Pink Journalism

My first year in college was one of the most significant times of my life for a lot of reasons, particularly when it came to gender identity. I’ve written before about searching the word “crossdresser” using one of the few computers my college had at the time that was connected to the internet.

Yes, there was a time you had to physically go somewhere to be online.

The search results returned a LOT of options and they were a little shocking, to be honest. If you google “crossdressing” these days you’ll likely get similar results but I am not sure if they’d be as surprising today as they were to me thirty (!) years ago.

What I mean is that the predominating perspective when it comes to “boys who wear girl clothes” is that this is entwined in fetishism and kink. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but I think we all know that this is the predominating perspective when it comes to who we are.

I think we are prepared for results that lean into the sexual aspect of this, whether it’s fair or accurate or not. The world has more or less come to a consensus that “boys who wear girl clothes” are doing so for arousal. But I think that consensus is about volume as opposed to reality.

What I mean is I do not feel that the majority of the world thinks that a trans person who is who they are because of anything sexual. I mean, yes, we are sexy as hell lol but I feel that the shrinking majority of people who connect gender identity/presentation/expression with sex are just really really loud and aggressive. I don’t feel that these vocal and angry people represent what most of the world thinks when it comes to gender nonconforming people.

I know that this is an optimistic perspective but even when I am incredibly pessimistic about everything I still feel this way.

Anyway, getting off track much faster than usual. I must be getting more efficient.

Back in 1994 the Netscape results (remember Netscape?) for “crossdressing” were all sexually explicit and very much NSFW. You may think that I was naive and I might have been but I didn’t know that for some of us “wearing girl clothes” was a kink. I didn’t know some of us were aroused by our wardrobe.

And to be clear, there are things in my closet and my lingerie drawer(s) that make me feel beautiful, sexy, and powerful. But they do not arouse me. When I am en femme I am not, for lack of a less crude term, horny.

My first day of college was significant in many ways, but this realization was the most jarring. I learned that not only was crossdressing kinky for a lot of us, it was also the prevailing opinion of people like myself. I couldn’t relate to people posting in chatrooms about how panties just turned some people on. I had always felt alone in all of this but thanks to internet I felt alone but in a different way. I learned that yes, there were countless other “boys who wear girl clothes” but it seemed that everyone like me did this for sexy reasons.

My heart broke a little that day. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sex of course. I love sex, but this side of me was interwoven with peace and happiness and beauty. From that day, I became aware of the connection between what I wore with fetishism.

Again, I may sound naive but please remember this was when the internet was not something we had access to 24/7. Unless you directly asked someone, we likely did not know what the majority of people (or at least the loudest people) thought about any one thing.

I kind of miss those days. It’s like finding out a band you love is the same band that “everyone” hates. Until you learned that you just happily listened to them and were blissfully unaware that the band was meme’d to death online.

(Of course, you shouldn’t let someone’s opinion of anything steal your sparkle.)

Anyway!

It was around this time of my life when I saw an advertisement in the pages of Rolling Stone for a new magazine called Transformation. The ad had a cover of an issue and a only a little bit of text but it was enough for me to learn that there was a magazine for people like myself.

The tagline was “MEN CHANGED INTO WOMEN” and although I didn’t think of myself as someone who wanted to be changed into a woman, it was enough for me to seek out this magazine. After a few phone calls to different book stores I found it.

After a couple hours I had a copy.

I know that Transformation was not the first publication that featured people like myself but it was the first one I was aware of. Now, I am not throwing shade at anyone that was involved with Transformation and although it wasn’t the most professionally edited magazine in the world, dammit, it was something. I read interviews and I learned a lot about presentation and makeup.

Maybe, just maybe, I learned there were others like myself who didn’t wear what I wore for sexual reasons.

I read Transformation for years until it seemed to just lean way too hard into nude photo spreads and cartoons where the humor was mostly along the lines of a beautiful girl surprising her date/husband/doctor that she had a penis. Hilarious.

So, I was back to thinking that maybe all of this WAS a fetish. Seeing crossdressing portrayed in this light consistently and knowing that this side of me wasn’t a fetish, I seriously wondered if I felt I was born in the wrong body.

What I mean is that if a boy wanting to wear girl clothes was ONLY a fetish, but it WASN’T a fetish for me, then maybe I should consider transitioning. I mean, as far as I knew, cisgender girls didn’t wear bras and panties as a kink. Everyone needs to (or should) wear underwear and is practical in many ways, but there is a lot of variety in the world of undergarments. I normally wear pocket bras because, well, they are practical and can hold my breast forms. But I also have bras that are waaaaaaaaaaaay sexier than those.

Essentially everyone needs underwear but I just wanted to wear (and I did and I do) the same styles and colors that girls wore.

This is why representation is important. It’s crucial to see others like yourself in popular culture. At this point in my life the only “boys who wore girl clothes” that I saw only did so for sexual reasons.

One day, in the back room of a magazine shop I reluctantly looked for the latest issue of Transformation, I saw a new publication called Girl Talk.

(And that was another irk I had about Transformation. I HATED buying it in the same little closed off section of stores where one could also buy the latest issue of Penthouse. I hated that, as far as I knew, the only magazine that was remotely relevant to me was wrapped in a plastic bag because of all the penis photos in it.)

Girl Talk was wonderful. It was another magazine about “boys who wore girl clothes” but it was bright, beautiful, and very professional. I never saw any nudity or lowbrow humor. Interviews with drag queens and amazing cisgender women our community loves, makeup tutorials and… features with people like myself.

I can’t recall any material that dwelled too long on fetishism. Girl Talk was essentially a lifestyle magazine. It made me feel that this side of me was beautiful, normal, and something to be proud of. It was, and still is, one of the best representations of people like myself that I have ever seen.

Of course, it’s been twenty plus years since I’ve read it so I may be remembering this magazine with rose colored glasses. I wish I still had copies of Girl Talk but they were always victims of the constant purging cycles of my twenties.

Sadly Girl Talk was too beautiful for this world and it didn’t last nearly long enough.

In recent years we’ve seen Frock magazine which has also ceased publication as well as Transliving which recently ended due to the untimely passing of the editor.

I miss these magazines.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to publish a magazine that I would want to read. Girl Talk was very similar to what I would love to do and I would do so in the same spirit and mindset that the MN T-Girls have.

What I mean is that when I started the MN T-Girls there were, and still are, other support groups for people like myself, but I wanted to find a group that focused on socializing and doing things out in the real world. Since I couldn’t find a group like that, I started one. Of course I had no idea if the MN T-Girls would be successful but I’ve always believed that if you want to find something that doesn’t exist, then maybe you should create it.

Of course, I know that this will never happen. I am over committed as it is and I can’t imagine how much time and money it would take to enter the scary world of publishing but a girl can dream.

At any rate, I was very bored at work last week and I played around with Photoshop and I daydreamed about these magazines. I hope you like these images because I had a lot of fun creating them.

Love, Hannah