Dina’s Diner May 3, 2021

ANYTHING OVER A HANDFUL

TGForum’s Linda Jensen wrote last week about her experience with her Athena breastplate purchase from The Breast Form Store. It’s a good read and the only problem I see with the product is the name: breastplate brings to mind the armor worn by ancient armies.

I’ve been seeing more crossdressers showing impressive cleavage in online photos over the past few years. For a while I thought they must be on hormones or something. Having played around trying to create cleavage with taping techniques over the years I thought that there was no way a guy could have that much breast tissue to tape into the Mansfield-esque boobage I was seeing. Now, I know the reason.

Several years ago I wrote about actor Walton Goggins who played a transitioning person in the cable series Sons of Anarchy. The prosthetic breast forms he wore on the show were impressive and he remarked to an interviewer that the sensation of having realistic boobs was interesting. I assumed that only Hollywood could produce a set of hooters so perfect. When the crossdressers started showing up online with realistic tits I was going “hmmmm” a lot.

The breastplate (ugh, there’s gotta be another word) is a great idea because it makes the whole thing literally seamless so the eye cannot see the subterfuge of gorgeous hooters on a person who shouldn’t have breasts. The video of the model making her forms bounce up, down, and all around may be one of the great marketing ideas.

There are so many sensations involved with crossdressing: the angle of high heels, the sensuousness of hosiery, the jingle of jewelry, the bounce of a coiffed wig, and yes, the feel of breasts — even if they are falsies. The realistic breast forms like the Athena model must be fantastic.

More pics please!

IMAGE CONSCIOUSNESS

The Associated Press website had an article headlined Japanese Businessmen Brighten Makeup Industry Amid Pandemic. The article appeared on April 20, 2021.

Preparing for the next Zoom meeting.

According to the article, “Japanese businessmen in their 40s, 50s and 60s who had little interest in cosmetics before the pandemic are increasingly visiting Takumi Tezuka’s salon, Ikemen-Works, hoping for a better look in online meetings. A large personal care company, Shiseido, says one of its male makeup lines has seen double-digit growth during the pandemic. Company officials give a similar reason: Men, confronted with the sight of their faces repeatedly during online meetings, want to improve what they see.” Male performers who appear on television or film have long used cosmetics to enhance their facial appearance. So it’s understandable that as technology regularly puts people in front of cameras they appreciate the advantage of some artifice.

The report mentioned that male cosmetics were mostly purchased by customers in their teens or twenties. A research company estimated the male beauty market at over US $5.5 billion. I don’t know what all is included in that estimate since “male beauty” products might include everything from shaving cream to the type of facial and eye cosmetics mentioned in the article.

The AP cited this example: “One customer, Yoshihiro Kamichi, 44, recently came to Tezuka’s salon to buy makeup for the first time. Kamichi chose makeup for his eyelids and had foundation applied to his face. A makeup artist carefully trimmed his eyebrows and contoured his nose and face with brown shadow power. “Who is this person? I was surprised at how different I look,” Kamichi said while looking at himself in the mirror.”

The AP reported: “To make cosmetics accessible to men, Japanese cosmetics store @Cosme Tokyo created an entire section dedicated to male and unisex makeup items last year at their newly opened shop in front of Harajuku Station, a trendy Tokyo area. One recent customer, Kenta Yamashita, 24, a hairdresser, has been using cosmetics daily. “There are men who cannot buy cosmetic products because it’s hard for them to casually drop in. I think it’s nice we now have this section,” Yamashita said. “But I wish they would make the section bigger so that men can more casually drop in.””

Well, it’s not quite the same cosmetic thing as we enjoy so much but, who knows, maybe someday boys nights out will start off with a stop at a salon for makeovers before hitting the town.

POPPIN’ FRESH

A young poppare woman.

I came across a Tumblr.com posting about Poppare culture. The photos accompanying the posting showed some young people in familiar yet not quite recognizable get-ups. It turns out that Poppare is a Swedish take on American Emo or Japanese Décora culture according to a listing in the Urban Dictionary. Confused yet? The listing says the name derives from “pop” music and the listeners to it. I don’t know about Sweden but in America “pop” music takes in a lot of territory from Sinatra to the Beach Boys to Katy Perry.

Well, the photos of Poppare (alternatively spelled just Popare) are variations on the pale skin, dark hair, black makeup look of Emo youths. Let’s not try to define Emo right now, okay? In fact, the black and white dynamic of many poppare practitioners made someone coin the phrase “panda poppare” for reasons that seem obvious – even to me. Another sub-genre is “glitter poppare” which is similar (according to the Urban Dictionary) to “Decora” culture in Japan. Okay, we’re going right down a rabbit hole here, I see. Decora kids in Japan dress in colorful outfits ornamented with shiny objects, plastic tchotchkes, and who knows what all else.

Having seen some of the photos of poppare youths they seemed to resemble Icelandic singer Bjork. Funny how things run together. Last month, I had a completely unrelated mention of Bjork in an item about Icelandic naming conventions. Sweden, Iceland. . .it’s all Scandinavian so it figures in that sense.

The young female Gothic Lolita movement in Japan spawned the “Brolita” parallel for crossdressing fellas. So now I must wonder if there are any “poppy-poppare” (to coin my own phrase) for dudes who wish to go femme in support of their love for pop music in Sweden.

Stay tuned. At the Diner, we cover everything — from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan.

THIEVERY WAS AFOOT

I saw an interesting article on Japan’s SoraNews24.com. The headline read Japanese Man Arrested for Stealing Women’s Shoes and Replacing Them with New Ones. The story appeared on the site April 10, 2021.

We submit the evidence.

The facts of the case are fairly short so I’ll copy and paste from the original article:

“The arrest came after Hiroaki Katsu was discovered to be the culprit that swapped out a pair of shoes valued at about 5,000 yen (US$45.53) from a 23-year-old female instructor at a music school in Nagoya. The incident occurred at about 10:50 a.m. on January 30, but the instructor only noticed something strange when she put her shoes on before heading home (it’s not unusual for people in Japan to change into slippers while at their workplace). The shoes she had worn to work were thoroughly broken in, so she thought it was strange that at the end of the day “her shoes” looked and felt like new. The woman contacted the police, suspecting that her shoes had been switched out. After an investigation led them to Katsu (age 33), police arrested the man on April 6, whereupon he confessed to the crime. “It’s not a mistake,” he told authorities. Katsu and the instructor had never actually met before he stole her shoes. Though he was initially arrested for the theft of one woman’s shoes, he was found with a collection of shoes that seemed to belong to several different women. When asked, he confessed to stealing those shoes, too.”

He told authorities that he simply liked the smell of women’s worn shoes. The article did not say what put police on the scent of the shoe switching thief. I suspect that police pumped up their efforts perhaps after re-booting surveillance footage to stop a crime that was like a stiletto through the instep of the community. Katsu may have been their sole subject and it wasn’t clear if police flip-flopped from focusing on anyone else. A subsequent article that appeared on April 25, reported a surprising outcome to the case. That headline read: Man Who Stole and Replaced Women’s Shoes Set Free, Victims Too ‘Disgusted’ to Press Charges.

The follow-up article told how Mr. Katsu carried out his crime.

“It turned out that the man would survey the shoe cubbies of his victims’ work place [Japanese people remove their shoes and place them in a common area] and take photos so that he could purchase a convincing pair of lookalikes. Then, after buying the shoes, he would break them in himself for a bit before making the switch, so that hopefully the victim wouldn’t notice. It would seem this new information proved too much for the initial victim to handle, because the music teacher dropped the charges against him, saying that the details of the case were too “disgusting” for her. She wasn’t alone either, after her story broke many other women came forward about their shoes feeling suddenly different and reported it to police. However, none of them we’re willing to pursue charges against the man for similar reasons.”

This didn’t seem to be a crossdressing thing as the shoe sniffing (rather than wearing) seemed to be the motivation. It sounds awfully considerate to buy matching replacement shoes while hotfooting off with the objects of his aromatic obsession. Creepy, yes; but you couldn’t accuse him of being a heel.

MANTYHOSE

Male pantyhose enthusiast.

A while back I wrote an item about women not wearing pantyhose as often as they once did. Besides crossdressers there is another market for the many varieties of pantyhose and opaque tights we loves much: male fetishists.

There are thousands of photos online of guys wearing pantyhose for erotic fun. I am referring to men who aren’t crossdressing in any real sense. They just love the look and feel of pantyhose. Where many of us started out with stockings or pantyhose and progressed to a fuller crossdressing wardrobe, these guys are content to stand pat in pantyhose alone.

My previous item on pantyhose reported that there is a generational loyalty to sheer tights among middle-aged or older women. The same thing seems to hold true for the guys as well. Many of the fetishists seem to be middle-aged fellas. I imagine that if you grew up as a young man during the age when pantyhose was ubiquitous — and if you were so inclined — it would have fueled your desire to try them on yourself. Body shape is not a determining factor: there are thin enthusiasts and out-of-shape enthusiasts among them. I’ve seen photos of guys in the gay leather scene who wear pantyhose as part of their hi-jinks. There is a “pantyhose encasement” fetish where multiple pairs of tights are repurposed to provide full body coverage. Oh, it’s a big’ wide, wonderful, sheer to the waist world out there.

I wear pantyhose as part of my crossdressing regalia and have sort of stockpiled pairs of my favorite brands because they are disappearing from store displays. I haven’t yet (well, not since my teens) worn them without any other femme accessories. But I celebrate all manner of pantyhose fetishism whether displayed on smoothly shaven pins or hairy, bulky thighs. You go, girl. . . .uh, guy.

Tags: crossdressing, featured, opinion

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment, Transgender Opinion