Coming Around Again

I think it is the norm for crossdressers to go through many stages in their lives. Over and over again I read or hear of ‘sisters’ who started out at a young age raiding their mother’s or sisters laundry, drawers, or cupboards. For many of us the sexual charge and release came (ahem) pretty quickly.

At some point many of us move on to wanting the full look. Many may be lucky enough to find the needed skirts, blouses, dresses, shoes etc in our family’s discards but I had to shop for what I needed/wanted.

I’m sure many of you remember being very nervous the first time you went to a store to buy something feminine. I know lots who still can’t face doing that and so do all their buying online. Fortunately for them the rest of the world is joining them. Shopping for and selling new and nearly new goods through the Internet is really big business.

It was literally way back in the last century that I placed my first order with the catalogue section of a Sears Department Store. It was a bra, panty and slip set. I was at university and living in my own room off-campus. I think it took me a day or two to go to the counter to pick up the order. When I did get it I wondered what my worry had been about. I spent so much time in that lingerie. I spent a lot of sexual energy looking at myself in the mirror while wearing that lingerie. I wish I still had them so I could donate them when/if I get named to the Crossdresser Hall of Fame. However they went in the first of several purges, this one coinciding with a girlfriend starting to sleep over weekends at my place. It was worth it as occasionally she let me wear her panties as we made love. She was no fool. She got some great sex out of it. But I digress.

It was a long time before I became comfortable going into the ladies’ departments and picking out one or more outfits to buy and take home, ‘for my wife to try. She is too busy to come in,’ I would say. Eventually I got there. Even then stores had generous return policies as long as the tags were still in place. I’d say that in my college days for every ten purchases nine got tried on and returned. The tenth was just too appealing for me to return. My closet or once the attic storage space would become more and more crowded to the point where a purge would happen.

Time passes and as you may know I am now very comfortable going out and doing my shopping as Linda. Never has any merchant or sales person ever said that no, Linda cannot use the ladies’ fitting room. In the smaller stores the sales people have often been very helpful in making sure I can try on alternate sizes and styles. They work on commission or bonuses, don’t you know.

Time passes some more and things continue to change. Now there is virtually nothing you can get in your favorite store that the company does not sell online. That is unless your favorite store is Ross Dress for Less. I love that store. I love going there, picking up an armload of dresses (7 at a time maximum), heading to the fitting room and spending as much time as I want trying on various outfits, looking at myself in the mirror and taking a critical look at myself in the 3-way mirror in the hallway. Do you find that a lot of outfits that look just great on the rack or from the front lose their appeal when the side view reveals a protruding belly, even a slight one and the rearview makes your shoulders look huge and your hips small? Me, too. Fortunately dress designers move the waistline around to help accentuate some features and downplay others. Fortunately businesses such as The Breast Form Store sell great hip enhancers.

So life was going along just hunky-dory. Evenings Linda would find herself going out to a club, meeting friends and ‘gentlemen friends’. Days would often find her shopping at Ross, Bealls, JC Penney or some other merchant of reasonably priced clothing.

Then it hit! COVID-19! It was clear that practices had to change to keep people safe and to stop or at least slow down the spread of this serious virus, the most serious in 100 years.

• I’m happy to wear a mask whenever I’m around other people. In fact the mask helps hide some of my least feminine features, my nose, chin and my rather large face.
• I’m okay with keeping my distance from strangers.
• I’m staying away from nightclubs.
• I’m not meeting up with guys I’ve met online. Now that is my real sacrifice!
• I still get to go out as Linda but mostly I’m just going shopping.

But here’s the rub. Ross has closed all their fitting rooms ‘until further notice’. There are no more in-store try-ons allowed. I guess that could make sense as it would be difficult to control the distancing in those fitting room areas and there would be lots of potentially infected outfits going back on the racks. My guess is that their corporate-wide decision is as much to cover themselves legally as it is to protect their customers and staff medically. That’s okay.

So that brings me back around to the start of my shopping days. I’m now going into a Ross store, this last weekend it was three Ross stores, picking up interesting looking dresses as I cruise the Special Occasion, Ladies, Women’s (14W only, thank you very much) and Clearance racks. The purchase is easy. Once home or back to my hotel room I can try on the outfits, re-bag some away right away and keeps others out for further consideration. Right now I am typing away while wearing a skirt from TJ Maxx and a blouse from Ross. They still have their tags on so I could return them but they feel and look so good I know they will be keepers.

What do I do with the rest? Most are going back — but which ones. One thing about this home try-ons is that I don’t need to rush to decide. I have a week. I have already tried on a few of the outfits but only discarded one. That one is a size 10 and I’m a 14. How did I pick that one out other than it was in the wrong section of the rack?

These extended try-ons are helping me learn or re-learn some important things about dresses. Not all styles and not all colors suit all women and the same goes for t-girls, too.

Colors? Remember when the color seasons were a big thing? My daughter lived and dressed by it. She told me I am a winter and that is good enough for me. I would love to be wearing sexy, feminine hot pinks but I’m a winter, not a spring. I don’t do well in any pale colors. But that doesn’t stop me from picking them out to try on, just to see.

Styles? To me the waistline is the most important feature. That is mostly determined by my body. My leg and torso proportions are a little off. For my torso length I should be about 6’3”. I fall about 3 ½” short. For my leg length my torso should be shorter, take your pick. What does that mean when wearing a skirt or a belted dress? The upper to lower proportions just look wrong and from the back my shoulders look huge. The solution: no belted dresses, hike the skirt up as much s possible and never tuck the blouse inside the skirt.

Another body problem is a bit of a protruding belly, only a small bit. I’ve worked to get rid of it but some is still there. ‘So what women have big bellies, too,’ you say. Yes but when their belly gets big so do their hips, their butt and arms and boobs and everywhere else their fat accumulates. A lot of us males that get big bellies it is not necessarily fat. It may be caused by an accumulation of great quantities of sludge in the stomach, caused by incomplete digestion. Did you know that?

So what to do? Years ago a sympathetic girlfriend advised me to look for dresses without waistlines or with what they call princess or empire waists where the material is gathered just below the boobs and not just above the hips. I loved that advice so much I could have married her but she moved away across the country.

What about so-called bodycon dresses? They look amazing the way they cling on some women and the Kardashians like them. It’s not unusual to see a CD at some club or gathering dressed in a body con. Sorry but yuck! Big shoulders, bulging bellies and small buns just don’t look good in body hugging fabric. Neither does their ‘package’.

My favorite styles? Sheath dresses and particularly those with the starburst pattern of gathered material. I often overlay them with a blazer to downplay my shoulders and accent my legs which I have been told are very attractive.

Enough talk. Here are some of the dresses I have been trying on. Take a guess which ones I’ll be keeping. Next time I’ll be able to tell you.

(Click on the first photo and it will display in a larger view. Use the >> navigation to move through the photos.)

Tags: crossdressing, fashion, featured

Category: crossdressing