Fake it or not
It’s hard to find a community of casual crossdressers. Most are traditional crossdressers. They want to be seen as women when they crossdress and thus they get all dolled up in bras, dresses, long wigs, high heels, full make-up, etc. They even give themselves female names and try to emulate female curves using silicon appliances. Some even go full princesses, that is super girly in pink and lace and all frou-frou.
This is not me and it’s harder for me to relate to these people. Which is why this site was born. Yeah I like pink and pastel colors. I like shorter heels and dresses. But don’t want to pretend to be a female to do it. I want to push limits on what is socially acceptable for guys to wear. I think this binary style of crossdressing goes against that ideal. It still separates clothing based on gender and says that if you want to wear a skirt you should also wear a wig and high feels and take a female name to call yourself by when in girl-mode. Otherwise go to guy-mode and be bland.
That’s not my goal. My goal is that there is no guy-mode or girl-mode. Only clothing. In my universe there are no mens and womens departments. Guys don’t give themselves a female name. They don’t wear a bra with silicon breast appliances in them to simulate having tits. If they do wear a bra it’s one that fits and purely for fashion/modesty. Like a tight sports bra rather than going bear chested. I mean unless the guy is overweight and really needs the bra for support. But he’s not faking anything in doing that if he does need the support. And that’s what it really comes down to for me, faking it versus not faking it.
A casual crossdresser/freestyle fashion person is not faking anything. They aren’t pretending to be a gender they are not. They aren’t going into girl-mode.
Personally I tried traditional crossdressing a couple of times when I first began and I felt like a fool. I quickly realized that was not who I am. I am not a woman and pretending to be a woman was irrational.
Sadly I haven’t met any casual crossdressers. I’ve met the tranditional binary crossdressers that only go casual at times because they are afraid of going full princess in public. Had they not that fear, I’m not sure any of them would ever wear mens-designated clothing again.
Several different authors have discussed how the Internet…has allowed people with obscure interests to find each other. In the past, if you weren’t in the mainstream, perhaps there needed to be a critical mass to allow a community to form. This may be true of the gay and BDSM subcultures. Otherwise you would be too few and too scattered to find each other
I am *so* bookmarking this site. Grok, it’s extremely difficult to find people like us — men who are perfectly content to be men but also like wearing skirts and dresses. I have spent the better part of ten years looking for blogs and forums etc. relating to straight, non-transition crossdressers and it’s the proverbial needle in the haystack. *every* site is perfectly welcoming and open to me, no problem, but *every* discussion is about passing and tucking and makeup and hormones and surgery… or on the other fringe, the fetishists with their obsession collecting panties and “entertaining” themselves while dressed as two-dollar hookers or insist that you call them Sally or Pretty Prissy Polly or whatever. And those are the nice ones. The ugly ones rip a new hole in me for making a mockery of something they take seriously and expect me to, as well. I’ve been called — by other crossdressers, mind you — a circus freak, a monkey, and worse.
In my wanderings I’ve met a handful of similarly inclined dudes in dresses, but no more than a half dozen. What a treat to find this place! Looking forward to more dialogue with y’all…
Check out http://www.skirtcafe.org. The forum is loosely divided between two different groups. “Freestyle Fashion” section is the one applicable to the Casual Crossdresser (and includes the Casual Crossdresser thread).
Check out http://www.hisblackdress.com/2011/08/thoughts-on-freestyle-fashion.html
In hisblackdress there was a comment about a Free Style subculture. My guess is that -because of the Internet-it is possible only now for such to form.
I suspect that we are talking about people who can pass…who appear to conform, if in a bland way.
Hi guys. I can’t resist posting a comment on here. Nod to Ralph for recommending this link to me.
I haven’t read any more than this one post here (though I will take a wander around soon enough). However, I thought I would add my own perspective. Basically, I loathe things which pretend to be something they are not. How does this square with my own desire to wear fem clothes? (And to be clear, I suppose I would fit your “traditional” category, of wanting to do the whole ensemble at once).
I get around this (and you may legitimately feel this is a fudge) by considering that, when dressed, I am not pretending to be a woman. I am just being a man in a dress. I don’t ask for fem pronouns (“she”, “her” and the like). I don’t even ask for a fem name. I adopt Vivienne as a handy internet alias, but if you met me in a frock I would be quite happy to be called by my male name and acknowledged as what I am: a man in women’s clothing.
For me, crossdressing provides two powerful rewards. It allows me an emotional expression I would otherwise be denied (since men are expected to behave in certain ways), and it is pleasantly sensual, in that men’s clothes tend to be functional whereas women’s clothes tend to be fabulous. But that means that I need to do the whole works: yes, the silicone boobs and the wig and the makeup.
I resonate powerfully with your statement that, if we could wear whatever we wanted, some of us would never wear male clothing again. Mind you, it makes sense to wear overalls when fixing the car or chopping wood!
Best wishes,
Vivienne.
so true. y is it ok for a women to dress like a man but when a man buts on a dress. hes gay. I just love the fill of it all.
“Janegirl” may be a useful term. Defined by Urban Dictionary-www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=janegirl.
One possibility may be that “casual cross dressers” are simply rare.
Lists of gender variant groups: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender; http://transprov.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/simple-list-of-third-gender-variant-groups/.
I started casual cross dressing or free-styling about a year ago. I will wear tights under pants or with shorts. Short shorts are very functional in the summer. I like anklets and will sometimes paint my toe nails. Most everything is “mens” and I am not trying to look like a woman, so it’s technically not cross-dressing.
It has occurred to me that Jane(y)girls may seem rare….because passing is a workable option. Outward (in a literal sense) conformity, because that avoids scorn/rejection.