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...

Black (Skirt) Friday

Barely recuperated from Thursdays' surfeit of food and wonderful holiday company, I waded into the mall melee yesterday. For visitors who have never witnessed the American post-Thanksgiving shopapoloozo known here as Black Friday, picture the Pamplona Running of the Bulls with everyone carrying flailing purses.

Let us, for a moment, trust Wikipedia, and believe that the expression, applied to retail sometime in the 60’s indicates the day of the year that a retailer had better be moving into a profit position for the year, thereby moving from Red Ink, into the Black. Plausible enough I suppose. But don’t dwell on the thought too long or that lunatic in the jogging pants will tear the hanger right out of your hand while you dither.

It’s a bloody mad-house out there.

And I am not kidding about the jogging pants. Its either wear fleece or be fleeced it seems, but please, ladies, would it hurt to dress up just a little? So many pretty things on the racks, being mangled by harridans of barely discernable female form, still spittle-flecked from the parking lot squabble and determined, dammit, to shop, and to hell with appearances.

Many things we are, here in America, but chief amongst them we are consumers.

Personally, I have for many years shunned the fun. Shopping for guy-me is just not worth the bother. This however being my first Black Friday firmly in the acknowledged kid-glove grip of cross dressing, well, what would I be if I did not try? You have to try.

We start with JC Penney. They continue to pleasantly surprise, featuring a cute contemporary line, Bisou Bisou that catches my fancy. These are not heirloom pieces dear friends. They are made on the cheap, but have enough caché to warrant the small investments required. The high-waisted lace skirt endows the wearer with a true come-hither slither. A saucy little slit at the back bares thigh to admirers lurking in your wake. She is of modest length, but that is the only modest thing about her. The highly elastic fabric clings, stretches and drapes quite well. It feels yummy. Nicely re-enforced at the broad and high waistband, it provides constant gentle reminders that you should move, always, like a lady. It’s a fine look, and I paired it with a black jeweled collar thin jersey knit with a beautiful sheer back detail top. Racy. My own glowing product review on the JCP web site can be seen by following this link.

Toute l’ensemble - $36.02., down from $88.00.

From JCP I waded into the busy mall, and popped fruitlessly into a couple of shops. Victorias Secret was about to go China Syndrome, 50 deep at the cash desk. 180º and out again. Nordstroms still too pricey. Nothing in H+M moved me to tears, either of delight or laughter. On then to the somewhat quieter and always warm embrace of Ann Taylor. Across the board 40% off everything through noon, including some previously seriously discounted beauties. I need another skirt like I need another leg, but I do so love this shop. I will allow myself to believe that I am merely making up for experiences not enjoyed in prior drab years, and can be forgiven the purchase of the odd unnecessary thing.

So, where the JCP goods have a night-clubby feel to them, today’s AT goodies have a finer corporate feel to the fibre. The black wool, fully tailored pencil skirt is close to heirloom quality. Taken care of I could make this last 100 wearings. In short I have a great interview look for anytime between now and 2045. I paired it up with a very cute little tuxedo blouse. They look terrific together, and the fit of both pieces is superb. Alas I am not sure that I will take the tags off, and make them mine permanently. First, the price, and then the reasoning.

Toute l’ensmble – $82.67 down from $195.00

And yet we may part ways. The skirt is just too, too much at the knee. Again, let us put this down to the years of missed opportunities to display my gams. I like to show a little more leg than this skirt affords.

As to the blouse, women in a smartly fitted and tailored shirts always get my attention. Versatile, confident and just gently unconcerned with gender conventions, the man-shirt reincarnated as the woman-blouse is a complete winner. But perhaps not for me. I think that I want more femme than this. More cling than crease. More bows than buttons. I am not a rash person though. I will sleep on the decision a couple of nights at least.

I am finding it interesting though that my feminine shopping habits are diverging greatly from long established drab shopping habits. Anything I buy for guy-me has a 1 way ticket out of the shop. It is correct or it is not bought. Period. Recently though, and unconsciously, I am developing the concept of a probation period for purchased goods. Its kind of like casual sex without the whole sex bit. Petra-mode shopping seems now to come with the privileges of indecision. There is a price to indecision though. Back into the mall I will go again. Quite likely that my arms will not be empty on the way out, but my purse will be.

Happy dressing and everything else for your weekend.

Voyages en Rose is One Year Old today.

A little over a year ago, with my wife visiting family overseas, and the tidal pull running high and hot, I shopped, dressed, and pressed my cross dressing limits. I made a decision to yield to my desires, and to see where they might go with me. Instantly, it all became very, very real. This, I knew, is me.

A long suppressed vein, or rather, a gusher of emotion splashed out and required thought and consideration. I wanted to attempt to put words to the feelings. In this happy, frightening chaos was Voyages en Rose born on 26 November, 2008. And such a cute pink little thing.

The very first thing I wrote under my newly minted nom de femme went like so:

Petra emerges from within me from time to time. This odd desire to periodically express myself in a feminine form has been with me forever now. It washes in and draws me out. I often swim against the tide. I sometimes let it pull. I don't believe its going away, and so its time for me to court it formally.

This is still true, and I still like the way it reads. It was written as an introductory note, not only for early visitors, but for myself. With the outlines of a feminine persona, and a wobbly authorial voice, I went ahead and created a first post. You are all far, far too young to remember this gem, published under the headline, "Nice Legs, Shame About the Face" :

...This is neither undue flattery or false modesty. I have terrific legs. And I have a face that draws attention for all the wrong reasons while out en femme. As a male face, it works, its serviceable. Not so handsome that guys don’t trust me. Not so ugly that women run away. As a woman’s face though, its just sad.

There are a whole pile of issues big and small. There is too much nose. The shadow is dark. And I feel poorly about my smile. I think this pulls my eyes down. And all the mechanics from that drive through shoulders, tits and ass too with a predictable impact on my gait and passability. But for now back to the face.

I will spare the stories of how badly I have done myself up in the past. I have achieved looks only marginally better than vintage Twisted Sister and Little Orphan Annie. It was time to put myself in the hands of professionals. Here is A Tale of Two Facials. ....

From a years remove, I am surprised at how true this blogs baby steps are to how I express today. I am now perhaps a little more insouciant, and little less coarse, but writing with essentially the same voice.

That voice has expressed in 89,000 words, spread over 112 posts the tiniest fraction of what I have felt, experienced and hoped for. These words have attracted the attention of some 17,000 unique individuals visiting over 26,000 times from 4,202 cities in 122 countries. The amount of time you all have spent here surprises too …. some 42,000 precious minutes have sped past here. This to me is dizzying and gratifying.

I underestimated the strength of our numbers and I overestimated the degree to which I felt my circumstances were unique. Our numbers are strong, and while many cross dressers and transgendered face challenges on the way to expressing and living as we would want, one of those problems is not a lack of company and kinship along the way. And so to you visitors I am deeply, eternally indebted. Nice to have pleasant, like minded people on the path.

Writing is inherently solitary labor. Many writers give voice to the philosophy that the labor is the thing, and that what it causes to happen in the minds of the audience is something that they are not responsible for. Only a handful of great writers and the perfectly medicated can happily sustain that lofty belief. I am neither.

I do have, however one year later a much better understanding of, well, me, and am proud to count myself much richer in friends. These friendships have started often with comments left on posts here. There have been over 200 comments and I am happy to report that I have published all of them (excepting the 1 profanity laced, drunken, abusive and anonymous screed). Insightful and supportive, they are indeed raindrops in the desert. As are the friendships.

These friendships forged here on the Senator Ted Stevens Memorial Intertube Highway (apologies for the obscure reference to non-politico’s and overseas visitors) are what I am most thankful for, vis a vis my journey. I won’t name names, but you know who you are. Thanks for everything, and thanks as well for your own fiercely honest, illuminating, artful and often funny blogging.

A new year begins for Voyages en Rose now, and for me in my continuing embrace of my whole self. Thanks for sharing with me on this road.