Ummm...maybe not a lynch mob, but do you ever interact with people when dressed this way, and are you totally oblivious to the startled WTF??? (sometimes barely stifled) looks that cross their faces when they first set eyes on you...or do you even care? Do you ever look behind you when you've passed a group of people, only to find them smirking, laughing (not with...AT you), and maybe pointing you out to others nearby so that they can get their chuckles in as well?Originally Posted by Stephanie Voorhees
Let me tell you a little story here...a few years ago shortly before Christmas I was in a local mall, and while walking down the concourse I spotted in the distance a somewhat odd- looking person...odd in the way that he/she was presenting themselves in their manner of dress and comportment. But what really caught my eye was what was happening in this person's wake...people were turning around staring, giggling, "nudge-nudge, wink-winking" each other - the works.
As I approached closer, I saw that this person had started to engage a young lady staffing one of those free standing mid-mall booths in a conversation, and it was evident from her awkward body language that she had been made quite uncomfortable by this encounter. I quickly surmised why: the person in question - clearly a man - was dressed like one of Mrs. Claus' little helpers...all the way from an ill-fitting "Prince Valiant"-style pageboy wig down to a frilly top, a short pleated red skirt, green leotards, and ending with buckled, high-heeled black shoes of the type most recently favored by 18th century Quakers. In other words, clearly a fetishistic crossdresser out to get his "jollies" by seeing what kind of reaction he could elicit from the unsuspecting "muggles", and not one of the mall Santa's costumed assistants on his break heading out for a smoke.
Call me judgemental if you will, but I resent people like that giving more "vanilla" types of crossdressers such as myself a bad rap, especially if this will affect my experience down the road when interacting with a person whose only other previous encounter with a crossdresser might have been with such an individual, and who would have formed a negative opinion about the rest of us simply from that. And before you ask, yes - I feel the same way about over-the-top drag queens who are typically gay and who delight in presenting caricatures of women for shock and comedic value, rather than attempting to emulate them in a respectful manner the way most straight crossdressers try to.
