If you have worn a corset or a waist cinch on your basically male body, you have probably experienced the annoying rolls that such a garment provides. Your body just doesn’t curve in the right places to keep the garment extended and you wind up with those annoying and uncomfortable rolls. Well, weep no more my dresser! A good foundation garment will have narrow flat strips of plastic or some similar springy material bound into the fabric. These are the bones and they exist to prevent the garment from rolling upon itself. The bones will keep it extended even if your body doesn’t fit it like nature and the manufacturer intended. A waist cinch is particularly vulnerable to rolling and bones force it to do just what you intended when you bought it.

My own case absolutely demands bones since my waist is a bit large and it bulges in just the places where a shapely woman’s body is narrow. If I try to wear a cinch without bones it ends up being a roll of latex over my navel. Not very cool.

Shop for good bones, ladies.

I cannot recommend the PALS forms too highly. They feel great and have a certain “stickiness” on the backs that keep them snugly in place without actually being glued on the skin. They can be glued with hairspray, but I have never found it necessary to do so. If you wear them to bed they will not end up underneath your pillow in the morning. Oddly, they do not seem to get sweaty during the day and can easily be worn all day long.

These are made of gel foam which has a good solid feel. Silicon forms are softer and are, therefore, a little more natural. However, silicon forms cost almost three times as much. I also have a pair of silicon forms and I find that I rarely use them now that I have the proper size PALS.

Forms come in two basic configurations: tear-drop and rain-drop. I have the tear-drop because they extend under my armpit and seem to be a bit more complete than the rain-drop which are more triangular but extend higher in the middle.
Another big bonus is this: unlike silicon forms, PALS do not require a pocket bra. You can use any bra you like as long it has a fair amount of cover to hold the form. This opens up your wardrobe to a wide variety of lovely fashion designs and gives you most of the same choices a genetic girl would have.

Unless you wish to have super large forms, a pair of PALS will cost less than $100.00 which makes them the best choice for true breastforms. They are not as cheap as bags of bird seed but you don’t get chased by Sparrows either. Pals can be ordered directly from the manufacturer at this site: http://www.supergelproducts.com/index.html . You will need to give careful consideration to measurements and sizing. It is not intuitive. Be aware of your bra size and the cup size you wish to achieve.
Remember: good things come in pairs.

Sure, this is a girl’s site, but, if I am honest, I am really a guy doing the best I can with girl stuff. And, so, this post is concerned with a common and annoying problem I have. Usually I shave in the shower because my face and legs present the best surfaces for hair slicing when they are wet and warm. However, shaving cream cans are not made for that; they all are slick and round and tend to slide out of my hand when I push the button.

Ah, such a serious problem! But, my loving wife has come to the rescue! She simply slid some rubber bands over the can. That seems so simple that I am embarrassed to even mention it. Worse yet, I never thought of it in all my 150 years of shaving.  It works great and costs nothing. My wife is a genius.

Whew! How many of you could make an entire post out of what ought to occupy a single sentence?

Yep, I have learned a very simple trick to get my breastforms comfortable regardless of the temperature around me. All it takes is a sheer skin colored knee-high. I was amazed at how huge a change was brought about with so simple a thing.

The only caution I have is that you take care to leave enough room in the knee-high to prevent the form from folding over on itself. Also, it works best if you insert the thin, outer edge of form into the toe part of the knee-high. Otherwise, you wind up with a bunched wad of hose in your armpit. It is very easy to tuck in the extra at the large end of the form.
Now, if that was simple, why did it take me ten years to figure it out?
Oh, yeah; if you tape the forms on, ignore this post. The hose is a bad idea.

Would I do it again? Sure. You see, at the time of my life when I put myself under treatment, I had talked with almost nobody about my dressing because I was much too shy and embarrassed. A therapist provided me with a safe place. That’s so important that I cannot overstate it. My point is that he gave me a chance to speak aloud about all that was on my mind for many years regarding gender and me. I was surprised by what I had stored up inside and the discovery itself was therapeutic. Could I have gotten the same release by talking to a friend? Perhaps, but I could leave the doc at his office and face the world knowing that none of my relationships had changed just because I spoke.
So, my advice regarding a therapist:
1) Expect to do some educating. You will be surprised by what you know when you hear yourself talk about yourself.
2) Try to work in a larger town if you live in a small one.
3) Do not rule out the value of sharing with a friend or lover; just remember that you will have changed the basis of that relationship forever.
Whatever you do, please talk to people about yourself.

If you watched the National Geographic program on gender, you would be certain that gender is not, as their narrator put it, “binary”. In fact, they discussed a group in India which is considered to be a “third gender”. Interestingly enough, this group was comprised of biological males (never seems to be females) dressing and acting as females all their adult lives. Are they cross dressing? I think not.

So, answer these questions: Is a genetic woman cross dressing when wearing a dress? We would all say “no”. Is a genetic man cross dressing when wearing a dress? We would all say “yes”. But these are extremes on a very familiar continuum. What about the points in between where the distinction between male and female is not so clear? What about an inter-sexed child (has both sex organs) who is raised as a girl; is she cross dressing in a dress? What if another inter-sexed child is raised as a boy but wears a dress; is he cross dressing? Even deeper than that: how do I know when to use “he” or “she”?

What, then, is cross dressing? There was time when I thought I knew the answer. Now I am not so sure. Here is my best guess:

Teacher: “Now, class, who can tell me what cross dressing is?”

64 yr. old pupil: “Cross dressing occurs when an individual, usually a male, wears clothing that is typical of a gender opposite that which he or she typically presents.”

That definition is not objective by any means; it hinges upon the lifestyle of the individual. It says that, if you have spent your life primarily in masculine attire, then when you wear a dress, you are cross dressing. On the other hand, if a genetic man is presenting as a woman 24/7 and has been doing so for such a long time that he has become totally accepted and identified as being a woman, then he is not cross dressing any longer.
Unlike the old police cars, life is rarely black or white. Perhaps we need to define the very act of cross dressing in terms of the situation and not solely in terms of the sex of the dresser. Perhaps that will start each of on the path to self discovery.

I had always imagined myself walking in a mall dressed in heels and a lovely dress. Somehow I was never 5’11” in those images. It felt so good to walk in heels and feel my skirt flying in the breeze. There I was clicking along and attracting no notice. “What dreams may come.”

Fortunately, I had enough sense to pay attention to women in the mall and realize that they did not dress like that just to go shopping. So, when I made my maiden voyage (just a figure of speech) I wore jeans, a red tank, and a long sleeved white shirt as a sort of jacket. I selected a pair of flats (well, my only pair) to complete my somewhat disappointing but very safe outfit. The flats had plastic heels so I still clicked and, dressed like any other female shopper, I attracted no notice. I had practiced a lady-like walk for years and I knew to keep my large hands as unobtrusive as possible. In short – I wished I were short – I was about as invisible as I could be. I would have preferred to look like women in 1960s kitchen commercials, but they weren’t real either and I just wanted to go out and be left alone.

It worked very well. I had a wonderful day which became one of the high points in my life. But I had a goal that I kept in front of me; I wanted to be out there and be relaxed and not be noticed. It had a lot to do with what I wore. When you go out, think about where you are going and how other ladies dress when they go there.

Oh, I guess I did say something about a huge surprise that day. That will the topic of another post, but the short version is that, from my first step outside the car, I lost all my nervousness and simply enjoyed myself. Nobody could have told me that before that day. I was prepared to be tense and weird all day. In fact, I was not at sure that I would even get out of the car. But that’s another story.

So, call me Cathy in this context.

Dark circles are related to the thinness of your skin layer under your eyes and are greatly accentuated by lack of sleep. I have looked around the various forums and come up with several helpful suggestions.

• Get more sleep. Find some really boring stuff on TV or get to bed earlier.

• Use a good concealer. Ulta makes a concealer that comes highly recommended. Be sure to be very careful to blend it around the lower edges.

• If your under-eyes are also puffy, try rubbing a very small amount of Preparation H on them. It sounds a bit odd, but it apparently has good results. But be careful of your eyes.