transretrogurl

Has a pleasantly stupidly busy couple of weeks, topped off by zipping into London for a bit of stress relief/Sarah time. I’m going to do a fun write-up as there were some gorgeously fun looks (nurse, swimsuit) but as I have been remiss in my postings I thought I’d whip up a quick frock tales with a dash of realism/hope.

And the title? Well, ignore the gas bit; I did another ‘glamorous’ look on Saturday and a load of the normal fun tropes, but I took what I would call a ‘normal’ outfit just for the hell of it.

Well, that’s lying. I have been dying to get out into London in the day as Sarah. OK, that’s not strictly true, I love the idea of doing it but it terrifies me. And it terrifies me for a simple reason – I don’t pass as a woman.

There, said it. But’s it is not the entire truth; I don’t try. And I don’t try because I’m secretly terrified I’ll pass.

Bear with me, it’s a tad complex. The whole cross-dressing thing for me is always contrary; I have an inner core that refuses to believe I enjoy it, that nasty little learned behaviour model I am always talking about. And that drives a lot of my behaviours; I have some wonderful and close friends, one in particular, who is the polar opposite to me in terms of attitude – she wants to transition, she lives as a woman and everything she does is, well, feminine. There’s not a trace of the person she was, if she ever truly was that person. Me, well, I’m a bloke 99% of the time. Not an overly happy one, for various reasons, but my attitude has always been that that is the way it is.

The dressing is a diversion, it’s just playing. And I do it well, if I may say so myself. But again, it’s not the entire truth.

I walked into Marks and Spencers a couple of weeks ago to buy some food; they have great things you can’t get anywhere else, like Marmite Cream Cheese (yeah, love it or hate it) and Percy Pig Fruity Chews (a personal naughty treat). But to get to the food hall at my local M&S you have to walk through the woman’s dress section.

And I saw a dress that just called out to me in a way I don’t normally feel. Normally I see a frock online, nigh on every time a retro outfit, and I get a little internal ‘squee’ that leads me to dig out the credit card and spend way too much. But this just made me feel a little breathless.

So, and made courageous by the fact I was wearing a mask, I bought it, and another one of the same style in a different print. It got added to the bunch of dresses I bought into London on Saturday but I had other ideas for it.

See, there are actually three people inside me, not two. Two are loud and boisterous, one is very quiet but pervasive. The loud ones are drab me, who does all the work and provides, and Sarah, the extravagant retro-obsessed girl who gets to do the posing. But there’s also a quiet, female presence in their who just wants to experience the real world from a woman’s perspective.

I’ve always, and I’m grossly simplifying things here, thought of t-women in two camps; ones who crave to *be* a woman, and ones who get pleasure from pretending to be a woman. They are very distinct; to one set the idea of dressing and making yourself up as a woman gives extreme pleasure from the difference angle, for the others the male is the pretence. One group is seeking to become women permanently, the other takes pleasure from appearing to be a woman from time to time.

I had myself firmly in the second camp, and I wore that as a badge of honour. The ‘yeah, I’m a man most of the time’ excuse is easy and a way to, quite cowardly, ignore the obvious questions of why. It’s a bluff, a way to subconsciously keep the masculine shields up even when you are tottering around on heels. And for me it’s because I’m genuinely scared of the potential truth of the other side.

And this outfit highlighted that completely. It looked beautiful, and it looked normal, even though I had the glamorous, slightly OTT retro makeup on.

We all have fantasies, and as I’ve said before the vast majority of them are healthy. But I, in particular, have to look at those fantasies and try to understand where they come from. One of the biggest fantasies I have at the moment, and one I keep coming back to even when I’m sat in front of my work computer, is the idea of functioning in the outside world as a woman. I dream of walking into Marks and Spencers wearing the dress in the blog post, looking through the racks of clothes for something nice to buy, maybe a cute top and some jeggings. Then standing in the queue, just another woman buying some clothes.

That fantasy is massively strong at the moment, and it isn’t the usual frankly erotic fantasy that my mind plays. And it feels so strong, so compelling that it leaves me breathless. The idea of just being out and, for want of a better term, being *me* feels like not pretending.

And that’s a deep thing to think about. In fact, I’m having a session in a couple of weeks where I am only taking those ‘normal girl’ kind of outfits, Cindy is going to tone down the look for a more day-to-day woman and, if I can get up the courage, we’re going to go out.

I truly hope that the little defensive chunk inside me that automatically plays the bluff ‘yeah, I’m a man in a dress and proud!’ angle to avoid that glorious but terrifying prospect of letting myself just be me dissolves. And the reason I hope that is that I have some videos that we did at the last session of me walking, applying perfume and other stereotypical feminine things, and you know what? I don’t look like a man doing them.

But the dress – oh wow, how gorgeous? Loose fitting but styled appropriately, button-up shirt dress in animal print. Very much a Holly Willoughby style dress and we picked a hair that was similar as well; without going into another, more kinky fantasy, I think this kind of Holly W would appeal far more to Philip Schofield. Just saying.

It’s a lovely texture and fabric and feels glorious on. It feels like a second skin, which again is a glaring indication of what this kind of clothing means to the third person inside me. It’s, well, just feminine in a modern way.

I’d love to think that with the toned down make-up and hopefully relaxed, I can pull off the ‘woman shopping’. Not because I want to pretend to be a woman shopping. But because I want to be that woman shopping. And that’s an interesting difference that I need to think about.

Stay beautiful and listen to your inside voices, sometimes they have something profound and wonderful to tell you about yourself that maybe you have tried not to hear.