Proofreading, Crossdressing and Femme naming.

One takes pride dear friends in ones work. When one screws up pretty badly though, one does the following:

1. Stop referring to ones self in the 3rd person
2. Fix the problem.

New improved 14 Stations of the Crossdresser presented here. (click to enlarge)

You see, I managed somehow while tweaking the 14 Stations of the Crossdresser, to squeeze out only 13. Nice. You would suspect that that is the sort of thing I would get right. Alas, I am human.

So, notes on the remedy. It occurred to me that the process of naming something is important. When we give our femme selves a name we are accepting of its permanence in our lives. We are providing the world, or at least the parts of the world that meet us en femme a users manual of sorts, a means of addressing us, of saying hello.

For ourselves as well we get to engage in an important creative exercise. The name is important. It is something, unlike our names at birth, that we are the sole authors of. There is much in our lives that we may feel inclined to blame our parents for, but our femme name is not one of those things.

What thinking goes into our choice of a femme name? I think we often aim for pretty and sexy. Perhaps we look for something that is a close female approximation of our birth name. Perhaps the name of a girl from the dark recesses of time emerges, a girl you had a sad and sweet and complete crush on and it swims above the rest. Maybe a desire for something absolutely unique after having grown up with a generic, middle of the road male handle drives us into exotic naming territories.

For me, I never thought Petra was sexy. Unique yes, and a name that I knew nobody else in the room would answer to. Unique is important to me. I liked as well the slightly exotic sound of a French family name. Not that Bellejambes is a true family name. I just think I have nice legs. Bellejambes = Nice legs. Allow me my vanity.

I like my name. I hope that you like your name as well. I would love to hear how you chose yours, and whether you feel that the private ceremony of choosing a femme name is a fitting event for The Stations of the Crossdresser.

Happy Monday.