One to One

With Cindy Martin


© 1995 Transgender Forum

April 6, 1995

You may have noticed some changes in TGF in since March 31. I've been doing some redesign work and incorporating some of your suggestions, especially those from Alexandra Richards. She and several other folks have also helped me correct typos and make other fixes that may have caused some problems. Very much appreciated.

I am also making a concerted effort to cut all the artwork to its smallest possible download size without giving up viewing size. I'm crunching the heck out of these babies but if you can't wait a couple of minutes to see the Marilyn Monroe portrait in mirrors I'm going to start getting worried about you. That's the way I like it: Final count for March showed more than 12,000 "hits" or contacts were made with TGF in the 26 days we were up in March.

I expect to have a major new innovation on line soon that I hope you will all enjoy. I won't steal my own thunder but keep dropping in and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

I am also working on adding some very special columnists to the pages. Expect to see more from our "Nightman", Frances Vavra, as he discusses his life as an FTM. A new friend, Christine Holbrook, may well become familiar to you over the next year. Her work and insights into the community is fresh and very interesting. Look for her first article in the next week or so as we prepare our next edition.

I can also tell you that an online makeup and fashion guide is being prepared now for TGF. Keep an eye on the "What's New" page for all the latest.

One reader recently asked me about running information on telling their children about their transgendered nature. I would love any comment or stories on this subject. Please contact me the usual E-mail way.

Please do let me know how you feel about TGF. It's important to know what you like and what doesn't interest you.

One thing we should all be interested in is our public perception, which took a little beating in the current (April 1995) issue of Allure Magazine. In what was an otherwise good article on drag queen make-up ideas, the author got weird on us and inserted this bit of narrow-mindedness:

"Actually, they're female impersonators, which is a subcategory of the larger genre, Men who Dress as Girls. Female impersonators as opposed to, for example, transvestites (men who dress as women and look like men dressing as women, with large, masculine builds, heavy features, and five o'clock shadows), tend to have small bones and fine features and look more like genetic females than genetic females themselves."

Why the author felt it necessary to cheap-shot transvestites, is beyond me, particularly in a magazine that has been a favorite of our community. I'd like to know what you think about this writer's comment. Do you think she is right? Are transvestites just a bunch of guys in bad wigs and way-too-tight clothes? Or have you noticed that there may be more to us than that. Drop me a line the usual way. E-Mail me.

Oh, and if you want to give Allure some noise about this article you can e-mail them at alluremag@aol.com. Be firm, but nice. They did run that incredible article on Philadelphia's famous TS Rachel Harlow, the sensation of the early 70s and the contest winner in the classic documentary "The Queens".

One final note: I have accepted an invitation from the International Foundation for Gender Education (see the library for info on them) to help put together a web site for them. No deadline set for going online but you can be sure that if the committee involved can get this off the ground there will be a link here to that site and what should be a rich vein of informative materials.

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