EDITOR'S NOTE: Many readers have suggested that Virginia should be a Cover Girl. I don't think that it is seemly that she should. On the other hand, it is natural for the readers of TRANSVESTIA to want to know something about the person responsible for this magazine and the other activities of Chevalier Publications. So, since this is the end of a full 2 years of Cover Girls, this issue carries a composite cover of 12 livin' dolls, and the space for the cover story is devoted to giving you...

The How and the Why of Virginia

by Herself

I am Virginia, but I was not so always. I used to be Muriel, but I was not that always either. Before that I was, you guessed it, a boy. Today I am 49 years old, 5'8" tall, weigh about 155 lbs. have brown eyes and greying hair, wear a size 18 dress and an 8B shoe, but these are the vital statistics today, lets go back and start at the beginning where all good autobiographies should start.

My first

To begin with, may I say that I suffered none of the experiences that psychiatry feel cause TVism. My parents are still together today, they didn't drink or fight, I was never punished by being made to wear dresses, nor did they want a girl (I've checked this with them). I was always a boy. When I was 4 a sister arrived and that was all. The beginnings of my interest in attire are shrouded in mystery. interest was in high heeled shoes. The only reason I can think for this interest was that my mother never wore them. She was not dowdy, but she did not dress as fussily feminine as many women and she was proud of her feet and was not about to "deform" them with such mon- strosities as high heels. By comparison, a boyhood chum of mine who lived across the street, had a mother who was always dressed in the heighth of fashion and with heels, of course. She appeared to present a better picture of feminine motherhood to me. Anyway, if we ever had lady guests in the house who wore heels I would be sure to visit her room on an "inspection" tour. I also began at this time to cut out pictures of high heeled shoes from magazines and newspapers and made a scrapbook of them. Since some nice pictures of shoes also involved lingerie shots, I began to cut out these too. Although I cannot date the beginnings, it must have been around 12 that I took to visiting my mother's bureau in her absence and dressing in her lingerie. Of course, like everyone else who did this, I was most careful to put things back just as they were found.

The first specific date that I have been able to remember was

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