Dina’s Diner 3/14/16

LIFE GOES ON — EVEN IF IT ISN’T ON TV

Aaryn Lang

The HuffingtonPost’s “Queer Voices” page includes a section for Transgender news and opinion. On February 24, 2016, they had an article headlined “Why Do You Only Hear About Trans People Who Are In A Casket Or On TV?” The piece included a video insert of some transpeople making brief comments asking the media to look deeper than the usual narratives of “victims” or “icons.”

The obvious examples of our current spate of trans-exposure are Caitlyn Jenner, LaVerne Cox, Andreja Pejic, or the transitioning Wachowski brothers/sisters in the “icons” category while many less well-known names are reported as victims of murder or violence. Meanwhile, the transpeople in the video say, there are many lives being led away from the spotlight by those who are neither celebrities nor victims.

“Our storylines almost always revolve around the same narrative that doesn’t fit everyone’s unique experience,” artist and activist Aaryn Lang shares in the video. “We’re actually not all trapped in the wrong bodies and we actually don’t all transition.” That point was also mentioned by Shelby Chestnut, a New York activist, who points out that there are many “gender non-conforming” points on the spectrum. The well-known M-t-F or F-t-M path is not the only way transpeople decide to live.

It does seem at times that if it isn’t on television or the Internet that it didn’t happen. We’re flooded with celebrities of real accomplishment or self-made promoters and, except for the odd slice-of-life feature, everyone else is just a part of the great unwashed. Nice to see some trans-folk trying to keep it real.

LIFE WAS NOT A SWIMSUIT COMPETITION

Yolanda Betbeze

The New York Times carried an obituary of Yolanda Betbeze Fox who died on February 22, 2016 at age 87. Mrs. Fox was Miss America for 1951 and inadvertently helped to create the rival Miss USA pageant, according to The Times.

Yolanda, born in 1928, attended a Catholic School and convent in Alabama and later was a student at the University of Alabama in the late 1940’s. She entered the Miss America pageant system hoping to win a scholarship to study voice in New York City. Her talent was opera.

As luck would have it, Yolanda won the 1951 pageant in Atlantic City, singing two selections from Rigoletto during the competitions. She was crowned Miss America and shorty after created a controversy. Being a serious young woman, religious, from the deep South, she refused to wear swimsuits when making personal appearances during her Miss America reign. She wore swimsuits in the competitions but did not want to do so after winning. “I’m an opera singer, not a pinup” she told the pageant organizers (this is reported on the pageant website itself). Unfortunately, the Miss America pageant was sponsored by the swimsuit company Catalina so when the winner refused to promote their swimwear, they dropped their sponsorship and created the rival Miss USA pageant instead.

Yolanda never became a professional opera singer but she married a movie executive and became a socialite and political activist in New York City during the 1950s and ’60s. She joined a vigil protesting the Rosenberg executions in 1953, joined a picket line protesting Woolworth’s lunch counter discrimination in 1960, and joined demonstrations against nuclear weapons in the ’60s. She criticized the Miss America system for its lack of ethnic and racial diversity after her reign. In the 1970s she said it perpetuated sexist stereotypes. “I’m a Southern girl, but I’m a thinking girl” she told a reporter. According to The Times, she later moved to Washington DC where she purchased the house formerly owned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and “became a fixture on the capital’s social scene.”

She told a reporter for The Washington Post, “There was nothing but trouble from the minute that crown touched my head.” A 2006 profile of her life in Smithsonian magazine said her “exotic Basque looks [her family ancestry] and her rebellious streak may have made her the most unconventional Miss America ever.” Not a bad legacy at all.

PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE — AND TONS OF IT

Anonymous pre-Web selfie.

I recently unburied a storage tub that contained dozens of photo envelopes of self-photos and yet more that contained photos of other crossdressers I had corresponded with before the Internet age. I suspect that many of you who were crossdressing before, say, the late 1990s have a similar trove of photos dating from before digital cameras and easy Internet connectivity.

It was common for crossdressers to have multiple hard copy photo albums of themselves and it was impossible to imagine any other group of enthusiasts who were so fond of self-photography as we collectively were. But now, with the advent of camera phones and social media, crossdressers are just one of many “hobbyists” who indulge in compulsive self-photography. And I mean more than just “selfies” but posed, sometimes themed or costumed, photos that are meant to document the subjects’ traverse through whatever it is that floats their boat.

There are of course the aspiring models who can now post their stuff on Facebook, Twitter and specialty sites; the Cosplayers; the fetishists focused on many different twists outside “normal” life; and certainly the porn-minded people, amateur and professional who simply must share what is normally left private. (Is it just me or are there way more “Grannies” posting porn than I ever would have thought imaginable?) I’m sure some individuals in these non-crossdressing groups were self-photo bugs before the Internet but I wonder if they amassed the kind of hordes of material most CDs accumulated over the years of “the old days.”

It’s also interesting to see how some people know how to pose and photograph themselves to best advantage and others just don’t have any art at all. There’s more to a successful self-photo than just being attractive or well-costumed or whatever. A lot of beautiful women (and crossdressers, and furries, and super-hero wannabes) are ill-served by poor photos.

So among all of its other benefits, the Web has spread the opportunity for exposure to so many more people who perhaps never had an outlet for sharing themselves with others. It also increases the chance of discovery by parties we would rather not have know about our secret indulgences. It is one thing to have your sexy selfie published in a magazine that was only available in adult bookstores pre-1999. It’s another thing to be on Facebook or Twitter where even your parents have accounts. It’s a great equalizer. Now many groups of people can live in the same fear of discovery that crossdressers have been sweating out for a generation.

WHEN YOU REALLY, REALLY LIKE COSMETICS

Ve at work on The Hunger Games set.

If you really like cosmetics, you could become a respected Hollywood makeup artist. The New York Times had a brief question and answer profile of Ve Neill in the January 31, 2016 edition. Ve has worked on Hollywood films like The Hunger Games, Edward Scissorhands and the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and has won three Oscars for her work. She is now visible as a judge on the makeup competition show Face Off.

She told The Times that she wanted to work with makeup since she was five years old. She went to fashion school and said she learned the makeup craft from a guy she met at a science fiction convention. She got started with small independent films and joined the makeup artists union. Yeah, there’s a union for that.

Ve said that there is plenty of room for creativity in her jobs but that the inspiration must come from the film’s directors. “A makeup artist is one of the director’s tools, someone who helps bring their vision to life.”

Maybe because she specializes in “extreme fantasy makeup” she is surprised by reactions when she meets for the first time. “People often comment that I’m so normal, which puzzles me.” She told The Times interviewer, “I just think it’s cool that someone wants to pay me for something I love to do. It’s nice that I get these awards, too, but I just want to keep doing what makes me happy.”

REAL WOMEN WEAR GLASSES

Jeepers creeper.

I was driving this week, on one of our first pleasant spring days, and through my mirror I noticed the young lady in the car behind me was kind of cute and wearing dark framed eyeglasses. As we motored down the road, an SUV was coming to a stop at a crossing street. When I got close enough, the driver visible through the rolled-down window was a pretty blonde also wearing glasses.

I am neutral on eyeglasses on women. They seem to enhance the look for certain women but it’s not a “thing” for me by any stretch. However, it made me realize that most crossdressers do not wear eyeglasses. Those needing sight correction usually opt for contact lenses, myself included. One factor is the extra expense of prescription glasses in a women’s frame that seems extravagant. No doubt the old stigma attached to “girls who wear glasses” also has something to do with their rarity in crossdressing circles.

It turns out that some admirers have a fetish for crossdressers who wear glasses. A quick Google search yielded these sites: “CD’s Wearing Glasses” on Pinterest.com; “Porn Pics of Crossdressers Wearing Glasses” on Imagefap.com; “TGirls in Glasses” on Flickr.com; and “Crossdresser in Glasses in Bed” on Porn.com. At least in some select circles the “stigma” is turned to an advantage. “Do men make passes at crossdressers who wear glasses?” asked a YouTube video devoted to ophthalmic gender bending. “Love crossdressers wearing glasses they get me horny” gushed a porn site focused (ha) on guys making a spectacle of themselves in and out of women’s clothes. It might even coin a new term for sexual excitement fostered by crossdressers wearing peepers: “hornrimmy.”

Tags: crossdressing, featured, TGs in glasses, Transgender, Ve Neill, Yolanda Betbeze

Category: Transgender Community News, Transgender Fun & Entertainment, Transgender Opinion