So each misfire means a trip back to the store. Otherwise, you're risking a coworker seeing you head into the Gap dressing room with an armload of miniskirts. Oh, and you have to do all of this experimenting at home if you're not "out" with your crossdressing. With women's clothes, it's a crapshoot at best - I wear anything from an eight to a 14, depending on the brand. If you're a guy shopping for men's clothes, you know that no matter where you go, no matter what brand, you're probably the same pants size. So now you can add wig maintenance to your to-do list - the brushing and washing and trying to get it back into the style it was when you bought the stupid thing.Īnd then there is the confusing labyrinth that is women's clothing sizes. I also have a variety of wigs, so another aspect of putting together an outfit is deciding which hair is going to go with it. the fake silicone or foam tits we keep in a box marked "TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD MEMORIES - DON'T GO POKING THROUGH HERE!") and the aforementioned thong to keep my tuck from escaping. Undergarments are a bra to hold in the breast forms (i.e. OK, your unwanted hair is gone, so now you pick your outfit. There are plenty of crossdressers in both of those categories, but there are plenty more who are like me - I'm perfectly comfortable in my male skin, but also have a distinctly feminine side of myself that I feel the need to express. Now, when people see a man dressed as a woman, they make one of two assumptions (well, really they make one of three assumptions, but I don't feel like addressing the "AHHH! It's the depraved spawn of Satan! Kill it before it corrupts the children!" folks right now): that you're a trans woman or that it's some kind of kinky sex thing. I don't know when I started actually seeing myself as that girl, but over time, that's what happened. I didn't have any body hair at that point, and I would imagine that I was looking at a girl.
Sometimes I would be home alone after school while my mother was at work, and I would try things of hers on and look in the mirror. But it really started right around the cusp of puberty.
I know I started cross-dressing as early as age three, because there are photos of me in a tutu, though memory of that is fuzzy at best.