Reality TV

A couple of posts back I advised readers that I was planning a nice outing for 9 November. The idea was to share some of my pre-Voyage staging notes on my happy path to being a non-credentialed journalist at a big rally headlined by media curiosity, and arguably the most stylishly turned-out American ex-Governor Sarah Palin.

The only potential run in the fabric of my scheme was stated thusly:

“ …Presuming that my planning comes together and clients do not rain down crises on or about the 9th …”

Well, hells bells, so it has happened. I am pretty well stuck into a big heap of demanding things. Things I caused to happen myself by flapping my gums and making a terrific suggestion. I opened a bit of a Pandora's Box, and for my troubles will be enjoying a Pandora’s Boxed Lunch, and talking about possible futures that include me taking a staff position, yes a day job with my principal client on Tuesday. These are people I genuinely like, the work is challenging, I am capable of doing it well, and pocketing a few more shekels doing it well than I do today. All good things.

This decision is being weighed against pretty late stage negotiations on a book contract. Some of you have said nice things about my writing in the past. There are others who agree with you. Different subject matter than what I dwell upon and within here altogether. Rather butchy business-y stuff in fact, but there are all sorts of settings that I can pass in.

In short, there is much occupying my mind and much threatening to occupy my time too.

It is a shame to not find myself in the same room as Ms. Palin and so many of her ardent and vocal admirers. We, Sarah and I, are members of different "T" parties, but proud sisters of the Size 4 Party. There may be much that Ms. Palin and I do not agree on, but I do believe we could mount a furious shopping expedition together. That is change that both of us I am sure, could believe in.

On a more serious note, there are of course other not-so-good things, different and indifferent things associated with these new possibilities too, and some of these things would trim my ability to explore and tend to my Petra-ness, and to paint the walls of Voyages en Rose as frequently and colorfully as I do today. All happiness at a price, yes? Much to think on. I will keep you posted.

At the very least, I expect that I will be posting here on a slightly slower cadence.

You know, my dear friends, I had been planning on a few tweaks to the blog in any event. Voyages en Rose is approaching 2 years in age, and the word-o-meter is damnably close to clicking past 200,000. A little routine maintenance is in order and some of them are underway as of today.

Those changes are going to be very hosiery-centric.

The very alert amongst you will have noticed a change in the header graphic at the top of the page. Where there was a montage of artful and beautifully lit figures clad in filmy things from Wolford, there is a new montage of, well me, poorly lit, clad in clingy things, some of them from Wolford.

Hosiery was the proto-lure, the enabler, the sizzling flame to my fluttering moth yes, and will always be very near to my heart (and often times near to parts south thereof). I just don’t want to mislead visitors. I love lingerie, and lingerie for the legs especially, but visitors here should know right off the bat that Voyages en Rose is not built to cater to the interests of dedicated hosiery enthusiasts.

Voyages en Rose is rather more about gender generally. It is about sometimes glimpsed, never reached, always receding horizons of understanding or clarity. It is about living with and enjoying fuller dimensions of human experience. A very important part of this journey does have to do with fashion, style and shopping and I will continue to share posts of that variety with you. Just not so much in the way of words or pics of the nylon/lycra variety. If your interests clatter in that direction, check out any of the sites listed in the “Fashion, Foundations and Femininity Links” section in the right sidebar below.

If you think for even a frozen moment that I could simply close the book on the whole hosiery thing and not burst a blood vessel, well you would have been wrong. Petra’s Pantyhose Parade is something I am proud of. I have studiously reviewed and scientifically ranked roughly 40 distinct brands of sheers over the last couple of years. I have, to my surprise and delight, become something of an amusing voice, and perhaps even an authority on leg wear. I will continue to cultivate this work. Just not here.

I have in fact found a new home, and really, a better place for my hosiery related posts. A place with a much larger readership than Voyages en Rose, a largely female readership whose blog-hopping has little or nothing to do with matters of interest to the CD/TG community. It is a matter of real delight to me that my writing and learning has earned me a chance to write for a new audience. My product reviews at my new home are going to be entirely neutral of the things that identify Voyages en Rose as a Cross Dressers blog. In my new home, I will simply be someone who knows hose.

So there.

I will share all the particulars when the inaugural review goes up a little later this month.

I will also share news on how all the business shenanigans impact my realities, TV and otherwise. Wish me luck.

The Stations of the Crossdresser

For crossdressers who are happy exiles from, or active participants in the life of, the Roman Catholic Church, faint echoes of vanishing rituals may come to mind at the reading of today’s post headline. Yes, Petra was raised in a Catholic setting. I suspect now, after some reflection, that most of my family would rather picture me in Priestly robes than the robes I prefer. Alas. I ask myself though, exactly what kind of lapsed Catholic Cross Dresser and blogette would I be if I could not somehow integrate my past and present rituals in a nicely twisted tumble of words? Hence The Stations of the Crossdresser.

For those of you from different faith traditions, The Stations of the Cross are the 14 tiny shrines that depict the final hours in the life of Christ that line the left and right interior walls of the typical parish church. During the Lenten season the flock might stop briefly at each of the stations for a moment of reflection. Each station could be thought of as a minor pilgrimage.

And do you know what? 14 seems like a good number of milestone events that the crossdresser might achieve in an exemplary life. And together we might call them The Stations of the Crossdresser. Each of them a minor, or for many, a major pilgrimage that together aggregate up into a greater gurly whole. A thing to be proud of, not boastful, but quietly proud. In the same way that a mountaineering enthusiast might want to summit the highest peaks on each continent (mounting The 7 Sisters for you clowns in the back row) we dressing enthusiasts should agree on our badges (broaches?) of honor.

I don’t have a comprehensive list just now of the 14 Stations of the Crossdresser but a handful come easily to mind. A makeup session in a public setting. A trip to Victoria’s Secret. Dinner out en femme. For the rest, I am going to count on informed input and breathless suggestions from you dear reader. When I am privileged to make a pilgrimage, I will report back to you. Perhaps we can agree on an orthodoxy, on our shared rites, not a theology per se, but with your forgiveness and forbearance, perhaps a Sheology.

I propose here that the First Station of the Crossdresser is a trip to a shrine known to my American sisters as the Designer Shoe Warehouse. I believe this to be a fine place to start because while the barefoot pilgrimage is fine for other traditions, I think we can agree that barefoot is entirely wrong for our set.

I will publish the particulars of this pilgrimage tomorrow. Its all simply too much to ask you to try on in one sitting. In the meantime, and anytime really though, I encourage you to think of those special milestones, those places of meaning, those frontiers of femininity that should be on our list of Stations of the Crossdresser. Ours is an inclusive congregation here, deliberative and refined we are. Your help is needed. I so look forward to hearing from you.

Have a Super Sunday, whatever shape and shade that takes for you!

Getting old is a drag

While the art of transformation is so at the core of our intoxicating and compelling urges, I will confess, dear friends, to being a bit of a data fiend. I do hope that my love of math does not erode what little womanly appeal I may accidentally possess. I trust that we, above all people, are able to rise above stereotypes (perhaps aided by impossibly high heels) and be smart girls without sacrificing even a smidgen of our feminine appeal. So here are some numbers and thoughts on last weeks poll that so many of you were kind enough to participate in.

I asked what age we are. I honestly volunteered my own (46) and another 48 of you clicked in, Many thanks! Here is what we look like:
To me, there are some results that run slightly against expectations, and one big puzzle. O how I want your help with the puzzle, which nets out like so: Where are all the young crossdressers?

My own polling and numbers gleaned from other sources indicates that we are called into the pink fitting room at very early ages. Anywhere from 80-90% of us either crossdressed or had the dawning realization of a gender gift before we escaped from high school. And yet this next crop of fashion forward friends is completely absent from the Voyages en Rose readership. (Click on images to enlarge)

Where O where are they? Measured against the national demographic data provided by the never glamorous US Census Bureau you can see how silver haired we are relative to the overall population. Fully half of our site visitors are 50 years or older where this sophisticated set comprises a mere 25% of the broad male population (absolutely no pun intended). The chart shows Petra’s readership shamefully below national population distribution in the under 30 set though, and this begs a little speculating. Mine follows, and your ideas are solicited here.

Do we spend our earlier years experimenting and then, believing in our young adult years that this will simply go away? Is there a drive for “fitting in” and even mating up that suppresses the dressing? Does the habit go dormant or only periodically erupt until we mature a little and really take ownership of it? This theory is based on only a little consideration of my own case. There is however, one other possibility that I must contend with if I am to be an honest correspondent from the front lines of crossdressing. Here goes:

Petra Bellejambes' Voyages en Rose could be so irredeemably uncool and out of touch with youth culture that I lost the younger CD at “hello”. If so, I can live with it. I know that I certainly lived with the “never trust anyone over 30” suggestion that a generation just a little older than me lived well by back in the turbulent 60’s. Perhaps my blog has just too matronly a fragrance around it for our youngish friends.

Recently on one of the crossdressers.com forums one of the sisters started a thread wondering where indeed the younger set were. An instant flurry of 20something hands were virtually and proudly raised. That was encouraging. It seems to me that we live in a time of broader acceptance of alternative expressions of gender specifically and of self in general. With those conditions in place, it would be a shame to keep desires that don’t seem to vanish too deeply buried to enjoy them to the fullest extent.

Especially when you consider that most of us had so much better a figure in our slightly younger years. Alas, perhaps that is why I am so rarely in an age appropriate dress.

If you have any comments you would like to share, don’t hesitate. Happy to hear from you anytime, and especially in this case if you have the perspective of the 20something CD/TG.

I am going to put the data away for a little while now. I have some terrific en femme shopping planned for tomorrow. And likely not dressed age appropriate methinks. I suspect the next couple of posts will be a little less academic. Till then, happy dressing and happy everything else.

Passing (well … sort of) & other news

Very short post here my lovely and curious friends. As I was doing my daily email, Google Reader, Blog traffic review and general CD/TG snooping I came across 2 things I wanted to share with you.

First, the sad sad news of the lingerie spill on Highway H-1 just outside of Honolulu. A truckload of intimate garments, wind-tossed, tire-spoiled and ditch-begrimed, never to feel the warm touch of flesh. Again, nothing but sad. For full article and video, click here. I imagine myself on the scene dodging traffic in a desperate bid to save the bras.

Next, the happy stuff. In this mornings research I found a neat site. (And I must credit the lovely and talented Lynn Jones whose fabulous "Yet Another T-Girl Blog) can be found here). The Gender Analyzer is a simple online tool that scans websites and offers up an expert opinion on the gender of the author. If you have a blog or want to play with your favorite web sites a little, just press on a new set of nails and click over here.

I did, (minus the nails girls, it’s a busy drab day) and had the analyzer look in on Voyages en Rose. And what do the experts say? (Click on image to enlarge)

I passed. I encourage you all to hum along to your favorite triumphant music and imagine yourself waving to an adoring imaginary audience with your wrist pointed just so and an open hand. That would be Petra just about now.

I glow.

For real, this is interesting to me. I have not edited myself too heavily here. I do a lot of writing professionally and have never considered my gender as an influencer of my style. I have, however, attempted to occupy Petra’s mind while writing here, because it’s a nice way to spend 30 minutes “dressed” without all the effort. Petra needs at least 2 hours to appear and disappear in the real world. Here in the virtual world, she can log in and live it up in snap.

And evidently, she can pass.

And now, I encourage you to imagine my quick pirouette and slightly sassy walk into the sunset on this happy occasion. A last flip of the hair and a wink over my shoulder right your way.

Happy dressing and happy everything else to you.