and a

for some hours into members of the opposite sex, number of effeminised youths, together with their in- fluential sponsors, some of who were high-ranking figures in society.

Although there was ample dressing room space at the Club, many of its members invariably arrived already transformed into their assumed role, apart from those whom we now call transsexuals, who lived entirely as members of the opposite sex. The sponsored youths all came into this last category and obviously loved their girlish existence and all it entailed. At least three of them had undergone the operation at Sao Paulo in Brazil, South America's Copenhagen or Casa- blanca, and all the others were having regular hormone treatment etc., to make them as feminine as possible.

The Club quarters included an intimate theater where programs were presented which were almost exclusively impersonation turns. Performers making a tour of South American cities were, when in Bs. As., engaged for special late-night shows at the Mujerados, and, apart from these, there was always plenty of high-class talent in the city and in Rosario and Mar-del-Plata, where female-impersonation turns were very popular. In add- ition to visiting star performers, the Club had its own permanent chorus-girls, who obviously loved their assum- ed female role.

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No one not in the know could possibly have guessed that this alluring song-and-dance team were really trans- formed males, so pretty was their hair and made-up faces so feminine their figures, so shapely their nylon-sheathed limbs and trim feet in high-heeled shoes, and particularly so saucy were they in practising the ogling and other wiles of the female species out to make a hit with the male. These chorus girls were not in the sole employ of the Mujerados, working part-time at hair dressing and other beauty works. Not so the commere and the three youths engaged as combined cloak-room girls, usherettes and chocolate and cigarette girls, for these four worked full-time at the Club, being dressed en femme the whole time. What gold-diggers this trio proved to be, for, as they moved among the members, saucily sway- ing their broad hips, they knew how to smile cheekily at anyone who caught them round their tiny, corsetted waist, or snatched a kiss on their painted lips, or pinched,

38.

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