Dina’s Diner, June 1, 2020

A MORE NATURAL SELF

Angela Gardner, our editor here at TGF, sent me an item that appeared in The New York Times on May 26, 2020 headlined On Being a Trans Woman, and Giving up Makeup. The article was written by Meredith Talusan who is an author and contributor to the Times and other publications, primarily on trans issues.

Meredith Talusan

The set-up of her Times piece was her return for a “queer faculty” reunion at Harvard University. In the intervening 20 years, Meredith transitioned and, more recently, had adopted a more natural look without any or as much cosmetics, high heels and dresses. When one of her friends remarked that she “looked the same” it made her reflect on her progression through life as a trans woman.

She writes: “I was obsessed with femininity for years after I transitioned in 2001. I reveled in using cosmetics and flattering outfits to look both more convincing and attractive as a woman, forms of expression my old gender denied me. But apart from how much time it took to dress up this way, I also grew weary of the awful feeling that my beauty was always on the verge of collapse, that a mere rub of the eyes or bunching of the cloth would ruin the effect. Also, the attention from men that at first felt intoxicating turned oppressive over time (especially when it came with the assumption that I wasn’t very smart). So I stopped wearing so much makeup after half a decade, then often no makeup at all, once estrogen had softened my features enough that I felt safe from people on the street calling me a man.”

I looked up some further information about Meredith and discovered that she is an albino Filipino person. Her 2020 memoir Fairest recounts her story growing up in the Philippines as a fair skinned, blonde-haired gay boy, moving to the United States in his teens, and realizing her trans identity as a young adult. In the Times essay, she mentions that her Filipino genes gave her a physical advantage inasmuch as she had softer features and the albinism provided fair skin when she transitioned.

The crux of her piece in the Times is found here: “When I began transitioning, I perceived the reality of womanhood only from outside and felt the need to embody an idealized femininity to feel like a woman among women. But over time, I’ve come to realize that every woman — whether transgender or cisgender — evolves a unique perception of herself, one that need not conform to any specific model of what a woman should be. Whether I grow my hair or cut it short, wear makeup every day or none at all, it would be an expression of the specific woman I am at that point in time. Making those judgments for myself is at the core of why I transitioned to be a woman in the first place: to express my gender how I want to, regardless of society’s expectations.”

THE OUTGOING MALE

A male geisha prepares.

I came across an article that appeared on the news and culture site TheDailyBeast.com about the dying art of the male geisha in Japan. It was headlined The Secret World of Male Geishas and was first published in 2015 but updated in February of 2019. I wonder why? Was there a new development in the world of male geisha performance?

The Beast article provided this interesting bit of history. Male geishas (known in Japan as taikomochi) date back to the 13th century and were akin to European jesters in royal courts. Female geishas did not appear on the scene until the 1750s according to this account. The original male geishas – like their late-arriving female counterparts – are skilled performers of dance, song, and musicianship. Both male and female geishas can thrive into middle age because their talents are not simply based on physical appearance. The article was emphatic about pointing out that geisha of either gender are not prostitutes or escorts. A hotel concierge who directs guests to geisha houses said, “It would be like asking a prima ballerina if she sleeps with members of the audience after a show.”

Despite coming some 500 years late to the geisha party, female geishas soon far outnumbered male geishas. “Today there are only a handful of taikomochi left in the country” the concierge told the Beast reporter. The article didn’t give any numbers but the female geisha scene is probably also declining as the culture gets more and more modern. The “look but don’t touch” aspect of the geisha world is being supplanted by “hostess” and “host” clubs for men and women clienteles respectively.

These clubs offer opposite sex companionship in a nightclub setting. The women are younger, fashionable, and not tied by traditional dress or comportment. The male hosts catering to female customers are young, thin, and (as the article points out) somewhat feminine in appearance. No brawny masculine types here – they appear to be more like Japanese boy band members. However, even in these more modern companionship nightclubs there is no sex on the premises. Hosts and hostesses are free to negotiate whichever before or after hours services they provide outside their working hours in the club. A U.S. based professor of Japanese Studies estimated that thousands of young men and women work in the hostess/host clubs given the number of establishments in just one section of Tokyo.

The article concludes that the decline of traditional male geisha culture could be replaced eventually by the modern host clubs’ insistence on physically perfect, highly stylized young male hosts whose androgynous appearance is in some ways as enigmatic as the taikomochi.

THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY

Chris Gennaro

The comic actor Fred Willard passed away in late May and one of the retrospective video clips of his work was hosting a short-lived TV series called Totally Obsessed. The show aired in 2004 (one season only) and the clip was posted by some fan in 2015. The clip happened to report on an obsessed Madonna fan who sewed copies of all Madonna’s iconic video and concert outfits. And, yes, the fan in question was a dude.

According to Fred Willard’s introduction, Chris Gennaro bypassed the chance to become a doctor to recreate and wear Madonna outfits and attend all of her live appearances. I have a feeling that forgoing medical school is a slight exaggeration but, who knows, maybe the next Dr. Fauci of the future could have been an obsessed, crossdressed Madonna fan. In the detailed Madonna outfits he sews himself and some wig styling to match particular recreations, Chris delights in wearing his finished product. I use “fan” rather than “impersonator” because it seems that Chris is content to make-up and wear Madonna recreations without trying to imitate or perform as the singer.

Gennaro in a Madonna costume.

When I went back online to find out more about Chris Gennaro for this Diner item, I came up dry. There is no electronic footprint other than the one show clip that I could find about him. I did find many more video clips, articles, and photos about other Madonna impersonators over the span of her thirty-plus years in the pubic eye. For you kids out there, the now sixty-something Madonna was hot stuff in her day, I’ll tell ya, sonny boy.

Besides the many young women who performed Madonna tribute shows or just liked to fool passersby on the street, there were, of course, a bunch of drag queens who had Madonna in their repertoires. One queen was heralded as “the best Madonna impersonator in the South Dakota region.” How about that? And then there was the guy who supposedly spent $200,000 over the years in cosmetic surgeries to look more like Madge. I wonder how he feels about spending all that material gelt to become the “material girl” some twenty years later. I remember writing about some guy who spent a lot of dough on surgeries to look like Kim Kardashian; likewise some women undergo multiple knifes to look like Barbie. Who am I to say they’re crazy if that’s what they want and it makes them happy?

Which brings me back to the item above about Meredith Talusan. Her journey led her through a focus on the outward appearance of femininity to a more natural look and the realization that underneath she feels good and that was the original motivation after all. The thing I liked about Chris Gennaro’s story was that Chris was happy (joyful, even) in his own creations with that end in itself. Under all the white lace or leather vests or corset and bullet bra, Chris was Totally Obsessed – but not crazy.

[Editor’s Note: Fred Willard did the voice of the character Captain Crossdresser in the 2008 animated short film The Adventures of Captain Crossdresser.]

…AND SIGN IN PLEASE!

I came across a cache of YouTube videos of the old (ancient) game show What’s My Line? The original series debuted in 1950 and ran until 1967. I remember watching it as a young boy with my parents during its Sunday evening time slot probably in the early 1960s.

What’s My Line?

For those of you too young to remember the original show (it was revived in the 1970s), the host was John Charles Daly, a former television newsman. The panelists were members of New York theater and cultural circles. Publisher Bennett Cerf, gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, actress Arlene Francis, and a “guest” celebrity panelist from the same circles. John Daly and the panelists were always dressed in evening wear befitting the urbane demeanor of the whole show. There was a lot of kidding and joshing but nothing at all off-color. These were ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen.

One of the quaint touches as I watch it now in 2020 was that the contestants (whose occupations were up for discovery by the panel) would be introduced by Daly and instructed to “sign in, please.” The camera would show them writing their names in chalk on a small blackboard. Boy, you don’t get any more analog than white chalk on a blackboard. This was in the days when a computer was the size of a refrigerator, remember. There was also the “mystery guest” who would be a well-known celebrity and the panel would wear blindfolds (pearl outlined for the ladies, simple black for the men). A Wikipedia entry about the show had a list of the celebrity contestants and it was a who’s who of big names and long since forgotten names of the last mid-century.

What does this have to do with crossdressing? Nothing directly, certainly. However, the show had style both in the fashions and the conduct of the host and panelists. To watch well-dressed, well-spoken, witty adults as a kid may have made a bigger impression on me than I realized. During those early years, my biggest aspiration was to drive a city bus in a uniform and gripping the huge flat steering wheel. Being on TV in a dinner jacket and bow tie seemed about as realistic as being on TV in one of Dorothy Kilgallen’s evening gowns.

The only time I wore evening wear as a fella was for high school proms and my wedding day. But I have been in nice cocktail dresses (if not evening gowns) and otherwise dressed en femme over the years so I may have gotten closer to the latter dream than the former in some respects.

SUMMERTIME…AND THE SWIMSUITS AIN’T EASY

I saw a summer-themed video on Buzzfeed.com that dated back to 2015. It was titled very simply Men Try Women’s Swimwear. There were four guys who tried on a bikini, monokini, one-piece and tankini for the camera.

The popular one-piece everyone agreed is hot.

The set-up was supposed to be goofy and it was for the most part. This was not an opportunity for any latent femininity to come to the fore. Squeezing male bodies into the bikini and monokini required a bottom wrap cover up. All of the fellas were laughing at how there just wasn’t enough room in the bottoms for their “block and tackle” (as Austin Powers may have put it). One model said he thought the various torso straps of the monokini made him feel like some sort of “porno sadist.” An interesting comment about the tankini (a looser upper section with a modest bottom covering) was the wearer felt sexier in that even though it had more material than the other styles. A new and perhaps never to be popularized expression came up when one of the guys complained that the bikini bottom was showing a lot of “side dick.”

The most popular style (by the guys own comments and reader judgments on the comments board) was the one-piece which was a red number with a modified halter top. The model who was more a beefcake than the others thought it made his butt look good. All of them felt more comfortable with the full coverage of the one-piece. The fellow pictured here looked pretty damn good and he wasn’t even trying. Oh, to be young and thin. I hate him. Nah, just kidding . . . maybe.

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Tags: crossdressing, featured, opinion, Transgender

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment, Transgender Opinion