Crossdressing In The Mid-20th Century

Tami’s Adventures In Crossdressing, Part 4

By Tami

My last chapter related how I was first exposed to another crossdresser who was trying on high heels in Frederick’s of Hollywood’s flagship store on Sunset Boulevard in LA. He was dressed in drab except for wearing stockings and having bright pink polish on his toes.    

That was the first time I had solid proof that there were others like me who enjoyed wearing clothing intended for females. Of course I knew that there were drag queens and female impersonators, but I considered them professional actors, not males who wore female attire for non-professional reasons. As far as my untrained radar could tell, the male in Fredericks did not appear to be a drag queen or female impersonator; he seemed to be trying on high heels just because he wanted to wear them.

I returned home from Tinsel Town with a renewed interest in wearing ladies fashions. This was before the internet existed, so the only sources of information on crossdressing were in printed publications I discovered in a shop specializing in men’s magazines. Within the pages of magazines and newspapers like En Femme, TV-TS Tapestry and LadyLike, the world of femulation began to reveal itself to me.

Thanks to online digital archives, you can still look through the pages of these treasure troves from the past (see links below). 

It’s easier for crossdressers and transexuals to find resources and information today thanks to the internet. Before the internet existed, information wasn’t easy to get; it was limited to those lucky enough to have local support groups or access to the few publications that catered to our interests. In those pages I read about other males who transformed themselves into females, often with amazingly genuine results. The photos of many of these gurls made them look like they were born and raised female. 

In addition to the stories and photos, there were listings for local cd/tv/ts support groups all over the country, plus ads for other resources I didn’t know existed. Makeover services specializing in male-to-female transformations were the first to draw my attention. There were actually stores that sold women’s clothing, but were focused only on male crossdressing customers.

There was an ad for a store near enough to me in New York City, Lee’s Mardi Gras Boutique, which offered everything a boy needed to look like a girl: wigs, corsets, girdles, panties, bras, lingerie, stockings, large-size high heels, pretty wigs, gaffs (at this point I didn’t even know what that was), breast forms, jewelry,  everything! There were professional voice coaches offering their services to help you speak in a feminine voice, services offering hair removal by waxing and electrolysis, even psychological counselors, and pages of pages of personal ads from crossdressers and transexuals. 

Within these publications I also discovered that there were conventions for crossdressers, like one in Provincetown on Cape Cod, where men wearing dresses, stockings, heels, makeup and wigs could walk the streets with no problems, right alongside the regular folk. Stana has often written here about her adventures at this annual event, previously known as Fantasia Fair, now known as TransWeek. 

This was beyond unimaginable to the young adult version of me and I dreamed to dare participate one day. An entire ecosystem for crossdressers existed, all laid out in a few very select magazines and newspapers. There was no Google search to find anything and everything, but there were plenty of resources, much more than I ever imagined.

The first thing I did after this sudden education was to visit that store in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan. In my next installment here on Femulate, I will relate the experience of shopping at Lee’s Mardi Gras Boutique, where I actually tried on girdles and all sorts of lingerie, plus high heels, wigs and dresses. From those first steps wearing female clothing other than my older sisters’s and mother’s apparel, other further adventures in crossdressing followed, thanks to my education on the wide world of crossdressing.

   https://www.digitaltransgenderarchive.net/files/fx719m53g

   
https://archive.org/details/ladylike25unse/mode/2up

   
https://archive.org/details/enfemmemagazine1990unse_1/mode/2up

If you click on the cover of the various issues, the magazine will open and you can digitally flip through the pages or in some magazines, you can just scroll down. 

I hope you enjoy time traveling back to the olden days of crossdressing as you peruse these publications!

Wearing ModCloth

Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey femulating in the 1960 British film Carry On Constables.
Click here to view this femulation on YouTube.