Transvestia

waist, bringing it down to 28". Thus she can wear a size 16 Tall in a dress without any alterations being needed, except perhaps to take up the skirt an inch or so to follow today's shorter skirt fashions. Gisele's other physical assets and liabilities are as follows. Good: No Adam's apple; slender ankles, arms, and wrists (men's watchbands are always loose on me); soft arms and legs with an ab- sence of bulging masculine muscles; a narrow waist, rib- cage, and shoulders; and wide hips and an ample derriere. Bad: Height; size of hands (glove size 8); size of feet (shoe size 10-1/2 or 11B); jawbone a bit too prominent (the solution to this is to wear your hair long and close to your cheeks); and a beard that would do credit to a lumberjack, growing out of facial skin so tender that shaving twice a day is an extremely painful experience (electrolysis has been started and will continue until this is no longer a problem). What influence if any did my secondary sex characteristics and physical appearance have in turning me toward femininity? (Which due to their more feminine than masculine appearance, especially when overweight, made me as a teenage boy worry, an- guish, and shame--to include acute embarrassment when forced by circumstances to appear naked in front of other males--when these same physical attributes would have been socially acceptable, overweight or not, had I been a young girl.) I might add that the "good" characteristics mentioned are a definite asset in creating physical authen ticity for Gisele. And, as a man I have learned to live with them today although I am still self conscious about appearing undressed among other men. However, by thrusting my shoulders. unnaturally forward and tensing my chest muscles I can minimize the feminine effect created by my slender waist and upper torso, and wide hips. When dressed, I belt my trousers about an inch be- low my natural waist on the upper part of my hips. This also creates a more masculine appearance.

At the age of 16 I left home to attend a prominent "Ivy League" university in a large eastern city. This wasn't my first excursion into the cold, cruel world for I had previously attended a military boarding school 70 miles from home during my high school days. This kept me away from home for 8 months of the year. As a result I didn't feel the pangs of homesickness that other college freshman did (those had been felt at the age of 11 when I

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