nurture your fetishes sweeties, it’s your brain’s way of making life a little more spicy.