05.30.08

Trannie Time

Posted in d'oh, sewing at 8:18 pm by wendy

(edited to say: this post is about transvestites and sewing.  Needless to say, some links may be NSFW.  Also, needless to say, since I know anyone who reads my blog is a lovely positive tolerant thinking person who recognises internet flaming for the weak-minded cowardice it is, that I am not linking to these guys to have them razzed at.  If someone razzes them and I find out they came from my blog…I will feel guilty.  And I will block your IP.  Ooh, what punishment that would be, eh?)

Sewing has opened up a whole new flickr world for me. June in a comment suggested that the Sew What skirts might need some darting and I should take a look at flickr for examples.

I have to admit, I don’t think I’ve ever really used the flickr search function for much beyond “greyhounds” or searching some random thing I’d seen out and about and wondering what it was, or just had someone else been captivated by this image too? Like the Iraq War Exhibit in Ashland (linked pic is when it was in Portland).

But searching for Sew What Skirts yielded a ton of results to sift through, and it seems like a lot of people had trouble with choosing or achieving appropriate hem lengths for their body types. I have to admit, I struggle with this too. I’m so short, the skirts should probably be shorter, but I have a comfort zone that is very jeans oriented. (BTW, the section of that book mentions specifically that they use 45″ fabric…they just didn’t expect someone 6′3″ or thereabouts to make it without taking the fact that the average woman (aka the woman the sew what skirts book was written with in mind) is 5′4″ into consideration and modifying accordingly. The whole book is about adapting to fit you…a great concept, but not that easy for us n0oBs.)

Anyway, so while searching for pictures of projects I’ve been thinking of making or looking for ideas, I keep coming across photos that make me go, “Lady looks like a dude!” and invariably, they are.

I had no idea the transvestite culture was so into sewing, but it makes sense, I mean, it’s got to be hard to find stuff that fits and looks good. Except there’s very much a theme of over-idealised femininity, lots of lace, satiny fabrics, ruffles and such, which on a girl I find ironic in a third wave feminist sort of way, and on a man, a little sad.

Anyway, I was looking for pictures of pinafores and was reminded of this new-to-me phenomenon. Every single sewing related search I’ve done has turned up one or more results of men wearing their homemade girly gear–this guy looks a bit like the dad in Punky Brewster and I love the stuff he makes, it looks pretty complicated and well-executed from where I’m sitting.

And it seems a pretty big culture on flickr. There are photo pools/groups and as far as I’ve seen, they leave supportive, appreciative comments for each other and while I may be surprised every time I run into one and I’m still not sure what I think about it all, exactly, they aren’t hurting anyone that I can see and it’s an interesting peek into a subculture that could be everywhere and anywhere.
These guys look like dads and brothers, some of them practically scream “I work in IT!”

Some of the comments and piccies are maybe a little icky though…funny, but kinda icky.
And I guess I’d never looked at an “unsafe” photostream before: Flickr (after warning you that the photostream of the user you’ve clicked on is outside the safe filter and do you still want to click through?)has a header on the photostreams page that says “If you’ve changed your mind about wanting to see this content, you can ESCAPE.” And then a blue box that says, “TAKE ME TO THE KITTENS!”

So freaking cute, these kittens. Anyway, I found it a cute bit of site programming.

“I’m feeling uncomfortable because of these images and I don’t know what to do to get away!”

Sure, you could just close the browser window/tab, but it’s funnier to wash the taste out of your brain with cute kitten pictures.

(And of course, all this means that when I stumble across my own pictures in the jumbled skirt search pile…I look at those bird legs in those twee socks and trampy cheap Target shoes and I can’t help but shout “tr@nnie alert!” ;))

Permalink