The Power of the Purse: Human Rights Campaign Edition

Ice hockey fans of a certain age may remember a time when the National Hockey League had a mere 6 teams, huddled closely against the cold in the American and Canadian north-east. For the rest of you, please just hang in there a moment. Hockey, then as now, was a sport that was fueled by good measures of finesse and brutality both. Teams required players from both ends of the spectrum in order to succeed. The most successful team of the era were les Montreal Canadiens, and firstmost on the finesse front was the incomparable Jean Béliveau.

In Toronto one night for a match against the lamentable Maple Leafs, early in the game one of the home team thugs was sent out to provoke M. Béliveau into a fight with the view to getting him off the ice and into the penalty box. The graceful great was determined to not fight, and so was circling, dodging punches and not punching back, when from the cheap seats a beer enriched bellow was heard:

“Hit ‘em with your purse Béliveau!!!... "

The owner of that voice probably never had to buy a drink for the rest of his years. But to bring the point home, we too can effectively hit with our purses. A Voyages en Rose reader (thanks Ellen!) shared a terrific resource with me, that I want to share with you.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC.org) is a non-profit, member supported advocacy group fighting the good fight for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered rights. My wife and I are long time supporters of HRC. Good people. Yes, they clear cut whole forests for their direct mail campaigns, but the cause is sound. I had thought of them as largely being involved in promoting legislation that makes life more fair for more people, but of course there is more to the good work.

HRC maintains a buyers guide. Their method is simple. They write retailers, manufacturers, service providers, financial institutions, media organizations, really all the places we toil and spend the spoils. HRC asks a few questions about hiring policies, benefits (think of extension of health care to same-sex partners) as well as policies vis a vis service to the LGBT community. Some vendors come out tops. Others have blotted copy books. And a handful do not respond and so leave themselves either as unknown quantities, or safely assumed to be unfriendly environments.

With this information in hand, HRC membership is encouraged to shop or not shop accordingly. There is no better way of getting attention from a person or a company than withholding something they want. In the case of these businesses, they want your money. Perhaps they should get it if they deserve it.

I come from a long line of boycotters. In most matters I have the memory of a goldfish, but grudges I can carry great lengths. Happily, I have not met any behavior myself while shopping en femme, or shopping for Petra while in drab mode that puts any company newly on my snit list. My normal, standing boycotts are maintained for my femme shopping (Walmart, can I have my main street back please?), but I have not added to my enemies list on the basis of recent personal experience.

A couple of highlights from the Apparel and Accessories retailer section here:

Personal favorites including Macy’s, JC Penney, The TJX Stores (TJ Maxx, Marshalls, etc), Target, and The Limited Brands (including flagship lingerie vendor, Victorias Secret) all score close to perfect by the HRC. So its not just me. These are companies that have policies in place that promote sensitivity, and a culture of openness. I will be back for more.

I was surprised to see a couple of names on the Red Alert, failed grade list. Not too much of my money has gone here, but a little has, and a little always does go a long way. The whole Jones Apparel Company is in the time-out chair. My Evan-Picone’s and Nine Wests may pinch a little next time I slide into them. Burlington Coat Factory, Chico’s, Ralph Lauren, the whole Vanity Fair group are amongst the short-bus, remedial class too.

Given my recent rhapsodies about Ann Taylor, their superb response to an initially awkward service incident, and the royal treatment I have enjoyed there en femme and in drab, you can imagine I was surprised to see them in the HRC gun sites. Ouch.

But this fact does illustrate that as the pharmaceutical and investment management commercials say, your results may vary.

I do not think that the HRC list will change my habits too much. Most of my shopping dollars seem to reward great organizations, and I am happy that most of my findings true up with the findings of the professionals. I encourage you to look through the guide, and, if you believe, like I do, that businesses should be held to higher standards than lower prices, let HRC’s findings influence your habits. Good time of year for a little withholding from those who have been naughty, and a little kindness to those who have been nice.

If you are not a member or supporter of HRC, they certainly are nice, and could use the kindness too. Go ahead, hit ‘em with your purse.

For those of you from outside of the US of A, I would be happy to publicize the name of organizations that do good work of this variety in your countries. Drop a line in the comments section please.

Photo Credit: Bottega Veneta tote courtesy of Couture Carrie

Cross Dressing your Age

I had a good few private hours to attend to my femme self with last night. Too much of a chest cold to share with the world, and truth be known, the event I begged out of was more my wife’s crowd than mine. I can grin and make small talk with the best of them but am acutely afflicted with an inability to remember names. I really don’t mind looking a bit daft myself, but hate to reflect poorly on Mrs. Bellejambes. These people are important to her after all.

So home alone, I set out to organize the wardrobe, accessories and whatnot, and to test drive a couple of newish mix and match options. Those boots with that dress?, this top with yonder skirt?, and etc. The exercise confirmed my belief that I have been shopping well lately. Not just for price, but for harmony with my shape, personality, and aspirations to beauty.

I truly had some moments in the mirror that made me catch my breath. You know the feeling (you full-time women know it too). Wow is the simplest encapsulation. I love the wow moments. Thrilling and calming at the same electric instant.

After snapping myself back to the moment, I took a good look through much of what I have acquired over the last year. These items represent the bulk of my femme wardrobe and is a pretty diverse rainbow of shades, silhouettes and styles. It runs the gamut from Lady Gaga to Liddy Dole. For those of you not obsessed with American politics, one of them is pictured here.

While I do not see myself pulling off any of Lady Gaga’s ensembles (figuratively dear friends, I am in exclusive relationship), I do notice a clear and happy drift away from twinsets, safe suits and other such pillars of the middle aged woman’s wardrobe. This drift is at odds with my biology: I am a middle aged something or other.

The high waisted stretch lace skirt from JC Penney is a look that 25 year olds I work with would go nightclubbing in. I am quite certain that high-schoolers will prom up and get down in it. My wife would feel terribly self conscious in it. And I love it. This put me to thinking – just what age am I? Do I have a split personality cherry on top of the gender expression cake?

With no certain answers are emerging, I thought to ask you. There is a poll to your right that will be running through the week. Queue up nicely friends, one vote per customer.

As I do put thought to it though, I do not think I am overly fooling myself. In my day-to-day life, I do feel younger than what the odometer indicates. When in serious business settings, a part of my brain is expecting a butler with a polished English accent to walk in and to discretely whisper in my ear,

“Young man, a terrible mistake has been made, grown ups only here, you know. Do excuse yourself, leave with me, and please try to not make a fuss about it….”

So while I do pointedly maintain a youthful outlook, cross dressing winds up being a very real fountain of youth. It turbo charges natural inclinations. Cross dressing creates the opportunity to play with the hands of time and for that I am thankful. I really hope that I am not delusional though. I am still expecting a visit from the butler.

How about you? Go vote. I am keen to see if we share perspectives. Analysis to follow.

Happy dressing and etc...

Petra’s Pantyhose Parade – Stockingirl.com Edition

The parade is a day late this week because of a stroke of enormous good fortune. The originally intended post was, at best, a random pile of stretched metaphor and torn imagery, the literary equivalent of a cheap hookers even cheaper fishnets after too long a night. I simply couldn’t get the words right. Then, just as blogger-despair was about to set in, a message in my in-box:

You Won!

More on the particulars of exactly what I won, and from whom down-post, but just for a moment, let me tell you that I never win things. I have good fortune in life in general, but as far as contests, raffles, lotteries, fast moving check-out lines and other such random events go, nada, rien, zilch. Never.

Friends would tell you that I use up my full quota of good random luck up parking. Its uncanny really, great spots just appear upon need. And the luck is not wasted on me either: I have great skills, regardless of footwear. I am fearless about the u-turn parallel park maneuver on busy urban streets. Flush and flat to curb on first and only required attempt, right in front of the restaurant without wheel scraping, arousing a full spectrum of reactions from complete strangers, from jealous rage to manly admiration.

I park, therefore I am.

But win things? Nah. One must try though you know. Last week, my favorite Fashion Blogger, Couture Carrie partnered up with Stockingirl.com to provide a glimmer of hope to their many fans by putting a madly glimmering pair of stockings up for grabs. The cost of entry? O, I had to push myself to somehow to take a stroll through CC’s beautifully curated pictorial display of lust-worthy light-catching metallic finish party dresses, and then drive enough oxygen to my brain to summon up a comment on the post. Poor Petra …

More on CC later, but for now, a better introduction to Stockingirl and my new stockings. Stockingirl has been catering to the requirements of refined hosiery enthusiasts around the world through their online store for close to 10 years now. They go right to the mills with great ideas that are often executed exculsively, and simply will not be found elsewhere. For variety, style, product knowledge, value and all around aesthetics, they are leaders. There is very little that Stockingirl carries that I do not want on my legs at some time or another in the happy future.

Right at the top of my own wish list was the pair in the contest, the Shiny Metallic Seamed Faux Fully Fashioned Nylon Sandalfoot Stockings. Not demure looking are they? The back-seam of course whispers sweet nothings to my readily engaged sense of nostalgia for by-gone times of hosiery glory. OK, fair enough, perhaps the effect is a little louder than a whisper. It’s a molten, liquid golden siren song. A song that will be soon serenading my legs. I'm really thinking about a new wig too. That auburn waterfall is almost too much.

Please visit them. They stock a terrific range of extra long stockings, and I know that I have a good number of tallish visitors here. You know who are you. You can expect a nice welcome from Stockingirl I am quite certain.

As to Couture Carrie, pay her a visit from time to time. She is the smiling one to the right. As a group, we cross dressers are noted too often for tragic fashion choices. It’s an odd thing really, when you consider how central dressing is to our habits. CC’s blog has been an inspiration, and has helped me raise my style game more than a notch or two. O, and she runs contests every now and then. Maybe you will be the next delighted winner. Good luck!

My regular tights review / reverie returns next week with a completely new chapter. I have a backlog of high-waisted, super-shaping sheers that I want to introduce you to. But first, let me take my notes to the garage for a tune up.

And again, thanks to Carrie and the nice ladies at Stockingirl!

Happy dressing, and everything else.

The Return of the Things

Even after all the bumping and bruising of my recent Black Friday shopping, I still had some snap in my garter. I had hauled in some terrific trophies from the frothy retail sea last week, and beautiful as they all are, I chose to exercise a woman’s prerogative on a couple of the glittering catches snared in the net. The Ann Taylors’, after some consideration, simply did not ring true. Yes, the pencil skirt is gorgeous. 2 issues though, and neither have to do with the skirt:

a) I already have her twin, and b), at 22” it is just a tad demure.

Much to like about a perfect skirt though, and not only for the admirer outside of its tight, sleek confines. There are joys for the bearer of such glad fashion tidings. The graceful limits of ones strides are so exactly pressed with each step. The compression of the thigh, the flattening of skirt front, the slight bias pull of sleek lining shifting and swishing around ones derriere, the cheeky opening of the back-slit. Ahh, be still my heart. Wonderful sensations. Mirrors not required. But again, we live in austere times dear friends, and so with heart hardened back to the shops I went.

I took with me the polished cotton tuxedo blouse too. Great look, really, but I already have a full male wardrobe of butchy enough things. I will henceforth leave this class of blouse to the genetic girl set, and admire the look from afar, or from as close as civil society allows. Live and learn. But be sure to hang on to your receipts always.

And a good thing I did too, because Black Friday is followed surely by Cyber Monday. A completely spurious invention of online retailers needing to gin up another belch of ill-considered consumption, Cyber Monday is celebrated with online door crasher specials, free shipping and other purse-prying premiums.

Smart retailers have learned in recent years that what is good for the online goose is good for the offline gander, and so most web deals are offered at parity in the stores these days. I prefer shopping live for a whole host of reasons, one amongst them that I move faster than UPS when the urge hits. My favorite smart retailer, Ann Taylor went 40% off everything again for Cyber Monday, and so I figured a nice swap out would be in order.

I dressed a tad differently than my lovely visit a couple of weeks ago when I had the leopard print dress on. Work boots, ratty jeans, indifferent jersey top with a corporate logo and paint stains on it, a ball cap to cover my unkempt hair and a Miami Vice class stubble-field on my unmoisturized face. There is a little construction going on Chez Bellejambes, you see. Drab to the fullest extent possible. Still, I was clocked by one clever sales assistant who had rutted the racks with me recently. With a warm return hello, and knowing smiles tendered, I dove in with renewed vigor and emerged with unarguably prettier, flouncier, and more feminine things.

The Top – A Cascading Ruffle Blouse, found in a terrific pewter shade, all delicate silk georgette, ruched shoulders and buttoned cuff, puffed sleeves, a blouse from the far reaches of Planet Girly. It will work terrifically with the new skirt (notes below) as well as recent finds from JC Penney. Knocked down from ~ $100 to just a touch over $25 US. <insert choir of angels sound here>.

The Skirt. Diagonal Tiers of very pretty chiffon pennantry draped across the stretch jersey front of this slightly more body conscious, thigh baring, 19” not-for-every-day-wear side-zipped flirt. The grim retail reaper had undressed this beauty from a lofty $90.00 all the way down to $30.00 by the time I found my grubby paint-splattered hands on it. Patience and compulsion rewarded at the same time. The universe is kind yes, and O so pretty.

I must tell quickly of the check out experience. My finds were being gently dressed in tissue paper by a statuesque beauty who had not been in the shop when I was there en femme, and who assumed I was in the gift market for a shapelier girl.

“Nice! What’s the occasion?”

“The occasion is beautiful cloths”, said I.

“O, that is sweet. I love sensitive men…”.

Damn, but I am glad I am married. I remember being prone to making a complete fool of myself with the slightest encouragement in younger years, and you know that a nice new outfit does make me feel so, so young.

After the taxes were figured in, I had an outfit I feel absolutely certain about, and a crisp $20.00 bill slipped back into my purse. That unexpected windfall is poised for the next, absolutely, positively required thing. If I know me, updates will not be too far off my friends.

Happy dressing, and happy everything else

Extreme Cross Dressing: Polar Opposite edition

I have always been an avid reader. I rather enjoy pictures too. When the two are put together well, I am a happy lad. Or lass. Depending on, well, whatever. As a youngster, when weather forced me indoors, and I had nothing new in from the library. I had two go-to books, classics that stood up to repeated deep dives.

First among unequal’s was of course the Sears Catalog. I would keep my thumb in the fishing tackle pages near the back, ready for a click flick in the event of sudden company while studiously absorbing the every detail of the confounding and compelling foundation garments featured rather near the front. The geography of the female form, and the sorcery with which it was concealed and enhanced held me in its gentle grip for happy hours at a time.

A close contender, reading-wise, was The World Book of Nations. Geography of a different sort, this book stirred in me my other great life long passion: beating my passport into a bloody, pocket-bent, dog-eared pulp, inked over, stapled and babel-tongued by renewal time.

The Jesuits say, show me the boy of seven, and I will show you the man. True often, and, in my case a 10 point bulls-eye: a vagabond in strappy sandals.

The World Book of Nations was of course rich in maps, but replete also with statistics, notes on languages employed and gods prayed to, commentary on social organization, currency, political systems, key economic drivers, and compelling illustrations of faces and robes typically different from my own. Go ahead, ask me for the name of the capital city of even the most obscure county. I have it still.

I do not have the book though. I think I hollowed out the pages to stash my vintage Playboy collection sometime in the early 70’s. Decisions, decisions.

Not travelling now so much as I used to, I now get my geography jolly’s in part through Voyages en Rose as illustrated by Google Analytics. Pretty, pretty maps, and good heavens look where all of our friends live. Never ceases to amaze me. I was waiting for some tile grout to dry out the other day, and went travelling as far North and South as Voyages en Rose had ventured in your hands. I wanted to think and learn about the lives of this blogs' Peary and Amundsen. Here presented as part of my periodical series of whimsical quantitative analysis are notes on our North and South-most outposts.

Northern Hemisphere: Tromsø, Norway, 68 º 69 N

Dear me, Tromsø is up there. This city of roughly 75,000 residents gets 2 months of midnight sun and mid-day dark both. Evidence of human settlement goes back as far as 10,000 years, and so clearly cross dressing has deep roots here. On the conservative assumption that perhaps 3% of the male population has a penchant for women’s clothing, our one visitor from this remote hamlet is surely not alone. There are 2 post-secondary institutions in Tromsø, and so with young people huddling and drinking for warmth, the nightlife (all-nightlife?) is reputed to be thriving. Opaque tights and tall boots are never out of style north of the Arctic Circle. I think I would love it.

Southern Hemisphere: Invercargill, New Zealand, 46º 42 S

The southern hemisphere, being the water hemisphere does not provide so many comfy perches for a cross dresser to perch upon. That said, you have to work pretty hard to get south of Invercargill. Ushuaia, Argentina is the only city on the planet further south (54 º 47 S) than this pretty Southern Island outpost. New Zealand as a geography has benefitted from a relatively short acquaintance with humans, with the original Maori settlement beginning only some 700 years or so ago.

Invercargill is of course a lovely Scottish name, true to the roots of the second wave of human settlement in the 1700’s. The Scots are uniquely possessed of an almost wretched love of homeland and an unsurpassed drive to get as far the hell away from it as possible. You have to love that. Prior to this pale wooly settlement, The Maori had made a nice home of Waihōpai for a good while, but given their famous martial traditions may not have seen a man in a skirt before the Scots pitched up and hitched up their kilts.

In any event, this city of roughly 50,000 is oddly a hotbed of competitive cycling. There is a velodrome in Invercargill. This fact provides our one visitor with a perfect cover for the shaving of legs. Nobody would bat an eyelid. Really. Go ahead!

I want to thank my Extreme Cross Dressing, Polar Opposites for visiting these Voyages en Rose, and for giving me the impetus to take a little virtual trip to your fabulous homes.

And how about you? Even more extreme? Remote? Drop a line anytime. My Passport is sadly fresh looking.

Small Editorial Postscript …

On the matter of font size, the very slenderest of margins came out in favor of keeping things just the way they are. Closed poll results presented are displayed here. Click to enlarge.

I am relieved for a couple of reasons. First, it saves me from adapting to another newish thing, at a time when my capacity for adaptation is already being pressed. Secondly, it indicates that a slim (final figure flattering metaphor of the day I promise) majority of you figure I made an acceptable decision somewhere back in the perfumed mists of time. Thanks for the encouragement, and as well for the thoughtful commentary.

And for those of you in the slightly smaller vocal and hopefully not bi-focalled minority, may I suggest that if a post looks like you might want to enjoy it, simply copy and paste into your word processor, and just add a font size or 2 for your reading pleasure. I do appreciate your forebearance with the will of the sorority.

Happy Dressing, and everything else...