RANSVESTIA

tion. She buttoned the skirt at my left side and zipped it, declaring that it fitted nicely.

She took me in front of a large mirror where. for the first time, I could admire my newly revealed personality. I was struck by the fact that a few garments can change a person. I was no longer a man, but a well-dressed lady. She had me try on a grey flannel coat that matched the skirt and pulled out the lace cuffs of the blouse that had slid up in- side the coat sleeves. The coat fitted tightly on me. It had little black velvet lapels which, framing the lace jabot had a wonderful effect.

The blouse had a round high collar in front of which she pinned a cameo. A little lace handkerchief peeked out a little from the pocket on the left side of the coat. The coat was lastened at the waist by a big round button made of black velvet. She said to the other girl it was surprising that the suit fitted so well on me. She said everything was in place: shoulders, waist, sleeves. She added, looking at me: "this suit fits you better than the girl who wore it." The other girl agreed and said some girls have trouble getting fitted in ready-made garments, which was not my case, for the suit did fit me pretty well.

I was told to take my place in a chair, facing a large mirror that hung on the wall above the dresser where the makeup products were dis- played. She covered my shoulders and chest with a transparent plastic cape. Through it I could admire my lovely blouse and the black velvet lapels of my coat, while she worked on my face.

She told me that she could not do a television makeup because it would show when I joined the audience. She said: "You will not be able to look at your best when the camera takes you, but you have to look natural while sitting in the audience if you do not want to be dis- covered by the participants of the game. So I will makeup your face to have you look like an ordinary girl in the audience. The only hard thing I will have to do is to pluck your eyebrows to give them a real girlish shape. Otherwise, the thickness of your eyebrows will immedi- ately tell you are a man, even if you wear an artistic makeup.“

I told her to go ahead. I wanted so badly to win the prize, and espe- cially to look like a real girl that it did not matter to me. But I almost regretted having given her that permission when I started to feel the pain caused by the tweezers pulling my hairs one by one. It was so painful that my eyes were weeping. The other girl, who was watching her companion work on my face, wiped the tears from my cheeks with.

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