By Ms Bob and Carol Kleinmaier
Lee Brewster feels that the heterosexual, crossover market was primarily aware of professional impersonators at this time. If a non-transgendered editor, deciding how to put together a crossdressing magazine, looked around New York, where FM was published, he'd see plenty of performers. There were venues featuring impersonators nightly, and the Jewel Box Review came to town, annually, performing to sellout crowds at Harlem's Apollo Theater. The run was a month long and was often extended. Lee Brewster claims that the profits from this run kept the theater open the rest of the year. And remember the editor's busy offices with its many deadlines and small staff? This, too, worked in favor of featuring performers. Performers were accessible, easy to contact, inter ested in the exposure, and might even provide their own photos. If not, it was no problem to send a photographer to the club to shoot the show or make friends with the girls and arrange for private sittings later.
This informality is evident in the many pictorials obviously shot in apartments, not photography studios. After professional performers, the next largest coverage is of drag balls, followed by anonymous transvestites called "amateur impersonators" in the earliest issues. Drag balls, like impersonator shows, were easy to photograph.
These events were held in public places, such as hotel ballrooms, so it was not necessary to have the subject sign a release in order to print' the photos. This is confirmed by the lack of names in so many of the ball photos. There's the feeling that the ball queens are a commodity to be captured on film. The photo captions that were written are not informative, and make the ball queens creatures of fantasy, not real people. This lack of recognition, which is still common in many magazines, definitely seems exploitative and dehumanizing. What about the rest of the magazine? Well, often there's precious little text and even less information contained therein. Lee Brewster is adamant that it was all fabricated, even the letters. When discussing performers Female Mimics seemed to present facts, but inflated. For example, if Female Mimics said a performer lived in a glamorous modern penthouse, it might be more accurate to imagine a six-story walk-up on the Lower East Side, possibly including drugs, prostitution and family rejection.
If the writing about the performers is exaggerated, facts about
the non-performers are non-existent. What abounds are fabulous
vagaries, and unfounded claims of glamour. Though show-stopping
performances and huge wardrobes may be claimed in the captions,
the photos don't show any club shots and sometimes only
one outfit.
Who these people are is not important. They're just a
fantasy. They're young, pretty and if they're gay,
which is likely, it's never discussed. This would violate
Female Mimics policy of keeping the world safe for
heterosexuality. The editors go out of their way to establish
a solid heterosexual identity for these models. In fact it might
be said that they go too far.
An example of protesting too much is the profile of Joi Fulnese
of Detroit in volume 1, #12. "Recently his wife gave him
a Dior gown for a birthday gift!"Joi spends his evenings
gloriously gowned in female attire - can you imagine how surprised
his co-workers at the auto plant would be? Well, maybe
they wouldn't be too surprised since Female Mimics
also claims that Joi "never goes without a manicure - and
wears shimmery shades of enamel.
The writing, much of which is photo captions, isn't credited,
but, there are a few articles by established writers on crossdressing,
Carlson Wade and Avery Willard. Carlson Wade is the credited
author of the Coccinelle biography She-Male and co-author
of two pamphets Transvestitism Today and Transvestism
- Males in Female Dress. Avery Willard wrote Female Impersonation,
a short book about theatrical impersonators.
There is little coverage of transsexuals. Besides the obligatory
Christine Jorgenson profile in volume 1, #1, there are only three
other pieces: "How I Changed My Sex by Patricia
Ann Morgan, author of the autobiography The Man-Maid Doll,
"Abby Sinclair
Ex-G.I. Now Bride-to-Be, and
the cover story "82 Club Star Hans Crystal Sails Away
for a Permanent Change. It is also noteworthy that very
few models pictured in Female Mimics evidence breast augmentation.
Many of those who do are French.
Perhaps this was an editorial decision. Transexualism was new
and threatening. Were transexuals on the other side of the Atlantic
less threatening? Perhaps hormones were more readily available
in Europe. Perhaps most female impersonators in American were
not transexuals. Perhaps, like Pudgy Roberts, they were gay men,
skilled in the art of illusion.
Between Summer, 1968 and Winter, 1970-71 Female Mimics'
publishing was disrupted. In the Winter of 1969 Health Knowledge
issued a new publication: Female Impersonators, "We
are happy to announce that we are wiping out the old Female
Mimics' format and starting anew with a new title Female
Impersonators . . . A new art staff and picture editor . .
. but most important, a new editor who has knowledge of the field.
Let us introduce Pudgy Roberts, who as well as heading up his
own female impersonator revue is probably the top writer in the
field. We believe this is the first time a pornography
publisher thought that adding a member of the gender community
to their staff would sell more magazines.
When telling the story of how he got the job, Pudgy says that
the publisher had no real intention of adding a member of the
community to the staff. "I went into Health Knowledge,
who published Female Mimics, and Lenny Burton was there
and I said, Are you the publisher?' He said, Yes.'
And I said, My name is Pudgy Roberts and I'm the
world's biggest authority on drag and you don't
know your ass from your elbow. You either make me editor of your
publication or I'll put you out of business because I do
know what I'm talking about. You don't!'
And Burton said, OK, I'll make you editor.'
But, I was editor in name only. I got them models, suggested
articles and such, but they still did what they wanted. They
wanted a porn-type publication and I wanted a publication about
professional impersonation. They didn't let me have the
final say on things. So, Pudgy's presence did not
represent substantial input from the gender community.
We know of fifteen issues of Female Impersonators. Most
are undated. The first three were published by Health Knowledge,
the remainder by Neptune Productions of Belmar, NJ. Female
Impersonators history is outside the scope of this presentation,
but, in the begining it was true to its title and emphasized professional
impersonators with lesser coverage given to drag balls. They
also featured Letters to the Editor and male-to-female transition
photo sequences. In many ways it was much like early Female
Mimics, so their claim of "wiping out the old
seems to have more to do with the staff than the contents.
In the Winter of 1970 a new publisher, Eros Goldstripe, introduced
New Female Mimics #1. They dropped the New
after the first issue. The magazine was expanded, sometimes to
98 pages. But, was this a real change of publishers? Probably
not. Joseph Vasta says that a similar change happened to many
Health Knowledge titles.
But, even if the publisher was the same, New Female Mimics
#1 bore all the marks of major editorial change. Some of the
changes were visual. The cover logo was new. The layout was
very different and there was very little reprinting of articles
or features from the Selbee/Health Knowledge days. All this confirms
Lee's statement that the Goldstripe on the cover of an
Eros publication meant new material.
There were also changes in content. The cover of #1 featured
England's most famous female impersonator, Danny La Rue.
The cover of #2 featured a split-faced, male/female image of
a professional American impersonator, Ricky Renee, who was not
identified. Failure to identify such a well-know performer would
have been unthinkable earlier. Performers had been the major selling
point of the Selbee/Health Knowledge Female Mimics. Lack
of recognition was expected for the ball photos, which were typically
without captions, but not the professional performers. The editors
of New Female Mimics knowingly dissed the performers and
gave them less coverage. The same goes for the balls. The editors
had something different in mind, fiction and sexual fantasy.
The first 12 issues of Female Mimics contain only one piece
of fiction and that was devoid of sexual content. But in New
Female Mimics there were stories in every issue and sex was
always a major element. This was a big change from earlier issues
where sex was even never implied. Sex also made its way into
the pictorials. The captions and fictional accounts of the girls
in the photos had more fantasy appeal and were often loaded with
innuendo, "Carol works all over the USA where she commands
top $ for her talents.
Perhaps the most important editorial change in New Female Mimics
was the appearance of a photo feature with very few words. It
was the longest piece in each issue - 32 pages in #3. Each portrayed
a fictional story. All had the same plot: a pre-op, male-to-female
transsexual with prominent breast development, picks-up someone
or gets picked-up. There was kissing, cuddling and plenty of
frontal nudity, but no erections, no genital contact and no actual
sex. The models were attractive and well endowed. Twice the
photo spreads show encounters with heterosexual men (#1 &
#3) and once a lesbian (#2).
The decision to include frontal nudity was a major editorial departure.
Joseph Vasta says that in the early 1970's there was an
on-going judicial review of the obscenity laws in this country.
As time progressed, the laws became increasingly liberal. In
spite of this new permissiveness New Female Mimics discontinued
showing frontal nudity after only three issues and it would never
return.
There are several theories. One is that the change was market
driven. Lee says that magazines without nudity have always sold
better. Earlier in this presentation we stated that the readers
of Female Mimics wanted to feel safe, certain in the knowledge
of who's male and who's female. Transexual nudity
is confusing, disorienting. Some may find it a turn-on, but,
perhaps for the majority of readers at this time, it wasn't
reassuring to see both female and male sexual characteristics
on the same individual. Perhaps the publisher didn't understand
this yet. They didn't know that the readers attracted
by the performers on the cover were very different from the readers
attracted by the nude transexual photo spread. Perhaps this new
format, which combined performers with trangendered nudity, did
not satisfy either group of readers.
A second theory is Joseph Vasta's. He reminds us that
with all pornography there is the general assumption that organized
crime is heavily involved. The editors, photographers and graphic
artists have the talent to produce publications that reflect the
fantasies of transvestites, voyeurs or bondage afficionados.
But, behind the scenes there are "distributors,
who are really pulling the strings. The editorial staff who create
the magazines receive only a flat fee from these distributors
for each issue. All profits go to the distributors.
Joseph believes that the order to stop the nudity came from these
distributors. Growing up in a lower middle class Italian ghetto,
Joseph remembers that the toughest guys in the neighborhood, the
guys who might kill people, had a double standard of morality.
For example, though promiscuous themselves, they expected everyone
to stay away from their sisters. Joseph can easily imagine these
toughs guys saying, "Look, I don't want those girl-boys
showing their tushes and their things in my magazine.
It offends me.
Besides frontal nudity these photo spreads shared another theme:
unsuspecting suitors who are shocked to discover that their female
partner is in fact transgendered. This theme of discovery, of
a lover being fooled by a transgendered heroine, was a major plot
element in the fiction, as well as these photo features. It was
in four out of five stories published in these issues. In the
fiction the dupe is always a heterosexual male.
In two stories the impersonator offers mutual oral satisfaction when discovered. In one story the proposal includes a line which seems designed to reassure heterosexual readers; "I'm a female impersonator. Only I'm not gay, honey. I happen to like girls an awful lot. I just dress gay. Especially when I boff."I don't take off my clothes when I fuck." Now, when I was in High School, I used to blow fellows and have them blow me. I can do that for you, if you like. Other stories seem designed to confirm the crossdresser's masculine identity. In one a professional impersonator beats up his twin sister's boss for making advances and then rapes the leader of a women's liberation organization.
None of the suitors in these stories wanted a transgendered lover.
Sometimes they rejected her and the "oh so heterosexual
date would take a hike leaving the heroine to cry, "Oh
no, don't tell me you're going - not so soon - here
I thought I had at last met someone'"and her voice
was aggrieved. There was always shock. The
shock proved too great for one unsuspecting suitor, who died of
a heart attack. "You - oh God - you. In addition
to the obvious homophobia, there's the degrading implication
that no one would knowingly have sex with a crossgendered person.
He welcomes the chance to compare collections, buy, sell or trade. He can be reached by Email msbob@tgforum.com |