transretrogurl

I have been daftly busy lately, with drab real-life stuff, and combined with my usual ‘I’m not going to have any Sarah fun in June/July/August because it will be hot’ approach which, because of the odd July weather (not complaining, I have Viking blood and we like the cold and wet), has been unnecessary, I’ve been a little remiss about posting anything. I realised I haven’t had one of those fun ‘FAQ’ style posts for a long while, and given that my approach to my obsession/hobby has changed a little I thought I’d do another.

Pictured – vapid woman reads porn mag without realising she is the covergirl. Man, I love meta-things

Also, some nice readers have asked questions (as comments) and I thought rather than clutter up the comment section I thought I’d do it hear instead. So, let’s get started…..

What can you use to feminize your body shape (if you’re into retro and 50’s stuff)?

So, an interesting question this. When I started dressing I was (a lot) heavier, and I used a tight corset to bring the waist in. Now I have a less intense stomach restrainer, basically like an old-style girdle, which acts like a wide elastic belt. Depending on what style of dress you want to wear, you can accentuate the hips with a set of padded underwear. If I’m wearing a pencil frock I will add the ‘bum and hips’ shaper which gives a lovely hourglass look.

Pictured – Pencil frock with stomach restrainer and a little butt padding = gorgeous 1950’s figure time

If you’re wearing a swing dress, or one of those lovely flowing fifties’ house dresses, you don’t need the padding; I use one or two petticoats brought up to just above the waist, to match the position of where a woman’s waist is, and the effect is delightful.

Pictured – and petticoats are ADORABLE if you want to play the Stepford Wife….

The only thing to consider is what you are going to be doing after you shape up; in the old days the corset made it very uncomfortable to sit or bend, so it was purely for photo sessions. When I went out a month or so ago in Manchester in retro style I had a gentle stomach restrainer only, and chose a dress that naturally spread out. It was gorgeous to walk in, plus without three or four additional layers of undercarriage I could use the toilets without it being an exercise in fiddliness; remember when you have nails on that taking off three or four tight pieces of undergarments, including tights, is a nightmare….

Do you have any makeup tips for feminizing the face?

Alas, no; I have 0% skill with makeup. The few times I have tried I have looked like someone has blasted me in the face with a clown-makeup shotgun. I use some fantastic and highly skilled people to do my looks, but you can shop around locally for contract make-up artists. The one thing I would suggest, if you don’t have the ability to fully shave your eyebrows off (and I’ve thought about doing it and blaming a kitchen accident, but never been brave enough) is to learn the skill of hiding them. All of the people I use do this and it makes such a difference, because you can resculpt the eyebrows exactly as you want them.

Pictured – check out the hidden and resculpted brows. And the Estrogen effect that now gets my pictures banned from instagram because ‘Instagram doesn’t allow the showing of female breasts’. Thanks Insta, I’ll take that as a complement.

It’s two step process and oddly enough works better if you have shorter eyebrows. For a couple of sessions I tried to be helpful and used a beard trimmer to reduce my Denis Healey style eyebrows, and got told off severely. If the brows are too short they can’t be glued down; the process involved brushing them and gluing them flat, allowing the glue to fully dry and then hiding them with foundation/concealer.

I have some odd obsessions but one of the most fun, and don’t tell the people who do my makeup, is the feeling of picking that glue off after the session. Yeah, I know, weird.

Where do you recommend for a safe first night out?

So, it depends on where you have access to. I started going out in London, and the first time I properly went out was with a couple of very experienced and lovely other trans ladies, who took me out, in the daytime, to Brick Lane. It was great but I was uncomfortable; the first thing I did in the first pub was take off the nails, and then I went to the toilet and took off the tights, but that was because I was completely terrified inside and wanted to get back to some form of normalness (in my mind wearing a frock, heels, wig and makeup was normalish, I just needed to be able to use my hands and the tights made me feel oddly aroused, which wasn’t helping).

Nowadays we live in an odd society, where the younger generation don’t really care at all how someone dresses, whereas the older generation seem to be becoming ultra-conservative. If you have access to a city that has a dedicated gay quarter it’s a safe option; with my times out in Manchester I have stayed around the Canal St area, and New York, New York, The Molly House and any of the clubs/pubs around there are safe and delightfully welcoming.

Pictured – and you can meet some delightfully fun people. And then tell yourself that you didn’t really find yourself attracted to him. You know, lie to yourself.

London is a little different; it doesn’t really have a dedicated gay quarter, with Soho being the play area for LGBTQ and others. It does have some venues, but you need to be careful (I will do a blog entry on my night at Trans Roma when I can find a way to write it that doesn’t come across as a Tranny Porn Video script, and believe me, that’s hard). There are a lot of venues that cater specifically to the casual sex/admirers/CDs out to have fun, and with them you get what you expect. I was going to use ‘pay for’ in that previous statement, and given the clientele of some of these venues I’d be dead on, but it seemed a little crass.

If someone was asking me specifically, I’d say The Molly House. Great atmosphere, great people, lovely bar staff. And lots of beer. But that may just be something I need in a good night out.

When you are out, how much of your male personality regresses and how much of Sarah comes out?

Again, a great question. It has changed massively in the last year or so, partly because the more times you make an effort and go out in public, the easier and less scary it gets. Like most damaged men I use aspects of my masculinity as a shield when I am out drab; hostile stares, tight body language and a deep voice are my gotos when I don’t want to engage. When Is started going out I found myself hyper-accentuating these because I was terrified inside.

Pictured – because, of course, I am an immensely masculine person. Cough.

Courtesy of my happy pills (citalopram are the best), I no longer have the core anxiety that triggers the masculine reaction, so when I go out now there’s a new entity. Sarah was always a little forced, talking in a higher pitch, over-doing the leg crosses and mincing in heels. Now I am relaxed and, oddly enough and I have said it before, I find that when I don’t have to be masculine I realise that I spend a lot of time trying to be masculine. I actually spend more effort putting up the masculine front, and when dressed and out I suddenly find myself feeling natural, and it’s joyous.

I still do the femm things, such as crossing the legs when I sit, letting the wrists relax and go limp, but they are done naturally now rather than an affectation. The other thing is, and I’m sure I am not alone, the longer I stay in femm clothing and mannerisms, the easier and more natural it feels. By the end of an evening I have a lot of female mannerisms that I am not consciously doing.

And I’m going to be completely honest, at the end of a night out I now find it very hard to take off the clothes and makeup. When I first started I couldn’t wait to be back in safety, and would strip off as soon as the door was closed, feverishly washing the face. But that person has changed.

Pictured – me at 3:00am in the hotel room in Manchester taking selfies and putting off taking off my frock and makeup…..

Granted, I do have the advantage of happy pills and self dosing of estrogen (yeah, not consulted the NHS because I don’t want to have wait ten years) but I feel that a switch has flicked inside my brain. A lot of the other girls I talk to say the same thing; get over the first couple of times, and then it becomes a lot more easy and fun.

If anyone else has any burning questions, drop them to me in the comment section and I’ll do another IFAQ soon. I will post about my amusing encounter with a set of Trolls as well, and if I just find a way to describe how I ended up on my knees in a dark room at a sex club with three men without it sounding like a bad porno, I’ll write about that as well.

Stay beautiful and remember to enjoy yourselves, we are at a great and a terrible time for people like us now, but it is still the most open and accepting of the culture I have ever seen, even if it seems like the politicians are very anti-trans at the moment.

Pictured – the cute woman-next-door says ‘enjoy yourselves’….