transretrogurl

So, I promised in the last blog post I’d describe, in femme detail, the fun looks I did last Saturday. It’s taken me until Friday to find a bit of time to do it; work is busy, stressful, the world is catching fire….again and courtesy of the happy pills I have somewhat of an inner calm that is both relaxing and terrifying in equal measure. In fact I’ve noticed, especially during the session, that the happy pills are really cutting into the anxiety that I kinda thought was normal.

Case in point; we were doing the sesh, Cindy was taking a break to get some food (I’m terrified of eating during the session in case I look fat because, well, cross-dresser induced body dysmorphia) and I was literally ‘I’m just going to step outside by myself and take some selfies’.

If you’ve followed this blog you’ll know that is jaw-droppingly unusual for me. I’m usually ‘yeah, let’s do some outside shots’ when the session starts, before the makeup goes on, and when I’m completely transformed it’s ‘hmm, I thought I heard a single raindrop, guess we can’t go out’ (I kid you not). Now it feels like the things that scared me (whilst being deliciously attractive to my inner girl) don’t factor in any more. When I went out in Manchester I didn’t *once* think ‘oh bugger, I’m a mile from the hotel, in tights, panties and heels’. I was in the moment and I was thoroughly enjoying it.

So this session was different. I still had a touch of the OCD, waking up in the hotel at 5:30am mildly paranoid because, for the first time, I didn’t obsessively shave the night before. I hadn’t shaved at all; I lay in the bed listening to ClassicFM, waiting for a more decent time (i.e. 5:45am) to get up, shower, shave the arms, pits, chest, legs and finally the face.

It’s a first-world problem but I hate shaving my face (and yes, I know, laser etc etc, but drab me needs his camo). I always take a long time, and I’m not good at it. I end up with a whopping rash around the neck because I go over it five or six times. I can never seem to get those little hairs just under the nose, and I always miss a tiny bit just under the jaw. But I did it without the usual worry.

It was pouring rain when I set off from the hotel but, gasp, I didn’t care. Stopped off at a wonderful coffee shop (The Watch House), got a little Mocha and a toasted ham and cheese croissant, and stood under a canopy looking out into the Thames and ate it.

Normally I’m stressed, concentrating on getting to Cinders, getting indoors so no-one can see me – even in drab I used to imagine that people just *knew* by looking at me that I was, cough, off to dress as a woman. This time I was calm, ate the croissant (which was really nice), sipped the coffee, then walked along the riverside.

I’d popped in the night before for a chat (and my usual four or five cans of Elvis Juice because, you know, self-medicating with alcohol is a lot cheaper than other mood altering substances) and my kit was already there – I’d bought a new 1950’s hair-piece from the brilliant Wig in the City (see the last blog post for ample evidence on that), I had my usual bag of goodies. I have come a long way since I started doing the sessions; I have a lot of the basics myself now, jewellery, undergarments, even my own boobs (and I don’t mean breastforms).

And myself and Cinders have a rapport. It’s fun, I’m completely relaxed and, due to the happy pills neutering the internal wailing and fear, happy in myself, even during the transformation.

Said it before, I’m not a fan of the makeup process. I have tried doing my own before and I don’t have the patience, skill or even eyesight now to do anything but make myself look like a heavily tanned clown. But now I enjoy the process, the moisturising, the hiding of the brows, the moment when I open my eyes and the base is on and I have become someone else. It’s cathartic, it’s relaxing and it’s way more fun than real life.

So, once Cinders had done her magic (and a little bit of a temporary facelift with tape, which always amuses me as it feels like I’ve put a motorcycle helmet on) we started the session – I had a number of retro looks, some Joanie Clothing Laura Ashleys and my annual, or sometimes annual, bit of fun with the Witches costume.

I missed last year’s Halloween session because my eye decided to sprout a sty that is still there today (not the sty, it’s now got some kind of medical name that translates to ‘gland wot has blocked up and you really need to heat and squeeze every day but somehow you forget to even though you whinge about it still being there’.

And, even with the happy pills, I was convinced I was looking a little fat. In honesty my weight has stabilised, much to the relief of a number of people who kept telling me I was looking a little…..unhealthy. But, as with all entertaining body dysmorphia my brain is telling me I bulge in all the wrong places. Oddly enough this whole thing only started when Sarah came out of the closet, so it may be a femme thing.

Anyway, let’s have some fun and look at the looks.

1: Starting with a Fetish Itch

Pictured – hmm, let’s start with scratching that fetish itch…

I’m always a little aware of the fact that I have developed somewhat of a, to put it bluntly, ‘fat chest’. What I would say is that if genetic females have this much uncomfort as their boobs grow in I apologise profusely for being a knob during my own puberty to them, because wow, talk about tender. I keep forgetting and rolling on to them in bed and they are quick to remind me that there is some fat deposits and milk ducts growing there now.

Anyway, I ordered a very tight PVC dress from Honour (more of that later) and whilst looking at the basket the website said ‘other customers bought these’ and pointed me at some posture collars. I have always had a thing for these collars, persuading my first partner to wear one without realising that I wanted to wear it. So now I have my own.

The first look combined a tight corset, fishnet stockings, killer heels, a purple wig, the aforementioned collar and nothing else. I wanted to do an androgynous look but courtesy of the breast growth I thing I landed a bit more on the ‘submissive female slave’ side. Either way it was a great look to start with and a fun way to start the day. Although corsets are not nor will ever be comfortable. But they are fun…

2: Resting Witch Face

Pictured – we got the outfit on, put the hat up, and I said ‘right, I’m just popping down Tesco’s to grab a sandwich, need anything?’. Cinders almost believed me.

I have to say it, I love this costume to bits. It was only cheap, but the transparent sleeves, top, the felt collar and the buttons add a lovely girlie feel to it. I was terrified I had put on too much weight to get it on; in the old days it was a struggle to zip it up, with myself and Cinders both doing the ‘think thinner’ thing to try and get it to fit. But this time it just did up instantly and felt a perfect fit.

The hat has always been a problem because I’m 6ft2in before heels; adding another foot or so of witchy goodness always make me scrape the ceiling, but it seemed to work fine. We did the normal couple of ‘Wicked’ pictures (where I smile from under the brow without you being able to see the eyes) which worked a treat.

The only difference I did this year is I used a small fluffy petticoat (from the pink sissy maid uniform I have) to fluff out the skirt a lot, which made it feel amusing to walk around in. There’s something delightful/delicious about that feeling of layers of crinoline and no skirt against the upper thighs.

Halloween fix ticked.

3: My dream job – 50’s housewife

Pictured – if I win the lottery this will be me *every* day. It’s just that much fun

Yeah, I covered this in the last blog post but wow, I just love everything about this look and the way it makes me behave. Given so far I’d been a topless fetish queen and then a ‘sexy witch’, following it up with this look just immediately flicked a switch in my head.

It’s worth mentioning as well; the wig, like all the proper retro ones I have, needs to be glued down so there’s a bit of engineering we need to do when I switch to one of them. Cinders carefully cleans the base makeup off of the point where the wig is to be fixed, then gently puts the wig on, applies the glue, presses hard against the lace and it sticks after thirty or so seconds. That last sentence does not cover, anywhere near, the feeling I get. For a start I’m sat in the makeup chair in a full petticoat and gorgeous 1950’s housedress, with my heels on. I have my hands gently placed in my lap, I can smell my perfume (I always top up the perfume between outfits), and all I can do is sit there and stare in the mirror as the 1950’s woman appears. Once the wig is set there’s an electric moment where I look in the mirror and a genuine 1950’s housewife looks back, and that instant is like a bolt. There’s a part of me that knows at some point I will look in that mirror and the change will happen, and it will be permanent. And that thrill is amazing. I see nothing of the drab idiot. I see a gently smiling, well-dressed housewife from the 1950’s.

I also start to talk like one. I refer to my husband, the children, the other wives. It’s an odd but amazingly strong feeling, the need to live the role as well as look the role. It’s also why the pictures of her, and I use the term her intentionally because that isn’t me, are all happy and comfortable in the role. We do pictures in the kitchen and it feels so fulfilling to be brushing the floor, checking the oven, doing some ironing.

I have no idea where the urge or fetish comes from but I am not complaining.

4: A bit of a milestone…..

So this look is interesting, and mind-blowing, for a special reason. In fact, the dress is modern – I found it on the M&S website and fell in love with the way it looked and the way it fell on the model, so I ordered it in a 14, picked it up from the shop, did a trial run at home (with no makeup) and it felt glorious, so into the bag it went as a potential 1940’s look.

Because of the effort to put the new wig on I decided to keep it (for three looks). By this time Cinders was getting hungry – she has very little if any body fat and a drop in sugar makes her tired, so after three hours of makeup, nails and the first three looks she fancied a break to eat. While she does this I love to be dressed in the next outfit, there’s something fun about, well, just pottering around in full femme. So we put the dress on and she went off to make food.

At this point I noticed a problem. The frock was a size 14, which fits my frame, but the breastforms that we use are, well, quite ample. Add to that my own little bit of growth and there was a considerable platform pushing out just under my neck. The dress wouldn’t sit right – because it was a full button-up the last couple of buttons were being stretched – I could see the bra in the gap.

So I undid the dress and removed the breastforms, leaving just my own breasts in the bra. And the dress fitted perfectly. And I had a noticeable bosom.

This was huge for me. For the first time ever I was looking at myself in the mirror as a woman, and under the dress it was my own bosom that filled the cups in the bra. The feeling of a lace bra on bare skin, and still seeing a woman’s shape in the mirror was a stunning feeling.

Pictured – ooooo, we nailed the 1940’s gal-about-town look, if I may say so myself

When Cinders came back from her lunch I was so excited that it was ‘let’s do some pictures in the garage’. So I found myself posing with my car, listening to the click of the heels as I moved to the garage door. Feeling the dress across my legs and, gasp, against my breasts. It was……thrilling.

5: A bit Mary Poppins

Pictured – so, a bit of a tough one this. I shouldn’t be massively sexually attracted to myself but there is something so formal about the look that ticks boxes with me

So, I had gone on a bit of a spending spree and bought a number of items from Joanie Clothing, because they had done a ‘collaboration’ with the now defunct Laura Ashley. What they did was take the patterns of some of the iconic clothing produced during the 70s and 80s and produced some modern spins on them.

One of these was a classic 1980’s blouse. I have always been massively obsessed with these; I love the frilly collar and cuffs, the formal look of the high-necked blouse, everything about it. And a chance to own one was not something I would miss out on.

I will revisit it but this time I decided to pair it with a pencil skirt and keep the 1950’s tight wig to see what it looked like. And it was fun; the whole look had a mistress/school-teacher/Mary Poppins feel to it.

6: Meanwhile, back at the car-key party

Pictured – darling, fetch some more mild cheddar and Blue Nun wine, and ask your boss to stop fondling my bottom whenever he thinks you aren’t in the room.

So, this was another one of the Laura Ashley dresses – I like maxi-dresses as they fit me, and this was a lovely 1970’s look; we used the hair we have done for all the ‘car key party’ looks. Both myself and Cinders agreed this was ‘frumptastic’, but that is part of the charm. For me, adopting a feminine look and role isn’t restricted to the sexy (yeah, I know, a lot of people aren’t turned on by the 1950’s housewife); I love adopting all the looks and this one was fun. But yeah, frumptacular.

Love the sandals. I have avoided sandals recently because, as a runner earlier in the year, I mincemeated my feet (13.3 miles of London roads and badly fitting running shoes = hamburger meat), but they are healed up. I’ve had some requests to paint the toenails and given my lack of anxiety nowadays, I’m pretty sure next session I will.

7: And another Laura Ashley frock

Pictured – my ‘good enough to take back to your parents’ look

I love this dress, even though it is a bit of an 80s shape. It’s something about the lace collar and floral pattern, it just makes me feel girlie once it is buttoned up. It is based on a pattern from the 1970’s but it really feels like something a middle-class English mum would have worn to look smart.

And it gives me a thrill to say that I would be 100% comfortable spending all day in this frock. It just feels, well, right.

8: Enough retro and good-girl, let’s turn up the heat….

Pictured – I’m smiling because the dress is gradually cutting off the oxygen to my brain and my inner bimbo is becoming my outer persona

So, this dress was hysterical to wear for all the wrong reasons. In the past I bought an identical one, from Honour, in black PVC, size 20, and it fit like a glove. Being somewhat daft, and ignorant of varying women’s dress sizes, I bought this one in a 14.

Now, PVC stretches; not much, but it stretches. When I tried this at home there was no way on earth I could get it on, even though it completely unzips and you put it on like a hospital gown. I couldn’t get the zip over my arse, excuse the language. Add a padded bottom (I wear a padded pair of panties to give the bum a little more roundness, although the hormones are doing that for me nowadays) and a considerable amount of forward padding (back with the breastforms!) and I really thought there was no way this was going to fit.

But fit it did. However….. I hadn’t thought about the collar.

The first dress had a belt at the collar and was adjustable. This one….wasn’t. The instant Cinders got the zip done up I realised that there wasn’t a lot of room to, well, actually breathe. The dress was strangling me. Slowly, of course, so we had time to take some really good pictures, but this is one of those dresses that looks good, and after 15 minutes I’d be unconscious. Of course, some men would find that appealing, but I’d rather be with it if you know what I mean.

Loved the hair though. The combination of that colour of PVC and a redhead look was killer, if I can say so myself.

9: Dealer’s choice – the nightclub dancer

Pictured – from a stay-at-home 50’s housewife, through a 1970’s frumptastic party-goer, past Mary Poppins and into the ‘girl at the nightclub I want in my spank-bank’. All in one session.

We had about 20 mins left after the choking frock (Cinders tried it on as well – she’s tiny compared to me and she found it choking as well), so I let Cinders do her stuff. She found an adorably sexy nightclub dress; we kept the hair from the strangler, added some ‘handles’ (i.e. hoop earrings, always amuses us to call them handles and insinuate that I would be somewhat of an easy girl if out dressed like this) and did some shots. I also did a fun video where I danced like a nightclub goer, a little too accurately in my opinion (my inner heavy-metal fan was appalled).

And then it was over. We ordered a brilliant curry, which I wolfed down, and then I hit the road, which was sodden because of the rain-storms. The drive home was entertaining in a ‘let’s close all the roads Sarah needs to get home and send her on a 180 mile round trip’, taking five hours to get home. But, because of the happy pills, I wasn’t stressed driving in London.

So, what next? I’ve sneaked another session in at the end of November, got some adorable new frocks from Collectif including a pencil leopard skin dress that will make me look like an inexpensive prostitute, and yes I am planning to hit the streets of Manchester wearing it later in the year. I have some plans to tick some more bucket-list items off, including a cover-shoot for a porn magazine (it’s not what you think). For now I’m enjoying the sense of freedom and peace the pills are giving me.

Stay beautiful and buy the dress you are thinking about. Go on. Dare you.

Pictured – I also did a quick look with the Phoebe wig we used to use a lot and a ‘going out’ dress from M&S. Given my lack of fears this may see the inside of a coffee-shop or even M&S at my next session