Boots.

You keep saying you got something for me. Skirts, check. Tights, check. (What else with skirts?) How about footwear?

I've already mentioned my humming bird boots, once or twice. People seem to like these...

Now I have a new pair of boots. My youngest niece arranged with her multiple siblings to buy me some DMs for Christmas. She'd mentioned DMs before, and later asked my shoe size, so I was more than half expecting them. But not the colour...

Aren't they grand :)

Sod the whole of last year. 2023 is going to kick. Something or someone.

Are you ready, boots? Start walking.

Skirts. (2)

Yes, most everything is still shit. No change there. However, I've managed to resolve the skirt issue from the previous post. The one where I was “thinking all the time about wearing skirts.”

After pondering and perusing the question, considering the possibilities, weighing them up, sifting them through, looking at them from varied angles and perspectives, I finally hit upon a solution.

Wearing skirts.

Hardly anyone gives a fuck.

“I'd probably have to ask my mate first.”
— Wear what you want.
— Okay :)

Two gigs, two skirts. Two trips into town, two skirts. (I don't get out much.)

Comments/reactions:
(young woman at gig) — “Great skirt.”
(young man at gig) — “I like your skirt.”
(woman in street) — “Nice skirt.”
(woman in shop) — “Love the skirt.”
(man in street) — “Nice, nice.”
(young girl in lift) — “Ha ha ha.”

Bah. What do young girls know about anything anyway?

Skirts.

The whole world is going down the fucking toilet. Everything is just shit and it's getting increasingly worse, it seems to me, increasingly. I can't even begin. Shit, shit, every where, nor any way to avoid it. You'll be drinking it whether you will or no.

From this super happy place, I've found myself thinking a lot about...

Skirts.

For instance:

Isn't that gorgeous! Who wouldn't want to wear a skirt like that? Even if it won't look quite so good on you. Or me.

Nevertheless:

Now I just need an occasion to wear it out. My youngest niece has suggested her wedding. Maybe :)

The last time I wore a skirt out was twelve weeks ago at the NTU Gender Matters conference. Finn Mackay was the keynote speaker, so presenting femme by wearing a skirt – a long purple one, paired with a they/them/theirs t-shirt in non-binary colours – seemed the least I could do. To show solidarity with my butch sibling as it were.

Now I'm thinking about wearing skirts all the time.

That is to say: I'm thinking all the time about wearing skirts. Or even both. There's a punk gig coming up on Saturday. I could wear my new skirt to that. And there's another gig on Thursday. I'd probably have to ask my mate first. Would it bother you if I wear a skirt? Maybe.

In the words of the song: I don't have any reasons. I've left them all behind. I'm in a new skirt state of mind.

Style.

There was a piece in The Guardian a few months back: “‘I went from basic to flamboyant overnight!’ The people who transformed their style – in their 50s, 60s and 70s”.

It's subheaded: “Growing older can mean getting bolder – so why shouldn’t this be reflected in our clothes? Meet four people who refuse to blend into the background”. I don't know about “getting bolder”. I think it's more an increasing feeling of “I really couldn't give a shit”.

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple.

The person with the style I most like there is Arlinda McIntosh (64, New Jersey): “The clothes I wanted to wear didn’t exist, so I started making these big celebratory skirts, some with trains, so I could bring joy to my appearance.” Right. Especially as the cross-dresser's "traditional" short skirt has never done it for me. I prefer to be covered up. And big celebratory skirts seem just the way. Skirts with a lot of material. Skirts that flounce. Skirts that swish and swirl. Mmm, yes.

Style-wise anyway. Word-wise I'm with Phil Grosset (51, York), who now identifies as non-binary: “I choose things that I think look nice and make me feel good without worrying about what gender they’re marketed at. Clothes that are marketed to women have so much more choice in their patterns, colours and fabrics – it’s made me addicted to colour.” Patterns, colours, fabrics. Mmm, yes.

Maybe I should turn this into a fashion blog.

On which note, I note that McIntosh runs her own label, Sofistafunk, where “the voluminous Skirt reins Supreme and all else is an accessory to It”. The ‘A Long Gathering’ skirts are my favourites, if a bit out of my price range. Then again, if I can spend £900 on a great bass recorder...

Eleven years.

...last Tuesday. That is, since my first post on 7th February 2011. One year I'm going to remember.

Looking back at those early posts – from the first three years, culminating
in Straight Male Femme (published here in 2018) – everything seems so earnest and important. And I suppose it was. I started this very much as a blog about cross-dressing: a big thing in my life that I needed to work through and explain, most of all to myself.

Now?

I've not exactly reached the stage that “they're not women's clothes, they're my clothes”, as Eddie Izzard once put it. (Indeed, I'm not sure Eddie is at that stage any longer.) It's still significant to me that everything I buy is off the women's racks. I've still haven't learned – or even tried – to present as femme in clothes from the other side of the store. I never even look at the other side of the store.

Perhaps that's just laziness. It's a lot easier to get stuff off the women's racks. Go out – or, more often, go online – pick up a nice fluffy jumper, or furry coat, or pink jeans, or cute trainers, or...

Um, vest check, gun check, clip one check, clip two check, I'm set.

If anybody ever asks... But they never do.

In any case, a question that concerns me more now is: will I still be around in another eleven years? And if so, where? :/