Voyages en Rose

Bullet Bra Blogging

2009-11-11T14:10:00.012-05:00

Google Reader alerts me to blog updates from a rich variety of sites of different types. Me, I follow quite a few fashion and foundation garment commentators. As a part time cross dresser, I have much to learn, and a lot of catching up to do knowledge-wise. Yeah, and the pictures are pretty, I must confess. I have followed Tomima (pron. toe-MY-mah) Edmark, the proprietress of HerRoom.com for some time now. Tomima’s own blog (linked here) is typically pretty rich in tips and tricks to finding the right underwear and getting the most out of them. Really informative stuff.

Her post today had a little reference to cross dressing that moved me to write a little note to her. I am all about recycling and so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone here by sharing the conversational volleys so far. I hope the discussion continues. Take a minute to read the post if you can. And then do come back here love, would you? Here is a short summary to save you the trip:

1. Cone shape bras are showing up on runways. 2. This silhouette always appears in troubled economic times. 3. Women will not welcome this – too, too unpractical. 4., and lastly, I will quote directly from Tomima (italics, mine):

...That said, we do get phone calls every once in a while asking which bras we carry at HerRoom that give a pointed silhouette. And, I will tell you that most calls asking this are from men who like to wear ladies lingerie. But, if you happen to like this silhouette, the Fantasie Belle 6010 and Goddess Longline 689 are two good choices. ...

Interesting reference I thought. My comment here:

A terrific and welcomed post. Yes I have been seeing some of the same silhouettes and breathless commentary about bullet bras from the commentariat, and have a couple of thoughts on the matter.

The designers who start the trends tumbling downhill surely into our closets are motivated in part by doing something different than last year. Change being at the heart of creativity. Change is clearly at the heart of commerce too I suppose. From short to long and back, from natural to de-natured and back, from round and soft to hard and angular and back we go and hope we can find a good parking spot at the mall.

Bullet bras and the resulting Russell-esque shapes will be seen in greater numbers for a while yes, but I suspect always near cameras and stages, catwalks and nightclubs. Boudoirs too I suppose for women and men both who like a little playful time and perhaps have a sense of nostalgia for an era they missed barely or by decades. God bless the girlfriends and wives who are willing to humour their spouses for a few uncomfortable hours.

I suspect that most of the men that inquire of your personnel about conical brassieres are possessed a little by that nostalgia, and perhaps a desire to feature the campier and less flattering aspects of “drag”, rather than the sincerely admiring and envious “femulations” undertaken by the vast majority of periodic cross dressers.

Speaking as one of the sincere latter, the search for comfort, support and prettiness remains paramount. I look for bras that contain my breast forms well, and disappear beneath my dresses leaving only the most setting appropriate and flattering figure lines up front. The experience of cross dressing is for many, if not most, the experience of blending in and being. Not standing out and being seen.

Thanks, sincere thanks, for your many blog posts. They have helped me be a smarter consumer of foundation garments of all types. Any time you have any thoughts or advice for the studious cross dresser or committed transgender, I would love to see them here. I can assure you that a surprising number of your current readers will be happy to see themselves respectfully addressed.

Fond regards

Again, a fine and educational blog, highly recommended. If I see anything catering to the CD/TG audience there, I will let you know here.

But tell me friends .. bullet bras? Yes or no. Leave a comment,

Happy dressing.

A Cross Dressers personality

2009-11-10T12:27:00.005-05:00

In prior posts (here, there, and o yeah, over here too) I have spoken about The Gender Analyzer. The Gender Analyzer is a piece of web gadgetry that makes an educated guess as to the gender of the author of a blog by examining the language used and how its put together.

I was typically a little delighted with “fooling” the machine, but more delighted by confirming my own feelings of, and pride about what I believe to be a healthy mix of gender characteristics in my outlook on life. Gender Analyzer said at different times that it had a 68%, 74%, and most recently, an 82% degree of certainty that Voyages en Rose was written by a woman. Nice.

Staci-Lana of Femulate (86%, go Staci!) directed me to another tool/toy from some people that use the same technology as The Gender Analyzer, over at uclassify.com. Amongst the tools at this site is something called the Typealizer. Typealizer does a lot of the same things in terms of analyzing the writing for “tells” about the gender of the author, but it goes a step or two further.

It goes in fact into the same territory as those personality typing tests that many of us have may have doddled through on the way to winning a job, or to addressing somebody in HR’s concern that we are perhaps doing the wrong one. Job that is. Ah yes. Personality typing. One of the grand-daddies is the Myers-Briggs. Not too far in the shadows is the Keirsey. There are countless others, but these, I am familiar with, and there is a Keirsey outcome in this post.

I have thought, in the past, when taking such tests that I was driving repeatedly past the same building having taken four left turns to get back where I started. And having forgotten how I answered the seemingly same question the first, and second time around. It always seemed to me that these exercises are a better test of whether you have control over your sweat glands and blush response than they are determinative of ones personality, but I am happy to cede to the professionals what they profess to know. There must be something in all the smoke and mirrors.

So imagine my delight at being able to take the test without a career hanging in the balance, and even better, minus all the sweaty and blushy bits. Simple as popping the Voyages en Rose URL into a box, and in less time than it takes to buff a nail, presto:

ESFP – The Performers. More on that in a moment, but first off, I love that they got my fashion sense right and placed me in my natural environment. An attractively dressed young thing with fine taste in boots and a bubbly beverage held happily on a bar. Bullseye! I love these people.

The language used to summarize my type follows:

ESFP = The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to
pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics,
bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don’t like
to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves. They enjoy work
that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They
tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can
make it hard for them in management positions.

Hmmm. Killing me softly, with their code, telling my whole life, on their site, killing me softly, with their code. They just get better by the minute. The observation on management is really trenchant.

I have quite pointedly pursued work that gave me as much responsibility for outcomes as I could handle, with the absolute minimum responsibility for the well-being and productivity of direct reports, otherwise known as people.

People are a daunting responsibility. I take it very seriously when responsible for a persons career track and general happiness in the workplace. I get better at it with time and practice, but its about the only aspect of my work life that I have constant second thoughts about. I truly worry that I over-said this, or under-stressed that. Some people call it throttle-control, which I sometimes took to mean controlling the urge to throttle a co-worker, but turns out to be about the even, constant and predictable application of force against an objective. Ah well, clearly this ESFP bar-fly has much to learn.

Further into the analysis, and with a familiar hand on my thigh, our newish friends at Uclassify lean in close and share some sweet uttering’s on the very workings of the pink fluff between my ears. Pictured here:

This visual happily sorts well with how I think my brain works. You will note an overcompensation to the lower left quadrant. Order, habit, detail, all of the things I focus on, perpetually, to sort out the otherwise busy jumble of impulses that I am besieged by when not mindful of my, well, my mind. Resolute concentration on how things are and fit together help me get along reasonably well in the face of my own self-diagnosed case of CDADHD. That would be Cross Dressers Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

In any event, if you blog, go ahead and learn something about yourself here. And if you do not blog, but visit my blog from time to time, I am glad that the personality you see expressed here is in some way curious and interesting to you. Come again.

Happy dressing and everything else ….

The Technology of Cross Dressing

2009-11-09T11:57:00.008-05:00

It is natural that we think of ourselves as living in unique times, and in unique circumstances. Many will agree with me when I suggest that if there is something that defines our time today as unique, that thing would be technology. More specifically, the technology underpinning the communications explosion facilitated by what we think of as the Internet. “www” is, by any measure, a unique signature of our time.

But technology has long had an impact on the lives of cross dressers. Sadly much of this rich history lays obscured beneath the rustling crinolines of yesteryear, lost to historians and orphaned from our present day.

We all learned, for example, as school kids that the very first words uttered into a telephone by the great innovator Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant Thomas Watson were “Watson come here I need you”.

What is less well known though is the shocking rest of the conversation. Watson replied:

“I’m busy dammit what do you want?”

“I need help with my zip”

Well baby, we’ve come a long way. As I approach my own mid-century mark I marvel at how different life can be today, for the transgendered, for cross dressers, and by extension, anyone who at anytime in their life asks themselves this question:

“Am I the only person in the world who does this or feels that”

There was a time in my life where I could only assume that I was the only boy in the world curious about the touch and feel and sensations conferred by women’s clothing. I had no evidence to the contrary.

In my early teen years, I was startled, slack-jawed really while reading a letter to the editors of Penthouse Magazine that began predictably enough with… I am a sophomore at a small mid-western college …. but moved from the mid-west to the darkest recesses of my imagination a couple of paragraphs in, when our hero confessed to how explosively good it had felt to be dressed as a woman by the random (ed. and of course totally hot, playful but somehow menacing, wise beyond her years and yet coltish still) girl from a dorm across campus.

No literary merit in the letter of course, but I felt at the time I suspect very much the same way as the inhabitants of Easter Island must have in 1722 after 1400 years of complete isolation, all of a sudden other humans just pitch up and say, howdy.

Wow. I am not alone.

This perpetually aroused teenager let his inner detective and amateur anthropologist loose on the world in search of evidence of delicate heel prints and lipstick smears where they might surprise and was not disappointed. With a little digging about, I found a good amount of “specialty literature’ and indeed photographic evidence describing and depicting people in outfits (and positions and predicaments) that I fancied I might like to try out, just to satisfy my curiosity of course. Only until I grew out of it all quite inevitably and naturally.

On the predictable path to that not happening, I was noticing a growing number of increasingly public and outrageous flaunters of gender conventions in the arts and culture spaces. Bowie lead a long parade, Boy George, Adam Ant and David Sylvain and countless more made up and laced up, threatening the very moral foundations of our society by … well, by exploring. Not much of a threat as it happens.

I further found around that time in the classified ads of weekly alternative newspapers a growing number of entrepreneurs, veritable Florence Nightingales’ (except that they might dress you as the nurse) who might be engaged with to actually transform the willing into the woman of ones dreams. This discovery was available to me though in part because of my stridently urban life style. I lived in a city. A big city, a cool city, a rich city. 50 miles from where I was may as well have been Easter Island. Isolated, unknown, untouched.

Fast forward, not too far, to today. Most of the world, certainly all of you reading here today, live in a massive city. The greatest metropolis ever imagined and perhaps never imagined. A city of 3, perhaps 4 billon people with another few billion knocking at the gates and sure to take up residence in the next pretty flutter of a generational eyelash. And while many will not have the luxuries of time and comfort in large enough measures to explore their multi-faceted gender compositions, more do have, and many more in the future will have those luxuries. How much easier is the discovery today, and how many more people will make that always unique discovery that they are not alone?

And now, not being alone, what do we say and do with each other, and with the rest of the world through our technologies?

More heavy ponderings along these lines in the never too distant future.

Happy dressing, and etc ...

Cross dressers of the world, unite!

2009-11-07T13:59:00.008-05:00

There are slender odds that a tiny trickle of you kind, beautiful visitors are not fully acquainted with and trans-crushing on Staci-Lana over at world famous Femulate. If you are in that trickle, be a complete lamb and meet me quietly in the next paragraph for a little chit chat.

Yes. I am addressing you directly here. If you do not know Femulate, now is the time.

Staci-Lana is running a poll for a few days. The more participants, the better the insights. Not only for a dear friend, but for you too. Well, that is to say that you can see results in near real time. Please visit. Then put a little thought to how you identify yourself. Then vote. This is good practice. Remember, 2010 is a Census year here in the good old US of A, so limber up for that labor with a mere flick of a mouse on Femulate today.

After that, give yourself a treat.

Long time visitors to Voyages en Rose know that I take my pretty hosiery pretty seriously. I have attempted to turn my passion for pantyhose into a science (without losing the thrill along the way) here in a weekly feature I call Petra’s Pantyhose Parade. If you have enjoyed those posts, or just generally have an eye and a thigh for fine things, then you simply must visit The Panty Drawer. Our correspondent, Tights Lover, goes places with a passion for hosiery and foundation garments that I admire and endorse.

I then suppress a small eruption of jealousy at TL’s ability to effortlessly swan around in a seemingly endless ocean of up-market, high-end, far from bargain-bin leggings and etc., because jealousy does not serve well in any circumstances, right? Of course. There, Petra is all better now.

So go visit, enjoy the views and insights, and leave a happier, smarter dresser. However you identify yourself.

Enjoy the weekend. Happy Dressing and everything else … Petra

Petra’s Pantyhose Parade – It is all about Hue

2009-11-05T09:05:00.014-05:00

With abject apologies to Cole Porter fans everywhere …

I’ve got Hue over my skin
I’ve got Hue, clinging to parts of me
From waist to the tips of my toes, they’re really a part of me
I’ve got Hue over my skin

I took care to not ladder them
So fine and frail that I walked in fear they would tear
But they have survived and thrived the test of my normal wear
I love Hue's over my skin.

I would sacrifice anything come what might
For a fine thing, the perfect dress sheers
In spite of the warning signs, that I own enough,
Enough now to last all my years ….

Yes friends, Thursday it is, and time for another high-steppin’ Pantyhose Parade. For newish visitors, a recap of the protocols. I like hosiery. I purchase a pair or 2 time to time. I wear them, and objectively as possible grade them so that we may some happy day possess a Rosetta Stone, a reliable periodic table, a statistically sound barometer of the relative merits of these bewitching garments that give so much and ask so little in return. I use a mathematical model as complex a those employed to bring Wall Street to its very knees last year to generate a Petra's Pantyhose Parade value, and have not yet received any kick-backs or threats of physical violence from the vendors I have subjected to my withering and/or longing glances.

So this week, as the poorly wrought lyric indicates, we have Hue up on the slab. Hue had always meant colorful, opaque tights to me. Lovely, useful items, but not fully in my fashion or editorial sweet spot. I was prompted to look more closely at this brand after noticing, in too much of a hurry to drop in, a Hue boutique in a nearby mall some weeks back. When I poked about the website, I found a much broader range of goods than I had previously perceived, including the stuff frequently featured here. The sheers.

Hue, as the name suggests is typically a brand more interested in color. You have likely seen massive walls of bright tights and funky leggings in your favorite shops and may have stayed away from them if you are more inclined, as I am, to dressier fare. Winter is coming on though, and great strides on the fashion tights front are being made daily, so perhaps it is time to broaden our horizons a little. More on that theme in a future post I am sure. But for now, a short review on the Hue offering for the pantyhose enthusiast.

Hue, as it happens, is a Kayser-Roth mills product. KR is the parent company, and Hue has a better known sister by the name of No Nonsense. No Nonsense has come in for some pretty harsh language from me in prior reviews. Truly a brand that brings out my own much unloved talent for caustic criticism. The net outcome of my reviews was that No Nonsense are the perfect fashion accessory for an armed robbery, or perhaps as a temporary fan belt replacement, and better kept off ones legs.

Nice to see, and to say then that Mr. & Mrs. Kayser-Roth have one lovely daughter. If they can forgive me for treating the other daughter coarsely, I would like to begin a serious courtship.

The tested product, the Ultrasoft Control Top is a 17 denier dressy sheer that straddles the day-to-night (ed. enough with the Cole Porter already…) divide confidently. With a subtle glimmer in natural light, that amplifies nicely under interior lighting, the leg arrives, announces and attracts.

Lets go to the name now: Ultrasoft. When you lead with “Ultrasoft”, they had better, and I mean better, feel soft. These do, curiously so with a practically downy feel to the leg, but to the hand, polished, sleek and glossy. Not often do you get the 2 feelings at once. Complement that with lightness and very sure wicking, and you get cool comfort which is a key consideration especially now in heated, dry indoor environments. Things can heat up quickly with those nice new boots on. You know the ones.

So, agreed, they look good, and feel fine. What else? Quality fabrication. Subtle sandal foot seam and clean finishing around the waist and through the gusset of a nicely firm, smoothing control top. Very sensibly, the Hue name is stitched into the waistband, making them easy to retrieve from crowded top drawers. The waistband sits, patiently, happily right at the waist. No roll. Nothing fancy or femmy in the private bits, no lacey or floral details to appeal to my aesthetic sense, and this is fine provided the best resources have been allocated to the look of the leg, and the comfort of the leggy. Which, I am happy to report they have. Abundantly so.

With a price tag of $8.00 ($7.00 each purchased in twins and trips) they are suitably priced for everyday wear, and do a better than everyday job at it. If you are a TJ Maxx shopper, keep your eyes peeled for these at a penny under $4.00. Unassailable value there, and still really good value at full retail. If soft is what you want, these will be your go-to-girls. As to the rankings, they earn a laudable 156.3 Petra Points and nestle into the middle of the pack at # 11 after a day nestled on my legs.

I am sorry to report though that they closed down that local shop. Walked by there hopefully the other day, and where once there was an ocean of nylon, lycra and general prettiness, there were dark lights. Was I too late to my realization? Again, Mr. and Mrs. Kayser-Roth, I beg your forgiveness.

Happy dressing and everything else….

What Not To Wear. Why We Should Care.

2009-11-04T10:13:00.010-05:00

My wife and I are fairly regular viewers of the fashion reality show, What Not To Wear (hitherto referred to as WNTW). Back in olden tymes (circa 2003-4), I cultured a crush on both Trinny and Susannah, the hosts of the original BBC program.

The premise of the show, for those of you in the TG community who are either dedicated to watching C-Span or simply anti-television is like so:

Trinny and Susannah would surreptitiously film a few days in the life of a walking, breathing, fashion sad sack. Then, in a very public setting, surrounded by friends and family, the intervention would begin. Shrieks of alarm, and a promise of a complete wardrobe do-over, on the WNTW purse, with one big catch:

The victim had to subject themselves to a caustic critique of everything that had ever worn, much that they had ever done, and all of what they were thinking in matters of personal style and presentation.

It made for great TV. Our hostesses were beautiful in completely different manners, stylish as could be, but not in ways that seemed too fussy or out of reach. Importantly, and charmingly too, they were both terrifically free with bodies, their own and their victims, always grabbing arses, bellys and boobs to emphasize points. Very entertaining and informative stuff. I always learned something watching them, and they never failed to take people from slouchy or freakish well through presentable, and often all the way to stunning in 22 manic minutes.

The same premise was maintained for the American transplant of the show, now at least 5 years on the tube here on The Learning Channel. There were a couple of changes, in tone mostly, with the sincerity dial turned up a little. This adaptation works in the American context in ways it might not have in the UK, works very well in my view. It could still use a little of the familiar fondling that the English lasses were famous for, but we are I suppose a nation descended from Puritan roots and pretty damned litigious. Might not work so well here alas.

As to the hosts, Clinton knows his stuff, and brings a good mix of droll, catty and funny. Stacey with her great hair, super-nova smile, killer legs and abundant energy, is hard not to like. Unless you are a girl who resents girls like that, which I most certainly am not.

Now, I don’t go out of my way to watch the show, don’t Tivo it, but, if channel surfing, this is one of those useful time wasters I have absolutely no problem throwing myself at for a half hour. I have thought on a couple of occasions just how would Stacey and Clinton (or even better… Trinny and Susannah) deal with a cross dresser? Not me mind you, I am not that open. But somebody…..

And now the Why We Should Care part of this post, dear friends.

I received an email from a friend the other day. She had nominated a pre-op TG friend to WNTW, and told me that the application had been accepted and was under review. She was excited and could barely contain herself and what did I think? Me? I thought this was a master stroke. It made me giddy. I really, truly want to see this happen.

I will share a link with you to contact the nice people responsible for this entertaining programming at the end of this post. If this is the sort of TV that you would want to see, please take the 5 minutes required to share your views. Here are a handful of the reasons I did:

- This would be a real challenge for Stacey and Clinton, and a challenge that I think they would want to take on. I get the feel that they are both very post-gender, non-judgmental, and genuinely interested in making the world look better.
- This is programming that would cement TLC’s already strong reputation for socially progressive programming
- This is a show that would very sensitively promote awareness about the Transgendered, and that cannot be bad.
- And lastly, given recent landmark legislation here in these United States around the issue of hate crimes related to sexual orientation and other common social differentiators, this would be timely programming.

Beyond all that, for those of us disadvantaged in our dressing simply because the genetic girls have such a head start, we could all use a style tip or 2, ne c’est pas? Of course we could.

Here is the promised link. http://extweb.discovery.com/viewerrelations

You won’t have to give any personally identifying information if you don’t want to. You will not be nominating anyone in particular. But if you suggest, like I have, that a TG focused episode of WNTW would be really welcomed, well then, my friends friend has a much better shot at a life changing make-over than might be the case today.

I truly hope you do. Drop me a note here in comments if you have taken the time. So appreciate your thoughtfulness and sense of general devilment. If I find other ways to politely pester Stacey and Clinton, I will share them with you in future posts.

Lets go make some great TV shall we?

Cross Dressers Correspondence Corner

2009-11-03T08:11:00.015-05:00

Loyal followers of these Voyages en Rose may recall a post from a couple of weeks back wherein I got a little dressing and shopping therapy in after what had been an awfully, needfully drab month. I picked up a dress from Ann Taylor that I had had my eye on for some time. Its never quite so easy as that though, is it? Let me color it in for you here.

The dress, pictured at right had arrived in the shops in late August, and retailed at $150.00. Steep, entirely out of my league. My periodic emails from Ms. Taylor advised me that certain early autumn pieces including this pretty object of my desire had been discounted by 40%. Hmmmm, at $90.00 I felt my not inconsiderable powers of destructive rational kicking in, but successfully mastered those indulgent urges.

When I walked past the shop though and saw that there was a further storewide 40% off previously discounted merchandise, I was drawn, powerless really, into the shop for a little look-see. Flipping through a rack of dresses, not yet finding my intended, the sales assistant opened with “who are you shopping for today?”

“Me. Hey, I am sure you can help. I am looking for a particular dress I saw in one of your emails. It’s the animal print sheath..."

She became a little discombobulated, and started marching me towards a wall of shoes (nice ones mind you) that housed a couple of leopardy or zebra-y pumps.

“Well we have these …”

“No, no no. A dress. Leopard print. Sheath style. Very simple cut, couple of inches above the knee, you must know it...”

“O … yes of course … right over here…”

She deposited me at the correct rack, and then promptly vanished.

Now, admittedly, this shop is in a very suburban setting, and likely does not get too much trade with or exposure to cross dressers, but I really got the sense that the poor dear was just confused, off-put and generally unnerved by the sight of a guy openly buying a dress for himself. Just then, my phone rang, a crisis bell was rung, and I needed to stamp out a professional fire. So was my spree cut short and a now $60.00 beauty held still in captivity.

A couple of days later I was back, found the dress, walked it up to the register, and a different lovely lady made no inquiries that forced overly honest disclosures from me.

I wrote a note to Ann Taylors customer service people letting them know that I love the merchandise, that I am a cross dresser, and that I want to feel welcomed when shopping there. Would they mind outlining their policies vis a vis CD/TG shoppers for me? ... thank your very much, and etc.

Here is the reply in full (emphasis mine).

Dear Petra:

Thank you for your email and positive feedback surrounding our merchandise. We appreciate your loyalty to our brand. We welcome all clients in our environment, and do not specify or create any special shopping protocols for our cross-dressing, transgender or transvestite clients. Ann Taylor does not discriminate based on gender identity or expression. In order to provide a comfortable and non-disruptive shopping environment, Ann Taylor recommends that those clients who present themselves as female may enter and try on clothes in our wardrobing rooms. For clients who present themselves as male, they may purchase items and try them in the privacy of their homes. Our return practice is flexible enough to accommodate the needs of our guests.

I hope our response provided clarification. We look forward to your return visit to our stores.

Sincerely, etc...

The content of the message said more than I expected and its tone is, to me, fully consistent with the sophisticated aura of the whole operation. They won me, fully. I wanted to mention this to you because when sensitivity is displayed by a vendor, well we really should share the news. I encourage you to check out the merchandise by visiting them online here. If Ann fits into your style and budget spectrum, please go visit a shop near you. The clothes really are well made, timeless, and feminine. All of these traits are worth a few extra dollars every now and then. I have great expectations of completely professional welcomes in the future, and suspect that I simply found a sales assistant who was having a less than perfect day on my first visit.

O, and about the dress, I have never, even for a moment, wore any garment that made me feel nearly as desirable and beautiful as I do in this dress. I cannot wait for the right day to take her out for a test prowl. Perhaps I will wear it out to pick up the sexy grey suit. Yum.

How about you? Any terrific shopping and customer service experiences lately? Please name names here.

Happy dressing, shopping, corresponding and everything else.

Petra’s Pantyhose Parade – The Softer Side of Sheers

2009-10-29T10:23:00.012-04:00

Well my lovelies, those were some heights I attempted to climb earlier this week. The air was pretty thin up there above the theoretical clouds.Stretched as I was by the whole effort, I suffered a pulmonary edema on my descent which required some attention to my circulatory system.

Well nothing quite so right for the circulation than a nice new pair of control tops, and so, thankfully here on Thursday, it is time to ponder on and prose about the nearly weightless but always enduring virtues of pantyhose.

… The softer side of … North American readers may remember this line as a Sears campaign from the distant past. Many of us think of Sears as a fine place for tools and appliances, and perhaps a little less fine a place for items of fashion. That was certainly, and remains the case for me. The stores suffer from a pedestrian selection of styles, laboratory quality lighting, and sight lines that extend unbroken over vast prairies of indifference to expressions of style. Not ideal shopping environments in my view. However, given that the Sears catalog was my original passport into the world of feminine foundation garments, it felt like time to give this grand old dame a try.

As is the case with most general merchandisers in these hard times, there was not much in the way of sales assistance on the floor, but I am a fairly independent shopper, and found the Sears private label Nice Touch SlimShapers without too much trouble. The sales assistant at the cash register was a complete sweetheart and warmly welcoming of the drab fellow with the nice tights and a fistful of cash. Practically begged me to come back and shop with her anytime. That wins points with Petra.

How much cash? Not much. The Slim Shaper Control Sheers clock in at a mere $5.50, which set me up for an expectation of reasonable quality, but not much of a fashion and feel experience. Now, home for the trials.

This is a day sheer I would guess somewhere in the 15-20 denier range, that can stretch into evening, not a super-special evening, but a nice night in a good outfit. A highly reinforced toe promises durability, and limits us to closed toe shoes, but our choices are still rich within those pointy confines. The leg portion is a run resistant 11% Lycra with good, clingy memory and a surprisingly luxurious, comfortable, and cool feel. Great feel in fact to both the leg and the hand, and again, unexpectedly so for the price. They have a subtle matte finish, but in very direct light give off a just a faint glimmer at the defined lines of the leg. Again, not, red carpet ready, but dressy enough for most outings.

It is up top in the highly reinforced panty portion that these smoothers really come to life though. Seams are well finished, and the overall effect is sleek and attractive. An extra front panel flattens and smooths without over constricting. And credit to these pretties for the absolutely unnecessary and entirely adorable lace detail effect at the thigh top. They possess a class of construction quality and function that stands out in any price bracket. The closest panty portion I have worn in the last year comes from Donna Karan’s’ Maximum Controls which retail at 3X of the price of our Sears entry. Terrific value for the money.

There really is nothing to pick negatively at here. Cared for, they will last. When on, they look elegant and feel like a little indulgence. The fit is superb, with a caution: Please be sure to go up a size if you are close to the margins on the height and weight chart, particularly if you are tallish. Yes, the packaging could be a little sexier, and the web site navigation is terrible, but these are concerns that disappear like so many blemishes beneath a fine, flattering sheer yarn.

And so, to the rankings. The Nice Touch line of pantyhose stride proudly up onto my personal Podium, missing the gold standard by inches, and toeing out current Silver medal holder, Calvin Klein by the slenderest of threads, 196.4 to 194.0 Petra Points. Our new top 3 are featured here.

It has been a while since I tested out so high ranking a pair, and it is a really refreshing moment for me. The Hanes Silky Sheers remain safely atop the rustling range of contenders in my top drawer. The Hanes just possess a certain je ne sais quoi relative to the Nice Touch sheers that keeps them on top, and never too far from reach. Can’t put my finger on it exactly, just something about the intensity of their aura. But silver is nice too, no?, and I have a new brand and venue to explore further. Competition and choice are wonderful things, yes?

A hearty endorsement all around. And my circulation seems to be back to (what passes for me as) normal. If you are looking to complete a Halloween ensemble you could barely do better, and with the Sears Nice Touch not taking too big a bite out of your purse, perhaps have a little spare cash to buy a nice girl a drink this weekend.

Happy dressing, Halloween and everything else….

Cross Dressing Canvas - Part 2

2009-10-27T11:57:00.012-04:00

Dear friends, I had no intention of writing a whole 2-part big deal here, but I seemed to have accidentally struck a bit of a thought gusher, and it seems to have splashed onto your monitor. Bear with me. I should be able to tidy things up today. Part 1 of this rambling epistle is nestled directly beneath this post. Scroll down and take a read if you like. Of course, the epically lazy amongst you may simply prefer to click here.

To net out the prior post, I will say that I have come to a grudging and late belief that the people who imagine, design, build and market the clothes that we wear are involved in an artistic, or at least creative endeavour. There. Everyone caught up? Good. Now, proceeding. What about all the rest of us who dress? And particularly those of us who cross dress.

This line of thinking started for me in earnest the other day when I received a nice couple of comments about my description of a recent dressing up experience. One of the notes came from a dedicated fashionista, a genetic female who said more or less “ …makes me wish I had an occasion to don my finery right now!...”

I pondered that a bit. All of us dress each day in something. There is a certain amount of routine about it, and routines lose their ability to capture your attention. Dressing becomes very functional, and not attached to any particular magic. But even at the most routine level, choices are being made that reflect something you want to show to the world. At some level, our ad hoc selections are acts of creative expression. We paint and present ourselves to the world each day, and some days with a little more consideration and pride than other days.

But for the periodic cross dresser, and for anyone, anywhere in between the opposite ends of the gender expression continuum, well, dressing is special. I believe, from my thinking and reading and corresponding with a handful of friends made here online that most M2F cross dressers are exploring that sense of gender. I sense as well that all of us to some degree are expressing a creative drive too. For me, I am beginning to see the creative side of this life as more central to my dressing than any sense of uncertainty or unresolved curiosity about my own gender identity. I enjoy being a guy. I do guy stuff pretty competently. Life is simple and I like simple.

O, but what a platform for creative expression cross dressing is. And what an array of media we get to work in.

Our bodies are clay. The under-layers that obscure some shapes, and build curves where there normally are none. The smoothing and cinching that happens here and there that molds the body into new shapes. This careful process, this first stage of my dressing ritual is surprising each time, and breathtaking too. From noticeably male to attractively female in shape, and there in the mirror. We are sculptors and models all at once.

Our clay is a form. And forms want adornment. The array of finishes from hosiery, to skirts, blouses, shoes, dresses, a much more endless array of drapery meant to display our form attractively, functionally, and perhaps even comfortably. The realms of choice multiply massively from the simple sets we work from in our more typical day-to-day lives. Some tragic choices are made, but as we get more skilled, and as our adornment better fits us and our images, the better the feelings. The clay beneath the drapery takes on a new life, our movement changes, postures smarten, and with each step, stretch and touch we are aware of our choices.

Our forms want finishing. The painting that changes and smoothes complexions, that adds definition to cheek lines, that amplifies the colors of our eyes, that makes our lips look and taste sweet and desirable. This transformation is perhaps the most heightened, and most demanding work of art we can labor at. Again, fraught with failure, but with practice or with help, done well, you become to yourself a familiar stranger, a newly possible self. Again, it can take a moment to get back to breathing again. But still, the next mirror will be sure to see you.

Our nearly finished selves are tapestries too. Final adornments, the hair, the belts, the bracelets, the nails, the scarves, the bags, these new things, taboo to guy-mode life, are a completely new and endlessly variable matrix of options that express us, and finally conceals the clay within. These elements compel new and changed ranges of motion, keeping your mouth clear of hair, handling keys and car doors, being sure to not derange everything that we have worked to create takes constant consideration.

Our finished, and feminized selves are now dancers, expressing with a new physicality. We must now perform, and to move like a man, to sit like one, to hold a glass as we normally do would spoil the illusion. So many of these reflexes require thought and response, and always moment to moment. Movement becomes with time more natural, but there is always a frontier of physical presence, for me at least, that requires attention, craft and consideration. These are complex and satisfying moments of learning and of performance.

And performance in public, is definitionally a creative art. I spent a good amount of my earlier years on stages. The nerves before the curtain went up never got slack. And the satisfaction, right in the moment, of realizing that the performance was being bought into, and perhaps appreciated was for me the primary reason to be there. The nerves and the curtain calls could not be separated. So it is when the door opens and we take on the world en femme. There are critics of course, and performances that fall flat, but the moments when our characters effectively occupy the space we are in, believably, plausibly, these moments are the curtain calls of this cross dressers life. We are sometimes extras lost on a huge set, and sometimes get speaking parts in smaller and more intimate theaters of sociability, but always performing. We are actors, and this too is an ancient and demanding art.

All of this together is a pretty deep immersion in a highly creative, expressive, artistic life. Few people get to be so deeply involved in such a life.

It surprises me to put all of these thoughts together and to realize that I am, and many of you are, unconsciously to some degree, really quite accomplished artists. You might see in your day to day life, like me, less of an outlet for these capabilities than cross dressing provides. I suppose that without really being aware of it myself, that much of the satisfaction, and elation I derive from being Petra comes from the truth that this taps into a pretty deep pool of creativity. Petra brings out a bit an artist. And that art satisfies a special part of my humanity, a humanity we all have at some level or other.

Regardless of what compels us to explore this part of ourselves, forces we cannot often fully understand, confronting those forces, exploring them, personalizing them, is a form of art. Each day is an opportunity for donning our finery after all. Lots of clay and canvas and performance spaces all around us.

Thanks for reading through this. I wish you artful lives. I hope you enjoy your art. Whatever medium you work in, for whatever audience you work and play for.

Cross Dressing Canvas - Part 1

2009-10-26T14:08:00.007-04:00

Clothing is pretty central to cross dressing surely. It takes clothes to dress after all. Link # 1 established elegantly in a mere 15 words. Well done. Now for the bits thats are somewhat of a stretch, complete with a warning up front for you:

Much of what follows is about clothing in general, style to a degree, and at the outer edges, fashion. Not so much of it has to do with cross dressing per se. There you are, duly warned.

This essay is an attempt at better understanding the role that fashion plays in my life. It might be a bit of reach my dear friends, on a Monday morning with only a tiny flicker of light on this matter ‘tween my ears just now. But I am going to take a swing at it.

For the 95% of my time spent either buck naked for sleep, or drabbed up for the usual undertakings of my not secret life, I dress with a couple of thresholds in mind. Comfort yes, correct for the elements, warm, cold or wet. Of course some thought or reflex goes into not appearing oddly dressed, underdressed or overdressed for whatever business or social doings are being done, and for mere pride, cleanly. Absence of food stains, ink smudges and undue wrinkling subtly informs the near universe that you are not a total madman and perhaps deserving of a respectful hearing.

Every now and then, an occasion for a little more splendor, formality or effort will present. A wedding, a party, a funeral, or a bigger-than-normal business engagement that will require shinier shoes, a well considered shirt and tie match and, at the high end, the selection of a dapper pair of cuff links. On these increasingly rare occasions, functional dressing gets raised to a level of expression of pointedly, proud personal style.

We don’t dress up much these days, business-casual being the more or less global rule. Technology is so central to our work and lives, that it seems that the style ethos of the technology vendors sets the bar, and for us fellows at least, khakis and a smart shirt passes muster. Clothes do not make the man so much as they once did, and not so long ago either.

In my 20’s I was well creased, dark suited and smartly strangled at the neck 5 days a week. Clothing took a bigger bite of my wallet then, and of the wallets of workmates. In those times there was more room and a bigger demand for thought about personal style. I was proud and peacocky in my wardrobe and appearance in general. I aimed to be unique, unique enough to be noticed but not so much as to appear over-interested. I was suspicious about everything and everyone just over that fine line. Beyond style I felt was an odd world of fashion.

My social circle at that time were active in the arts, theater people, lots of TV types (television that is), PR and advertising folk, and most of them were style conscious, and au courant to a healthy degree. I periodically then rubbed elbows with people very much in the fashion business and very avante garde, and they struck me as having a screw or two slightly loose or mis-threaded. They took it all so seriously. They seemed to be possessed of an encyclopeadic knowing about what I thought to be a frothy merangue of not much. In conversation, they assumed that their passions were shared. I could nod and grin only as long as my glass was not emptied, which was never too long in hindsight.

I believed then that the fashion-obsessed had fallen into a trap and were being victimized by a malevolent industry optimized to prey on insecurities and machined to create demand for things with high prices and with low, and not long lived value.

One happy random night at a party somewhere in the 80’s, a woman tottered by me in a pair of what looked like bright red Converse hi-top laced-up basketball shoes glued somehow to a 4 or 5” stiletto heel. Caught my eye surely, and to a friend beside me, I opined:

“Fredericks of Hollywood has an athletic line now it seems”

Too loudly it seems. In this woman’s odd wake a male proto-fashionista glided by and, with a stereotypical hiss, bit back at me:

“ They’re Norma Kamali bitch*. Do you know anything?”

Truly a beautiful moment. I laughed aloud. I had been told clearly that I was not in the know, and not qualified to know either. This I took great comfort in. I really did not want to know. The ceaseless labor and worry I associated with being fashionable was just not in my suite of cares. I was alert to the traps and secure enough be free of them. Pity the fashionable I thought, for they have been bought.

The tide in my mind is turning now on the issue. I have started to find more and more merit in the world of fashion. The more seriously I investigate my cross dressing, the more I have come to understand how much my transformations into a different self is an inherently creative, even artistic undertaking.

Life is inherently artistic. Our bodies are the only canvas we have with us, always. Link # 2 in another 15 efficient words.

Our clothes are paints of a type. Some of us are driven to go beyond painting by the numbers, within the lines, and from a palette of primaries. Many of us who cross dress are surely driven to dress by some difference we have or feel with regard to gender and how we express it, but also I suspect that we are driven by some kernel of art within us that kindles our fires. Our acts of dressing are acts of creative expression, and moments spent nurturing, refining and satisfying an artistic muse within.

And as for the high priests and priestesses of the fashion worlds, perhaps they, at their very best, are not so different from painters, sculptors, poets and the like, posing to themselves a challenge against conventions and boundaries. Asking how to take what has influenced them in the past, make it new for the present, and perhaps leave something of interest to the future.

Perhaps, therefore, fashion is not all fluff, trick lighting and deception.

I will attempt in Part 2 to make more sense of this for me, and for the undoubtedly few of you who have made it this far, who perhaps share my muse on the matter.

Happy dressing - Petra

* this was the mid-late 80's. Norma was not on the shelves at Wal-Mart then.

photo credit - Jonathan Saunders Spring 2009 - Thanks Carrie!

Therapeutics

2009-10-22T18:27:00.005-04:00

Dear friends and odd followers of these Voyages may agree and not take offense if I suggest that even the most well adjusted cross dresser has moments of what we shall lightly call agony. If not agony, then at least self doubt and a desire for more simplicity or openness about our habits.

I have had a bit of this mixed in recently with the other agonies associated with my previously documented flood. The threat of more drenching now seems past, and putting everything back where it was seems now do-able, if not for Thanksgiving, then at least for Christmas time. With some extra labor, at the expense of dressing and blogging time, I have got my professional life back on track and under control. So perhaps now is a fine time to blog about the other stuff. Therapeutics as the sign says.

Autumn weather is upon us, and we even frosted in Georgia earlier this week which helps sharpen the senses. We now have perfect weather to get into clingy things head-to-toe and go walkabout en femme. Halloween is just around the corner too. Thoughts of public devilment and the general free pass for kink that 31 October implies bubble up. The stores are packed with beautiful clothes, and the whole knits / tights / boots theme showing in so many windows caters nicely (in my view) to the cross dressing community's fashion limits. Lastly, retail sales being weak owing to general economic issues, there are lots of steals and deals to be had for the girl on a budget.

And there I was at the start of the week with my wardrobe, wigs, and all-too-necessary padding literally buried beneath an avalanche of mattresses, duvets, pillows, futons, and a few closets worth of off-season clothing.

Put the lure of the season together with all the tools of my trade being oh so tantalizingly out of reach, add a month of unscheduled Drabbatical, and well, its crazy-making.

Yesterday I took steps to address the imbalance. Mrs. B had some client visits far enough out of town that I had time to act. It was a hell of a labor, but I managed to extricate the Petra-gear from the fiendish prison beneath all the flotsam. Or jetsam. I can never tell the two apart. Anyhow, I scraped a knuckle and hyperventilated but was able to take comfort in simply reintroducing myself to my darling things.

Minus the make-up I went full-Petra, and spent upwards of 6 hours dressed. My walk is still good, and the heels felt golden. My posture, upright and seated still adjusts quite nicely to feminine standards. Combing out the wig, shaking the long hair free, and feeling the tingle on my neck and shoulders was just as natural as breathing. And the breathing, a few electric moments after I pulled the zip up on my dress became calm, deep and comforting.

I took a couple of breaks for wardrobe changes but otherwise kept my productivity up on the project I am managing just now. Late in the day, I calmly drabbed down, and stored things away more accessibly in the attic.

Today, on a little bit of a roll, I took on a little shopping therapy. Ann Taylor was 60% off on a dress that I have been lusting after (pictured at right). Ann is normally out of my price league, but I simply could not resist treating myself. Fits like a glove. Not entirely sure when I will take my new friend out for a day on the town, but knowing its there, waiting, patiently for the right day helps settle my mind just that little bit more.

Thanks for the notes of concern and good wishes over these odd and trying weeks. Those notes have helped settle my mind and keep the potential for madness at bay. Nice to know you are there too.

More or less regular publication schedule resumes next week.

Happy dressing, and everything else.

Pumps, sensitivity and women.

2009-10-14T09:59:00.005-04:00

Dear friends. My wardrobe remains buried safely but frustratingly beneath roughly a half ton or more of well, stuff, labored upstairs from our recently flooded basement. Sad to say, there has not been much in the way of cross dressing going on Chez Bellejambes.

I have though added to my collection of pumps lately, and they are getting a lot work. Unhappily, these are pumps of the submersible variety. Not at all as fun and beguiling as the shapely pumps that come in pairs and smarten up our postures just so. Given the continuing rain and the not yet fully receded potential for more damage to my home and belongings, I am resigned to devoting my unwandering thoughts and attention to these functional, practical, sensible pumps. Evidently a girl cannot have too many of either variety.

This entire episode has upended things rather dramatically. I lost a lot of daylight that I had planned to spend on a client project with an end of October deadline. The project has been grappled back into a state of relative submission, and this frees up some time for other things. Things like ripping up the basement floor for waterproofing and resurfacing. Things like trench digging, and plastering of foundations.

Not so much of the plastering, painting and parading of myself en femme. My exteriors are fully drab, and no change in that weather is in near sight.

But there is the interior life. Yogi Berra famously said of baseball that “90% of this game is half mental”. So it is with matters of cross dressing, at least 90% half-mental. Here is some half-mental for your consideration.

I read a great piece at Femulate in September called Girl Talk. Worth a read if you missed it the first time. Staci Lana spoke about how comfortable she had always felt in company of women and how their company was always more interesting to her then the company of men. She wrote about how much more natural, open, revealing and intimate women are with her when she is en femme. It really got me thinking and I am only now getting around to digging out my two pennies from purse bottom and offering them up.

My experiences are entirely similar. When en femme, I witness a whole battery of evolutionary and social adaptations to the presence of men just melt away. A subtle vigilance is given a rest. I get welcomed into a club. These are moments that are amongst my favorites. They are both a privilege, and a great lesson.

In my guy life I believe that I am pretty well attenuated and alert to the effects that gender has on how we interact with each other. I see many men fail epically in their attempts to win the confidence and trust of women in professional and social settings. Perhaps they are perceived to be trying to win something else, something tactical, something that happens after trust and confidence.

Trust and confidence is the thing that I have typically sought to earn first. These are the foundation elements, elements that are difficult to build when you are carrying an agenda. As a rule therefore I try to not carry an agenda, and this makes life easier for me. In my adult years I think of this behavior simply as respectful.

In younger, single years though, it came with a different label. Sensitive.

Sensitive sometimes lead to different, and typically unwelcomed outcomes. Trust often grew as some of the more male bits diminished. Metaphorically of course. The dreaded F word. … “you know I love you like a friend …”. There were days that I would have paid dearly, anything, to be thought of as whatever sensitive was not. When I tried to be otherwise, I simply could not pull it off. For long, anyhow, or without feeling like I was untrue to myself or hurtful to someone else.

So after all these years, and a little bit of thought, it feels good to be able to place that behavior in a broader context. Women are interesting, fascinating in fact, relative to men. I envy much about them, their looks, their lives, and choices. It is a real privilege to be trusted by women and to become more intimate with them, whether I am drabbed down, or en femme. Especially en femme though.

I wonder how closely related sensitivities like these are tied to my cross dressing. Regardless, I am glad that I have both. I am sure neither is going away anytime soon. I would miss them both dearly as I am missing the sun just now. How about you?

Happy dressing, and everything else…

Soggy Blog

2009-09-27T09:33:00.004-04:00

The worst weather seems to have passed, the forecast for the week is dry, and the basement is in the process of drying out. Life however remains in a state of mild uproar. There is a good amount of re-assembling, repairing and replacing of stuff that absorbed water damage. Manageable, all of it, but burdensome nonetheless.

The recent flooding took me away from my paying work entirely last week which puts in me in a deficit position from a time and money perspective. Something has to give while I catch up, and for me, that will be the blog.

If you want to keep entertained in the meantime, many of the people who follow this blog have very read-worthy blogs themselves. So go poke around the followers profiles, and see where the links lead you.

Thanks for the nice comments, words of encouragement and etc.

Looking forward to a return to my brand of normalcy sometime in October friends.

Ta ra for now …

Here comes the flood

2009-09-21T15:52:00.004-04:00

Curious people (in every sense of the word) who visit Voyages en Rose on a regular basis may have noticed a pattern in my publication habits. In a normal week, I try to churn out 3 pieces with slightly different feels to them: Pithy, Profound, and Pantyhosed.

Often I am wildly off the mark on at least two of them, but trust me dear friends, the intent is there.

This weeks publication schedule is threatened however by events beyond my immediate control. It is raining, and I mean Biblically raining. Chez Bellejambes is presently partly submerged. While I would rather be battling with back zips and wrestling metaphor into a state of surrender, I am battling the elements, and wrestling with the very outer limits of my physical capabilities.

Fear not though, the wardrobe is safe.

Be assured too, or perhaps even a little freaked out to learn, that this cross dresser is butch enough too to possess a shop vac, and not one, but two submersible pumps. Happily, my wife and I are insured out the wazzoo, but I am always gruesomely fascinated with exactly how Insurers respond to prone wazzoo’s when given half a chance.

Apart from the grief attendant upon all of these unhappy events, there is my sadness in not being able to work out a couple of themes that came to mind last week. Stuff I look forward to writing and sharing. I beg your patience, and promise to reward it next week with some better than middling efforts disguised as blog posts.

Fans of vintage Peter Gabriel may recognize the lyric from the headline of this post. Or was it Robert Fripp? Sorry, a little busy to Google it up just now. If there is anything good in all of this, that song popped into my head over the gurgling of a pump in my crawl space. Has not left yet and beats hell out of many songs that may have infuriatingly dossed down in my noggin for the duration of this minor ordeal. Small blessings everywhere.

Keep dry. Damply yours, Petra

Petra’s Pantyhose Parade – Sheer Berkshire

2009-09-17T11:53:00.020-04:00

If you have recently driven a car more than 10 years old, you may have felt a little sensory displacement when you noticed that the steering array lacked cruise and audio controls soon into your journey. Similarly did I feel when I smoothed up this weeks proud, throwback entry in my perpetual Pantyhose Parade, Berkshire Ultra Sheer Control Tops. Something just felt different, some ubiquitous modern convenience was absent, and I had to refer to the packaging to figure it out.

Look ma! No Lycra! That’s right, these nylons are all nylon!

Curiously, and without wanting to set off too many Freudian alarm bells, these are your Mothers' Pantyhhose. Or perhaps mine. I felt a little like a salmon swimming upstream to the spawn site of my own cross dressing.

The Berkshires were the only product I had not yet plundered the ample racks of Macy’s for over the last year, and were picked last for a simple reason. No pretty pictures on the package. I mean, for pity’s sake Mrs. Berkshire, would it kill you to hire a photographer, an art director and a model so that your prospective client has something to aspire to? Modesty in such matters is often interpreted as a lack of confidence, and my legs and I agree that you should shake that off, post-haste. Glad to meet you finally, and now back to your all-nylon construction.

Lycra© and other sythentic microfibers are employed to add elasticity to, and to soften the feel of most of the modern hosiery that we wear today. They add the silky feeling often referred to in product names where silk is nowhere else in the mix. Science in the service of womankind surely. Older milling and yarning machines cannot be economically refitted to manage this multiple fiber magic, and so I suppose with time we can expect to see fewer of these all-nylon entries on big retailer shelves. This is a shame. We will lose over time a refreshing change of look and feel in our wardrobes, looks and feels that are at heart nicely nostalgiac.

First, looks. You have seen it in silk stockings, a gentle darkening gather behind the knee when seated, and around the ankle when idly twirled. That alluring pinch of nylon at the narrow toe of a nice pump ... vintage Hollywood starlet stuff. There is a glimmer to them. Far from invisible, these are statement leggings and available in a nice array of shades harkening back to a different time. My middle brown “Utopias” seem lifted directly from the set of Mad Men, and while they look ready for business, they have capacity for a little devilment. I additionally love the dark and fully reinforced toe which would look quite at home with a fully fashioned heel. I have been fortunate so far, but I suspect that these are fairly fragile, and prone to runs, so don't rush your dressing.

Feel is a touch and go thing though. The all nylon boot (i.e. leg portion) lacks the smoothness that we have come to expect from our tights. For this trade, we are returned with some nice gifts. The proportioned fit glides easily up and down and around moving legs, and this is a nicely distracting pleasure. To the hand though, they are a little coarse. Through the midriff, the spandex rich control top panty is very secure, quite comfortable and cleanly finished. Snug, compact and not prone to either waistband peeking or gathering.

Berkshire has a mission, stated clearly on the package: “Dedicated to making Hosiery a Pleasure”, and I would have to say that unless you are completely dedicated to the latest and greatest that technology can bring, Berkshire will have succeeded nicely.

Excellent fit, strong marks all around except for feel, and a modest price of $6.50 for a nicely showy pair of legs all add up to a 7th (out of 21) place ranking with 166.2 Petra Points.

A closing note on Berkshire. I snapped up a pair of their Sheer Leg Thigh High stay ups that same day on a mad whim. For me, stay ups typically don't stay up, but I am happy to report that these did. Still 100% nylon, but somehow, much more glossy and smooth to the touch. More hosiery magic I am at a loss to describe, but suffice to say, if you are a stay-up or stocking kind of a gal, this is a product you might want to try. I will figure out over the course of the year just how to judge and score stockings as a class of hosiery, and look forward to sharing those findings with you all at some pretty point in the future.

Happy dressing, Petra

A-Z, or only as far as CD?

2009-09-16T11:37:00.013-04:00

Future generations will scarce believe there was a time when hitchhiking was a borderline acceptable behavior, and not an advertisement of poor judgement or a display of desperation. Hitching was the platform for bad starts in countless films, and in real life, too many instances of crime, violence and victimization slowly drove this sociable means of transportation beyond the pale of, well, decent society. The civilized no longer pick up hitchhikers, and hitchhikers are no longer civilized. There we are, one way less for people to display a random act of kindness, and one way less to be surprised on the way from Point A to Point B and beyond.

I hitched in my own youth, back to college when money was tight, holidays in Europe, and a handful of other instances where the lure of a distant place was great and my purse too empty to travel on own my dime. Happily, I never ran afoul of the good luck that has been a hallmark of my nearly 50 happy years. In my time on the road one consistent finding was that my ultimate destination was rarely the same as my rides. There was an end soon ahead for my lift, or a route that I needed to be on that diverged from theirs.

In the space of 5 minutes though, or a couple of hours, we would typically, warily, politely establish the things we had in common. With that established, we could talk, share views, and pass the time and miles well. The open road as a literal and metaphoric mind expanding substance. Each traveler would get a little closer to their destination, and both of us at parting would feel like the world was a little kinder, a little less selfish than we feared it was.

So it has been with me here as I come within a few weeks of 1 year of active engagement with my feminine self. Last year around this time I felt stirrings and had occasion to cross dress again. I have long had a Love/Hate relationship with cross dressing. I decided to focus on the love part. I embraced my life long desires more willingly, patiently and fully and was rewarded with feelings of wholeness that had forever eluded me. I got past fetish, and found deep within something very real and rich. I knew, finally, that I had a real need to learn more, and that I had something of value to share. My need to learn resulted in a good deal of time spent hitchhiking around online. My desire to share resulted in the creation of my own vehicle, Voyages en Rose.

I started off the journey committed to not being frightened of where this all would wind up, but pretty certain picture of what the end of my road looks like. I pictured a destination where I could dress when I wanted to, not when a compulsion ruled me. I pictured a place where I could experience the world through better attenuated feminine senses, and not just stare blankly at a different looking me in the mirror. I hoped that I would arrive in a place where I could share a fuller self with a select number of people I love. One year later, I think I was right.

This destination is a private place that I will not heedlessly share with many people, many of whom I know, love and respect. Life has complications enough without optionally adopted complications. With that said though, once I am at that place, I hope I won’t work terribly hard to obscure it, and not live in fear of the consequences of disclosure. I am not there yet, but can touch this place in my imagination and feel like its not too far off.

In short, periodic cross dressing, especially publicly anonymous cross dressing in the big wide world satisfies me. Satiety is a good word to describe the feeling. I am delighted to find this state for myself, in part because of the feelings of tranquil excitement, becalmed alertness that comes with it, but also because it seems to signal a limit to my desires for exploration.

A part of me feared that I would not feel this satiety, and that an active embrace of my curiousity would act as an enabler for something bigger. That by opening Pandoras' box, Pandora might just decide to take matters over with me powerless to slow the ride down. I suspect that every cross dresser has imagined that an innocently hitched ride could have radical consequences. Consequences like a real challenge to our perceived sexual orientation or gender association. Challenges that seem too too big to take on when the rest of our complex lives take enough of a bite out of our energies and gifts as it is.

This was certainly the case for me. I questioned, for decades, if my sticking my thumb out on this curious road, was simply begging for a ride too far, unturning, and permanent. This fear I believe constrains our desires and douses our willingness to set out on the journey. So good to be able to wrestle the fear down.

Many of the friendships I have formed over the last year are with gender explorers who have that different destination, full gender reassignment at the end of their road. How daunting a ride. I have thought a great deal about the differences between the “simple cross dresser” and the person committed to the transition, to the adoption of a new and finally correct gender. I have thought often about how close our starting points were, the die cast in toddlerhood, or perhaps in the womb. I have thought about how each of us to some degree enabled the broader societal conspiracy to suppress our fullness. Denial, overcompensation, introversion, sourceless anger and often the unhealthy embrace of something in a bottle or a bong that might deaden senses aching for a little touch.

I am unable to put a name to what causes our destinations to be so seemingly far apart. And I am now ready to not worry about the knowing. The great shared things are enough. That we each have felt that a part of us was unknown to ourselves. That we each at our best moments let honesty and curiousity trump deceit and fear. That we have each felt that the consequences of not engaging with our whole selves was the bigger risk.

I have found myself metaphorically hitching a ride with many admirable, smart, brave, caring, perceptive, beautiful, and humorous people this last year. I have been inspired by the dignity and fearlessness expressed by our surprisingly large numbers, cross dressers and the transgendered alike, thumbs bravely out, hopeful of a destination in perfect alignment with their imaginings.

Whichever road it is, it is a road of uncertainty, fraught with peril, and a little bit beyond our absolute control. Taking to this road is an act of love for ones self truly, but it is also an act of faith in the people around us. That act of faith is an expression of our very best natures. With that better nature in mind, I am looking forward to an even better year, and wanted to thank you for sharing the journey with me this far. If you are looking for a lift on your road, holler out. We might be off to different places, but we have a lot to share on our common road. Thank you all for picking me up.

The Fairer Sex and Cross Dressing

2009-09-15T07:40:00.010-04:00

I was reminded of long buried memory this past weekend. The weekend first:

My wife and I were sharing a cottage with some friends celebrating a birthday and I was the only rooster in the hen house. 5 women and I were shaking off cobwebs with coffee and generally loafing around at the start of a long day, not mustering the energy for much. Two women, curled on a couch were flipping through a Vogue and gushed at the picture of the nice strappy gladiators with killer heels.

“nice”, says I, walking by.
“they'd look great on you” says women #1
“I do have the ankles for them …”
“hell yes. These and a nice short skirt, oh yeah, we could have some fun dressing you up…”

Well, you know where this goes. Absolutely nowhere. In this case in any event.

The memory however goes back to high school, and I suspect that Halloween enabled the whole caper. Myself and a best friend managed to find ourselves in a home untroubled by adult supervision with a couple of girl friends, couches and a bottle of lemon gin or some other social lubricant.

The girls had mustered the nerve to make or rent Playboy Bunny outfits, were foolish enough to share the news, and contrary to the sound advice of mothers everywhere were convinced to slither into them for an early private audience. This, in and of itself was a “bucket list” moment. Black sheers, tall sandals, and form fitting bodices yielding an epic upward effect on youngish breasts not needing much help for starters.

A grand time was had.

At some point, a conversation along the same lines as my recent experience happened. Hushed conspiratorial, enticements and giggling endearments …

“you would look so cute, both of you… wouldn’t they?
“oh yeah, and we dressed up for you … fair is fair … right?”

Knowing my desires well, I put up a little fight, but my buddy who was less hung up on things in general grabbed a bunny and vanished behind a slammed door in a heartbeat. It wasn’t long before I was cotton-tailed, short of breath and entirely short-circuited in my overloaded brain. Any attempt to summon up accurate detail about what happened next would be pure speculation, and not worthy of my respect for you, dear reader.

I have had more than a handful of experiences where a woman or a budding young thing wielded this tease, parts innocent and parts provocative, and wondered whether this is a more common desire, more commonly acted out than we know. I wonder whether this class of conversational probe is intended to find out something good or great about the guy trapped in her gaze. I hope that the sessions of exploratory dressing that I was fortunate enough to stumble into were … well, “good for you too” you know, and whether it is a theme that these curious girls returned to later in life.

I hope so. I had a terrific time in the bunny hutch, and if I had more nerve, would likely have gone on an all carrot diet to stay there for a while. Daylight frightened me back into my warren though, but thoughtful always of pretty captivity.

In closing today then, for those select and respected women reading this post, here is a question:

Did you ever dare or engineer a guy into a dress? Go ahead, don’t be shy, and leave a comment. Or better yet, just go and have some fun with your guy. It may be a little awkward, but a part of him will thank you.

Happy dressing, and happy everything else.

Cross Dressers wins Victoria’s Secret Sweeps (Moral Victory Category)

2009-09-11T15:02:00.014-04:00

Careful readers will note 2 headline characteristics:

- The plural form: Cross Dressers, and
- Moral Victory. Moral, not actual.

It is true, I am not going to New York with a purse stuffed with Victorias' fragrant lucre. I did not even come close. The Body by Victoria “Love your Body” online contest has come to a shrieking, early halt owing to vote tampering. With the (alleged) scallywags having been shown the door, it seems as though Casey is on her way, with a staggering 26,454 votes. Yes, I did rather imagine myself staggering under the weight of a dozen or so signature pink bags, and generally lighting up Manhattan en femme, and it was a nice imagining. But only that.

I am delighted for Casey. She is a cancer survivor, with hard days yet ahead. I introduced Casey to you in an earlier post, said then, and repeat now, that this is a person entirely deserving of some luxuries, pampering and a fine distracting time in an exciting place.

What a fun lark the whole exercise was for me too. My entry, with your help, came in 432nd out of over 10,000 official contestants with an understated, and fittingly ladylike 58 votes. Pathetic when measured against Casey’s hordes, but I did register in the upper 5%. Pretty rarefied territory and much better than I honestly expected. I believe, but cannot confirm that my entry won the unofficial, unsanctioned, Cross Dresser category. That is a victory of sorts, but not the victory that I am keen to share with you today.

The very last vote that I received came from a stranger, a fellow contestant, and someone simply nice enough to take the time to reach out to me, say some nice things, move on, and leave the world a happier place.

Meet Laura. I suspect that Laura like myself and many other contestants had noticed over the last couple of days that her vote count was not growing. I had noticed that my legitimate one-a-day ballot box stuffing was not registering in the count, but got distracted and moved on. Like many of you, I too am afflicted with CDADHD. Laura however, being of sound mind, had a bit more curiosity and set about to research the topic. She Googled up a text string with “Body by Victoria” and “Vote Count” in it and Voyages en Rose was high enough in the search engine returns to catch her attention. She then spent a little time poking around this site, and was moved to leave a blog comment.

She said some very nice things, and things as well that demonstrate sensitivity to realities faced daily by simple Cross Dressers like me, and the Transgendered of every stripe. She focused in her note on things that she suspects we endure, and not on the many things that, if fortunate, we enjoy. She gave a little salute to what she called my “inner and outer beauty”, and then vanished off into an anonymous internet sunset.

Laura, going by her photos, is quite young. I don’t suspect that she has had much in the way of exposure to people who express and present as I do, and as many of you do. Given that, I was very touched that she took the time, kept an open mind and spent a little time thinking about people with our curious habits, or needs, or gifts, or whatever we want to think of them as. Thinking about how the world reacts to us. And then, thinking about a way to welcome us into her world.

And that my friends, is the victory. Small, but big enough to share around, amongst us all.

I had time enough just before the contest was terminated to place just one vote for Laura. I wish I could have done more. I had hoped to be able beg and implore enough of you to spread the good karma around and click your mouse once or twice for this nice stranger. Alas, it was not to be. With the contest closed early, we can’t send her to New York, but if you wanted to send a nice message or 2 to her, please leave a comment here on this post. I suspect that our new friend will visit again. I would love her to know her kindness is greatly appreciated.

Hearts and minds are won and changed one at a time.

Have a terrific weekend all, and thanks again Laura for helping Cross Dressers everywhere win.

Petra’s Pantyhose Parade – The Year of Living Hosiery – Part 2

2009-09-10T12:21:00.025-04:00

In last weeks parade review of our constantly expanding and yet still nicely fitting Universe of Pantyhose, viewed through the eyes (and paid for through the nose) of this cross dresser, I generalized on my year-to-date findings and delightful learnings. I did name a few names, but focused more on trends of thought that emerged from the crowded top drawer of my admittedly obsessed mind. This week, a few specifics on the great and less so, and a regrading of a brand that seems better with time.

I maintain a pretty detailed spreadsheet of hosiery purchases. After a typical shopping sortie I enter a few values including place of purchase, country of manufacture, brand and model number, color, fabric content, and sheerness. I then make notes regarding their construction (control top, sandal foot, sheer to waist, boarding and stitch method, etc.). Then the fun bits: I say hello to my little friends and they get rolled up and on to my leggy laboratory. To the best extent possible they get a full days wearing, sometimes in the great open outdoors fully en femme, more often though here in the relative privacy and comfort of my own home.

After a few false starts in early parades, the 4 key categories of Fit, Finish, Style and Feel emerged as useful barometers. Tested hosiery is granted a score between 1 and 10 for each of these categories with one catch: I do not give 10’s. A final and entirely capricious value is added that at heart, measures my passion for the current pair. All of these values are added, averaged, squared, divided by cost and multiplied by a constant that spreads the scores out over a fairly large scale. This formula rewards quality and value. At the top of the chart today is Hanes, and holding last place at 20th, are the Spanx All the Way Up’s. Lets start at the bottom and work our way up, shall we?

Spanx Revisited. Big mea culpa here dear friends. In my original review, I tested the All The Way Up sheers (pictured at right). These specialty, high waisted, body tamers should not be judged in the same flight as traditional, seated at the waist pantyhose. While they score very highly for fit and register in the upper 1/3rd on all other categories, their high cost ($28.00) cripples them. The Leggs Silken Mist Waist Cincher is equally in the wrong room here. This is a class of hosiery deserving of its' own pretty parade, and I will stage one in upcoming weeks. Body sculpting tights are very useful underthings for very dressy evening wear, and worthy of exploring in greater depths (and yes, heights I suppose). My mad crush on the energetic and alluring Sara Blakely continues to smolder, and so I will test more traditional low rise pantyhose from Spanx in upcoming weeks. I expect them to perform well.

Worthington Revisited. The JC Penney house brand did not fare well in my original review. I took them out for another spin yesterday. Fit still excellent, but having judged later and weaker entries less harshly, I went back to the original scores and added one half point across the board to their original scores for finish, style, and feel. I think I had subconsciously downgraded them in part because the check out lady clearly did not approve of cross dressers. Or perhaps she simply does not like people. In any event, that day, Penney’s felt like a Soviet era department store and the feeling lingered throughout the test session. These are fine hose. Pretty floral detail through the panty, run resistance that does not ruin the finish, and very durable. When you consider the practically permanent “Buy 1, get 1 for ½ price” offer at JCP, the Lace Tanga Control Top is a terrific value, fine for everyday wear, and newly promoted to 14th place above lesser efforts from No-Nonsense.

Hanes Silk Reflections Revisited. The marks do not change. I believe that I got them right. I feel the need to say a few things about the top ranked product. Faintest shimmer, just south of a glimmer from them. Very smooth yarn is invisible to the eye, and practically liquid to the touch. Superb. Very subtle contruction, suitable for the most clingy fashions. Available in toe finishes to suit your favorite shoes, very cool to wear. The Silky Sheer Control Top is an unassailably good value, and a complete delight to wear. It is going to take a miracle to knock the tiara off Ms. Pantyhose Universe. I live in hope of miracles every day.

Wolford Revisited (ed.and never often enough). In a world where money is no object, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would be 24/7, tummy to toe, in these most peerless sheers, the Luxe 9’s. Part science, part magic, all delight. They cling, but they glide. They are weightless, but you feel them. They are invisible, but beautiful. Their $30.00 retail tag is steep yes, steep to the extent that they are driven to 12th place of 20 contestants in overall Petra Points, but some feelings are more precious than money. I implore you to skip a meal or 2. Buy some Wolfords.

So from top to bottom, from gusset to ground, here is The Pantyhose Parade organized by Petra Points. On the podium, gold to Hanes Silk Reflections (205.0 Petra Points) with an envious silver to Calvin Klein’s Matte Ultra Sheer Control Tops (194), and a laudable bronze going to the Donna Karan Bronze Satin Sheers (185.2).

If you would like a closer look, simply click on the image. For those of you who want to review the archives, just search this site for “Petra’s Pantyhose Parade”, glide into something comfortable and settle in for a couple of hours of overindulgence. For those of you with suggestions about what I ought to wear next, I am all ears when not admiring my own thighs. For the rest of us all, please visit on Thursdays for fresh news from the hosiery’s sheer frontiers. Next week, Berkshires.

In closing, 20 Pairs of pantyhose, $215.72. Gas for 14 shopping trips, $35.00. Knowing Pantyhose better, priceless.

Happy dressing - Petra

Cross Dressing Drama

2009-09-08T13:02:00.008-04:00

Having perfectly misspent some of my youth and earlier adult years in a company of theatrical players, I am acquainted with an acting technique or two for summoning up emotions. Actors will sometimes quite pointedly rummage around in their mental attics for a moment lost to time that helps underline, amplify and lend genuine feeling to an audition reading or to bring more arresting authenticity to a performance. This “memory sense” is available to us all, but is typically consciously deployed only by the curious people found exploring the human condition on stages or in front of cameras.

Fear is an emotion commonly required in dramatic settings. I may have been a more successful actor if I had tapped my own memory sense for fearful moments associated with Cross Dressing.

Fear remains in the mix today, well into my 5th decade of cross dressing (a bravura performance, widely acclaimed, Tony-worthy and held over yet again in the poorly ventilated theatre of my mind). Today, I am going to do a little Devils Advocacy for Fear.

Historically, fear is not an emotion that gets much credit. If Curly, Larry and Moe were Emotions and not Stooges, Shemp would be fear, an irregular player, never claiming the spotlight or winning the big laughs. The Cowardly Lion did heroic things with his Oz gift-bag of Courage. Tin and Straw men merely became usefully employable with their gifts of Caring and Thinking. Little boys are told to get over their fears, and punch the bully right back. The poorly suppressed subtext of course being that not mastering fears earned you a permanent set of sissy stripes.

I got along quite well as a youngster, a charter member in good standing with the fraternity of the penised. Athletic enough, I displayed no evidence of the sort of creative talent that brands a youngster as being seditiously sensitive. My handwriting was lamentable then, and worse today. Additionally, I was reliably dirty and smelly enough to not be welcomed into the company of girls on my own merits, and so was saved the stigma of being a girly-boy. These things, these evident things I knew instinctively to be behaviors that had the effect of making my life simple, and O how simple was desired.

I believe now that I knew this better than many because I had already satisfied complex curiosities and compulsions that would surely have had me drummed out of the uncivil boy society that I felt I needed to belong to at the time. I found women’s clothing, and lo, it felt good.

Even before I was old enough to associate the tactile experiences of cross dressing with sexual imaginings and experiences, it felt good. It felt liberating and confining all at once. Smooth things that clung like no boy-clothing. Structured, shapely things that fastened and twirled and shifted like no boy-garments. Things I was curious about, and intoxicated by. And for all of this intoxication, these things engendered a greater feeling of fear than any bully or bogey-man could ever summon up. My curiousities acted on, were a breach of a commandment so obvious to me that it needed no carving in stone, no bearded guy in positively ghastly sandals to stumble down the mountain with. No one, absolutely not a soul should know about this breach of the rules. I do not know why I knew, and still do not need to. Fear told me well enough.

There was fear of getting caught certainly. There was fear that not everything had been put back perfectly in place. There was fear that the missing thing would arouse inquiries and that the billboard that passed itself off as my face would advertise my guilt in tall, bright, neon-outlined letters. Tactical fears. There were the bigger, subtler fears too. Let me simplify and articulate the biggest one, confident that I am not alone in having asked then, and having asked often since then, the following question:

Does this make me a girl?

Over the years, I believe that I was happily capable of suppressing my dressing in part because of my fear that the answer was yes.

Fear is a powerful inhibitor, but it is also a useful evolutionary adaptation. We are deeply wired to stay away from things and behaviors that cause us harm or get us marginalized in our tribe. Hooray for Humanity! We are here in pretty strong numbers, and at least nominally in charge of things. Hooray too for fear! Long may we summon it up for what it is, employ it to our advantage, but keep it in check. We have been provided with the tools to do so.

Curiosity is the tool I have in mind today. Curiosity is, for me, the delicious chocolate partner to Fears peanut butter. Curiosity has impelled humanity forward as surely as fear, and has bequeathed the carefully curious with great advantages.

I feel inclined to favor curiosity more and more the older I get. I feel surer about my own boundaries, about my own desires. I do not fear for myself the question, “does this make me a girl?”. For me, a few moments at a time with the privilege to experience the world through feminine senses is satisfactory. In fact, it is a joy that I cannot believe other men are not lining up for in great, uniform and unanimous hordes. Don't they know what they are missing? Where the hell is their curiosity? Why did they not do a better job of right sizing fear along the way?

For my many friends who are on a different path, for those of you who have a different answer to your own question “... does “x, y or z” make me a girl? ...”, let me say here something that I hope you already truly know. You are not alone. And I suspect your experiences are not too, too different from many of your simple cross dressing cousins. Our fears and curiosities are surely similar, even while the root causes, the magnitude and the consequences of our truths differ.

I am going to put a little thought to these different, sometimes parallel, but seemingly divergent paths this week, and scratch out a note next. Your thinking in the form of notes left here will of course be welcomed.

Happy dressing, and happy everything else - Petra

Petra’s Pantyhose Parade – The Year of Living Hosiery: Part 1

2009-09-03T11:32:00.012-04:00

In December of last year, realizing that I needed regular features to return to in order to build useful, regular blogging habits, I started a still enduring Thursday feature, Petra’s Pantyhose Parade. I was not sure at the time what I knew, but was very sure what I liked and had forever.

Hosiery. Tights. Pantyhose. The sheer stuff dear friends.

Putting names aside for a moment, I am not hung up on the term pantyhose. For me it is too utilitarian a word. It does not capture the imagination in the same way that the garment captured mine, ensnared me really in my very young, very impressionable days. What an impression, One with me still, and I suspect, forever. Clearly, a name for this regular blog post was required. I settled on Pantyhose mostly because of the alliterative possibilities presented with Petra parading about. Thusly, was Petra’s Pantyhose Parade conceived.

I suspected that this was a deep realm, a cool fashion well that would never run dry. I saw in my minds thigh a sheer and endless river of nylon and lycra. I felt as though I could cool my toes in this glittering ocean ceaselessly. I believed, moreover, that if I took my time and made good notes, I could genuinely develop a shapely body of work, free of blemish, that might help us all make better, smarter and more fashion forward choices for our legs. Beautifying the world, one happy gam at a time. I have not been disappointed. I have now tested and opined upon 20 pairs, and the horizon gets further away each week. I do not lack for choice. Yumm.

I do lament however that fewer and fewer genetic women share this passion with cross dressers. Pantyhose seem to be thought by many to be a chore, only borderline comfy, and not in most circumstances absolutely required to complete an outfit. When given the option for bare legging it, many, too many do. Hosiery sales have been in decline for years, and outlooks don’t predict a rebound. That leaves less to admire for all of us, and the loss of a truly feminine touch in the everyday world.

From many comments on these posts, and correspondence with friends of this blog, I have learned that my passion, while pretty vivid, is not unusual. For many of us, this frail, powerful amalgam of inner and outerwear, this quietly private choice, this sometimes brazenly displayed enticement was at the very start and remains at the very heart of our sometimes difficult but always electrifying journey. This gossamer thread has the strength of Spiderman’s web and is perhaps stickier

So 20 reviews thus far. 20 is a good number: fingers and toes. Its time to pause and reflect before I lose count. General observations today.

Control Tops dominate the shelves, and as a result, the rankings. I sense that they dominate the shelves because clingy, body conscious fashions demand slimming effects, and if you look around, so do many too well fed, too poorly exercised bodies. Beyond that, I tested a good number of control tops because they do have a beneficial effect for cross dressers who, like me, pad up to achieve more attractive curves. Control tops help smooth it all out.

Wine and Pantyhose have much in common. I keep an army of <$10.00 wines on hand at home, and many of them I proudly present to friends. It is a relief that we live in a world where one can get comfortably tight with a $8.00 bottle, while comfortably clad in $8.00 tights. When you go south of $5.00 though, something happens to both. They are still mostly well made, employing state of the art technology and best production best practices, but they lack something. They lack finish. The finish element is to me, more than a certain je ne sais quoi, this quality is the very raison d’être of pantyhose. Be value minded therefore, but do not cheap out dear friend.

We are worth a little indulgence every now and then. There are special outfits, and nights when a spoil is good for the soul. At the very top end, the luxury vendors really are a treat. The highest scoring panty hose (Wolford Luxe 9) garnered an unassailable 47.4 out of an available 50 Petra Points. They felt and looked so good I could barely think. A $30.00 splash out is not a whim for me, but then neither is a $100.00 massage. The massage makes me feel better but doesn’t make me look better. The Wolfords do both and will last longer.

A Girl on a budget can look terrific. Our Gold Medal performer is in fact a $7.50 entry from Hanes (Silky Sheer Control Top) that can be found even more frugally if purchased online in bulk. They scored 31 points out of an available 50. The L’eggs line at $5.00 even shows terrific value in a line of very comfortable, evening appropriate, dress sheers. If you are hard on your hosiery, getting a run does not have to mean a run on your bank.

Durability is not pretty. Run resistant weaves help contain minor snags and help hosiery last longer. These weaves typically though add heat, coarsen finishes and leave the fine but apparent tell-tale horizontal lines across the thighs. So, for the price of a little longer wear, you give up much of the magic. For some, not a bad bargain, but not, for me, a good one. I rather take the approach that if you are mindful of how you are dressed, alert to your surroundings, and graceful in your movements, ladylike in a word, then you will not need the durability that run resistance provides.

Love them, and they will love you back. Runs are ultimately inevitable and costly. If you get fewer of them, your price per wear drops each time out. I have laddered precisely 1 pair of pantyhose this calendar year (the fishnets that got freakishly caught up on my purse). Do these things please: Keep your nails filed, pay attention to the size charts (and go up a size if you are borderline), and use a pair of standard issue rubber gloves to smooth up and really fit your hose perfectly after you have both feet in. Your legs are worth the care.

The chart shown here is a top to bottom ranking of all tested pantyhose with pricing taken out of the final score (click to enlarge). Raw scores out of an available 50, 1-10 in 5 categories. At the top are favorites, and what I would wear always if money was no object. Next week, I will re-order them with price in the equation, and line them up with the “bang for the buck” values highlighted. In next weeks recap post I will additionally provide a little color commentary on the good, the bad, and the saggy of some of the more memorable experiences.

2 quick footnotes.
1.The first two photos are courtesy of a stylish friend, CC over at Couture Carrie. 3rd photo from Worlford.
2. I am drafting today’s post in a Starbucks, and I just spotted a completely healthy, beautifully shaped woman in her 20s with a smartly tailored black cotton, belted shirt dress, wearing a very nice pair of nude sheers. It is presently 80F in Atlanta. This gorgeous girl could have made a different choice, been more comfortable and saved a few minutes earlier today by going bare. Bless her soul, she did not, and the world is prettier as a result. A nice glimmer of hope for us all.

Happy dressing and everything else ...

Petra’s Pantyhose Parade – Wednesday Special – No Nonsense II

2009-09-02T10:54:00.015-04:00

Food critics will always visit a restaurant at least twice, and often more, before rendering a judgment that may in the future reflect unfairly on the establishment, or call their own taste into question. Well, when this cross dressing hosiery critic first reviewed No Nonsense in February of this year, it was an off night for pantyhose. In fact, I could not wait to get them off. Full review linked here, but here is the pithy conclusion:

… They breath poorly. I know that after a long day confined in a nice fitting pair of day sheers it is an airy pleasure peeling them off, but I was a mere 15 minutes in captivity and starting to get itchy. The prospects of the full day loomed as impossible. I thought perhaps I was experiencing vicarious hot flashes, remembered my commitment to you, and settled in for the day. It wasn’t a delight friends. And 2 hours into it, I threw in the towel. And then I toweled off….

My word, that was bitchy. Not entirely what I like to hear from myself.

I did promise in that review to revisit No Nonsense (ed. after a court ordered trial separation) to see if perhaps I was just a little harsh, just a little snippy to our hard-working, earnest, and modestly priced friends. It seemed to me that after swanning around the globe to slide Chinese, English and Italian hosiery up my all too willing legs, that I might just stay near to home, enjoy some domestic comfort food, and perhaps have a sunnier disposition about the No Nonsense brand.

And so, with an open mind (ed. short memory?), and all the good will in the world, I snapped up a pair of Smart Support Control Tops, to go back for seconds.

A handful of things made this model interesting to me. First, the promise of an Ultra Sheer Leg. Second, the nude shade, Beige Mist suited my complexion well from what I could gather from the package. These 2 things together improved the likelihood that my new Smart Controls would be a great warm weather option.

The last thing that intrigued was the concept of Graduated Compression. Now, having flunked out of two truly superb universities, I rather hoped that a pair of Graduated Pantyhose would help complete me somehow. The idea of graduated compression is to provide a tighter weave on the lower parts of the leg so that the nylons provide a little of the circulatory oomph that nature loses with time. Terrific concept, and Nobel-worthy to my thinking. And yet again, graduation has failed to impact the odd trajectory of my life. Periodically, oxygen does not make it to my brain in full enough supply, but my legs seem fine without the help. I simply could not feel the difference.

So, on to the rest of the product. Polite applause only my dear friends. On the plus side there is care taken making the product. The seams are well finished, the toe is tidy, the panty portion is firm and comfortable, the waist band does not roll, and really, they look attractive enough. Attractive is at the heart of the problem though: what attracts the eye are the pantyhose, and not the legs. A good pair of pantyhose becomes one with the leg, and makes the leg more attractive. This weeks model simply sit on top of the leg. Ultra Sheer is an overpromise. Lastly, while not quite so warm on the leg as the Silk Indulgence model, they are still a tad cozy.

Dear friends, for the price ($3.99), they are a good performer. One should not I suppose expect greatness from the spare change you can shake out of your purse. A high grade (7.0) for fit, but 4.5 – 5.5 for the all important finish, style and feel criteria. 1.0 only for random merit. I could not imagine wearing these to my own funeral. I might wear them while selecting my grave site if the place was completely overgrown and likely to tear a run in a finer pair, but that is as close as they would get to my eternal and eternally sheer place of rest. All of this contibutes to a 15th place rank out of 20 tested pairs. Furthermore the Silk Indulgence has laddered over time from 9th, when first tested to its' present 17th place perch.

These No Nonsense Control Tops are the 20th pair of pantyhose reviewed here in this ongoing and hopefully endless parade. Tomorrow, a look back on The Year of Living Hosiery©. It’s a fitting time to reflect on what I have learned to date before getting busy with a new autumn rush of tights.

Ta ra till then, happy dressing, and etc…

Long Crossdressing Strides

2009-09-01T11:14:00.026-04:00

My wife sometimes thinks as far as a half day ahead when considering what to wear. We cross dressers typically require a little more planning. Perhaps require is the wrong word. I, for one, rather relish thinking about what will work for Petra. And in so far as dressing en femme for the outside world is not a frequent event, I typically do have time to ponder on about exactly what I want to shimmy and slide into next time. Here at least, is a nice, low carbon emitting pastime.

I review 8-10 emails a day from various retailers promoting this look, pimping that coupon and generally provoking my next click with the promise that I too, yes even I, can look as beautiful as the remote, perfect woman pictured within that simply-must-have garment. I follow avant gardiste bloggers gathering intelligence from the glittering trenches of the rag trade. The other day in a dentists lobby the choice between Sports Illustrated and Elle was a no-brainer. I’ll take the pretty over the sweaty any day.

Out in the real world too. I can barely stop writing memos to self. Fueling up the car, hunting for a bunch of bananas less bruised, holding an elevator door open, all around me are women who made fashion choices that register a place on my long and largely unfulfilled wish list. The variety is blinding and crazy-making. I envy them the complexity, the exponential explosion of ensembles that somehow, by some miracle emerge from so many drawers, shelves and closets, so effortlessly assembled and lived in so gorgeously.

My wardrobe is largely built around the dresses that flash a little leg, the skirts that gently and surely constrain the stride within taut fabric, the suits that insist on mindful modesty sliding out of the car seat, or taking a tall chair at a long bar. I do not suspect that will ever change. Truly. The breeze between my knees is the wind beneath my wings. With that said, I am struggling with an urge, a yet unexpressed desire to get into women’s pants.

Now, for the benefit of visitors from The U.K., by pants I mean slacks, not knickers. Well tailored trousers that merchandize curves, lengthen legs, narrow waists and draw eyes from butt to buffed nails. If pants were good enough for Katharine Hepburn, surely they are good enough for me? … I think. There is a curious set of feelings aroused by this next likely fashion statement. I feel like I am considering a little act of sedition within a bigger act of sedition.

For me, and for a few of you perhaps, cross dressing is, in part, an act of rebellion. Even as we embrace feelings and needs deeply wired within, we are thumbing our noses at convention. Hello world, yes, this is me, in a dress. Maybe “passing” from afar but far from passing up close. And now I am considering taking the dress out of cross dressing. I spend years warding off the urge to dress, agonized over accepting myself when I finally realized the fight was futile and wrong headed, and now I want back into pants? How very perverse.

Pants might just represent an interesting fashion frontier though. I suspect that they might have the impact of cloaking me just a little bit --- who is expecting a cross dresser to cover up their legs after all? Slacks have an odd ambiguity to them. On a woman, they are statement ... "I can run with the boys, and look like a girl". This statement is pretty muted these days and demurred by ubiquity. But not so long ago, a grown woman in pants was challenging the status quo and being just a little cheeky. Well, I live to challenge status quo's everywhere, and with the help of my ample padding can be just as cheeky as the next girl.

Perfect pants are de rigueur for the modern woman, can fashionably rise to the requirements of practically any occasion and still possess all the liberation that their design naturally provides. And lord can they look good. I want some of that. I am man enough to admit it.

High-waisted, thin-belted, side-zipped, flare-legged, and long enough at the cuff to insist on a good heel. Paired with a smartly tailored, stretch cotton, French-cuffed, body-fitted blouse. A little bling, a big shawl and a bag to die for. I am looking forward to really legging it about this autumn in this imagined look. Ann Taylor and Macy’s are showing some terrific stuff. The endless racks of TJ Maxx are lined with options I have not taken the time to explore, besotted as I have been by the dresses.

I just feel like its time to mix it up a bit. How about you my dear? Do you have a perfect pair or do you remain faithful to garments with higher hems?

Happy dressing …

Petra’s Pantyhose Parade - Versione Italiana

2009-08-27T11:18:00.019-04:00

Chianti and Maserati. Cappuccino and Piazzas. Chaotic intersections and hot tempers. Wonderful Italian things all. Petra is not a big fan of the Italian brand of football (big generalization, scuse, por favore, too conservative, winning goals scavenged on frustrated fields), but in matters of fashion it must be said that Forza Azzuri plays a wide open and spirited game. Such is the glory of Rome (or Milan I suppose).

Other glory emerges from Italy in the form of the all too scarce Glory line of hosiery, and gets a little blog-light here today. I made a glancing reference to clichéd “flashy and operatic” Italian characteristics in last weeks Pantyhose Parade as a look ahead to the then untested 30D’s under the thighcroscope this week. Flashy and operatic are the wrong terms. More below, but briefly here a quick recapitulation of the protocols of this parade ...

I like pantyhose (ed. you think?). They were at hand for my first cross dressing forays, and my living will stipulates Wolford Luxe 9’s (in black of course) when put to rest. And so hoping to further everyone’s appreciation of this delightful and womanly garment, I shop. I play the field far and wide, up-market and down. Gossamer Sheer, lustrous Matte and everything in between that I can get my greedy hands on. I then get as objective as I can and apply 1-10 scores across a handful of commonly desired traits (fit, finish, style and feel). Lastly added is a random and very subjective value. The subjective value is arrived at by posing this question of myself:

“Would I wear these to my own funeral?”

These numbers get grinded through a formula that rewards lower prices, and lines up the legs from best to next. Color commentary on the hose and the place of purchase where it might be helpful is thrown in. All published on Thursdays apropos of my desire to present an online version of “Must See CD”. Ahem.

Continuing now…

Our Italian entry is a great day-to-night stalwart. I feared that the high 30 denier would make for a coarse and plain finish, but this single covered Elastine© reinforced yarn yields a suprisingly nice dressy and high quality appearance. This yarn method provides plenty of torque which is easily maintained through long hours of wear. They fix to the legs very surely, coolly and comfortably. The run-resistant tuck stitching guards against dreaded laddering, as do the reinforced toes (good bye sandals and peep toes). A very satiny feel to hands and legs and a confident, subtly shining overall look. Quality finishing at waistband, and pretty scalloping through the sheer to waist construction makes for comfort and freedom to wear outrageously slitted skirts. Again, day to night at the flick of a few revealing buttons for the brave.

Value priced too for an import at $7.99. All of these qualities add up to a pretty attractive score and a well earned stride into the middle of the pack with 156.5 Petra Points and a running rank of 8 from a current field of 17. Bravo Glory.

Now, the sad news for those of us not taking Autumn in Tuscany – Glory is harder to find on these shores than a truly great Lombardy Grana Padano cheese. I found my pair in the Shapings boutique, and you might find the even sleeker 20D model online at the Femme Fatale Boutique. You will be happy if you do, but given the abundance of choice we all have, I do not expect to create a run on, or in, this very attractive fashion accessory any time soon.

Next week, I really can’t see from here. Which means of course it is time to shop. I hope to find some terrific new product and am praying for fresh descriptive language to describe my delights. If you have a favorite you have not seen reviewed here, just drop a line.

Happy dressing …

Cross Dressing, Contests and Curves

2009-08-26T14:09:00.013-04:00

Faithful fellow wayfarers on these Voyages en Rose will note my recent entry in, and feeble attempt to win, a Victoria’s Secret giveaway, the Body by Victoria 3 Day NYC spa and shopping spree. I want to first of all thank those of you who did take a minute to leave no chad hanging and actually support this cross dressers campaign. As of this morning (Aug 26, with a little under a month left in the sweeps), I seem to be the best placed cross dresser. Hooray!

Now admittedly, my suspicion is based solely on a very cursory examination of the photo galleries of my fellow contestants. The girls look very real, but you know how good we are at cloaking when we really try. Nonetheless, I take some pride at currently being placed in the top 400 (#396) of some 6100 ++ entries.

With that said, I am a realist. I am just treading in these fragrant waters, slowly moving forward while being left in the wake of more seriously connected, determined and deserving competition. Which leads to curves part of the post. There are 3 types of curves that I have in mind are relevant to this post.

Standard Distribution Curves (think of a Bell Curve)
Power Distribution Curves (think of a curve high at one end, with a steep declining slope), and
Feminine Curves. Hips, butts and breast that the genetic woman is blessed with that I am not.

Well the Body by Victoria contest is a real power curve. At the top of the curve with nearly 7,000 votes is Casey. No argument, a heart-stirring story, and a women worthy of a weekend of luxury. I truly hope she wins. In 50th place is Jessica with 365 votes. A range of roughly 6,700 votes within one group of 50 entries. In 100th place is Sorayah (159, love the name). This sort of rapidly diminishing gap between fixed data points is called a “scale invariance” and this is what makes a power curve look like it does. Here are the BBV contest rankings plotted out. Not very expertly, but they illustrate the problem, and my newly adopted reality.

While I rank quite highly, I stand absolutely no chance of climbing the steep power curve up to Casey’s admirable heights, no matter how sensible a pair of shoes I chose for the effort. Even with your unfailing, daily and generous support.

But there I am, in the campaign, seemingly unable to bow out to leave the path more clear for more deserving and more curvy contestants. Many of whom, I must say have curves to be envied.

It has been fun though to see my entry on a very slick and graphically compelling web site, especially a site in the VS family. I am a fan of their product and am happy to have been treated respectfully while shopping there, both en femme and in drab. Beyond that little thrill, I will satisfy myself with the purchase of a new Body by Victoria bra sometime between now and the real onset of Autumn. That should help out with my own lamentable curves.

It has also been exciting to note that many of you did throw a little kindness my way. Very much appreciated. And while the delusional dream of winning still danced in my head, it was interesting to consider just exactly what Victoria would do with a cross dresser who won. Cameras and microphones tend to come out for these events. No doubt there would have been a PR headache or 2 along the way, but perhaps this might have been one of those moments that helps those of us still in the shadows to get a little positive daylight.

Perhaps for a younger generation of cross dressers. Here is hoping…

If you have, or if you do enter just for the fun of it, drop a comment here with your profile link, and I promise you a vote in return.

Thanks, happy dressing and everything else…

and PS - the link to vote for Petra remains here...