robbiehhw

Whenever you have a particular thing, whatever it is that seems to be "taking over your life" in some way. A therapist is an invaluable resource to help sort it all out.

I squeeze myself into some pretty tight jeans and jeggings  Girlfriend jeans are a great idea.

There are a whole lot of people on this spectrum and yours is a great example. Some people are also gender fluid, gender non-conforming and a-gender and those folks all have various and unique styles that they prefer (as we all do)

I think it is awesome that you choose to help society and get out there and be different. Society needs a lot more of that.

Cali - you always have such a great selection of shoes.

I love flip flops in the appropriate places. Casual places, beaches, out shopping and having fun it up with pals, even casual office wear in the warmer months. If the fashion designer is showing those types of clothes, than yeah flip flops work. There are many places they are not really good to wear.

The key as with all sandals is to keep your feet in great condition. 

Also there are some quite nice and more elegant flip flops than foam and plastic. There are leather ones, embossed ones, cool colors, braided leather etc.

Sorry that happened to you. Breakups indeed suck, no matter what the circumstances. The best advice i can give is to get back on that horse and get out there and date. I'm a trans woman and as my wife and i became more friends that romantic partners, i got out there and met a great guy. There is a lot more than one or two people out there that are great for us, there are actually many.

Even at the hottest parts of the year in Oregon's central valley when the temp get's close to 100, the evenings rapidly cool off, usually into the 60s if not the 50s Fahrenheit. So theoretically wearing boots works fashion wise for any evening.

Personally once the daytime highs reach the 75-80 mark, i ditch the boots most of the time. My summer wear is mainly sandals, wedge sandals, block heel shoes, flats or converses. (with actual athletic shoes reserved for athletics)

Nice jeans! I have a few boot cut pairs but must confess that mainly i wear skinny or boyfriend jeans. 

All the time. I have many different types of the same shoe as an example.

The term "well healed" was meant to distinguish those that were wealthy enough to own more frivolous footwear, that would never have survived slogging through the mud to feed the pigs etc. 

Having said that there were still some fairly flamboyant men's wear even into the 20th century. Top hats, coats with tails, white tie wear, walking sticks. The colors were fairly subdued for the most part but not always. It was very fashionable to wear a white straw "boater" hat well into the century and that often had a nicely colored band. Summer wear for men could include things like white jackets

The working class and the poor class have always had challenges in dressing to fashion until clothes became more mass produced and cheaper. Today clothes as a percentage of expenditures is lower than ever, when things like food and housing has continued to climb.

Yes i love my Maxx out Wedges too.

Retail is a tough game. I've noticed DSW and Famous Footwear stores seem to be pretty busy lately.

I'm a trans woman but i have been doing my toes in polish way back, including when i was pretending to be a guy. I get pedicures about every 4-5 weeks. This week i am rocking this sort of pink/coral color.

Very into wedges - we had some nice weather here yesterday so i wore some pretty but lower wedges with my outfit. Rocking a new pedicure too. That felt nice.

Sandal, slides, mules and converse season is coming

What you wear is an extension and presentation of yourself. I have a friend that likes to wear pokemon stocking caps complete with ears etc. Do people look at him because of it? yep...he doesn't care and probably likes it a bit at times. 

Nothing tells us we have to fit in any norm of gender presentation, you can dress slightly feminine, slightly masculine or change it up every day. Nobody will stop you and it is your right.

Tell her matter of factly. Don't make it a big "coming out" thing or she may think you keeping it from her is some hidden dark area of your life which it is not. Perhaps a simple acknowledgement that you were afraid to tell her for silly reasons would also put her at ease.

Part of being in a relationship with people is we get to continue to learn about one another the entire time we are together. Its like Christmas morning but ongoing and more often.

This is a neat thread to see everyone's motivations and how things started. The human mind is a splendid thing.

When i first started to try on and then buy women's shoes it was to feel more feminine and from that feeling comes a "centered" feeling that i later learned was me dealing in the right way with gender dysphoria. It never excited me in any sort of intimate or fetish way. Learning to walk in higher heels to me seemed elegant and it forced me to adopt a more girlish walk as well. 

Lots of men have attraction to feet, so it would make sense that footwear fits into that also. I never saw feet as anything more than another lovely part of the wondrous human body, worthy of massage or a kiss or two (men and women included) but nothing more than that. To some people footwear, stockings and just clothes in general seem to stimulate a sort of primal area of the brain that generates pretty intense feelings. Totally interesting.

I think it is fine to make a suggestion such as that based on the nature of the interaction. You are not telling her how to parent simply making a suggestion about clothing and maybe gender expression, which for his generation is going to be much more fluid than the previous one. Sometimes those types of conversations are just a way to find commonality and make small talk, something us humans need for socialization.

Some years ago i was buying underwear at a store like Aerie and it was pretty quiet there. One of the women sales assistants at checkout said to me " my son likes to run around in my bras, so i am expecting that he will start doing the same with panties any time now " i replied well he is a risk taker and pretty independent it sounds like to which she replied " yeah that one is our child that marches to the tune of his own band" and "that is pretty cool, i like that he wants this stuff" Simple interaction with positive commonality.

Bye the way i saw a young trans or gender fluid person the other day and i said to him/her " love those boots" and he/she smiled from ear to ear. Make peoples days it is so worth it.

Back in the day when i dressed more androgynous, people looked quizzically at my shoes/boots all the time. In the summer in sandals they looked at the color on my toes too. Was this a guy? yes? why is he wearing women's shoes? are those women's shoes? Is he one of those people? (queue whatever prejudice they could mentally come up with quickly). Rarely did anyone ever say anything. The only negative responses were a mean looks. Usually i just smiled at them.

Positive responses included things like "nice boots" etc. One time in mid summer i was traveling from the Salt Lake City airport home and going through security i was wearing women's jeans, women's sandals and a man's t-shirt. The sandals had to go on the belt and while i am in the queue for the scanner, the lady next to me nudged her friend and pointed at my very light blue painted toes. I caught her doing that and smiled to which she replied " that is really awesome" i said thanks and she asked, " is that a canary blue color? " i was like...yes i think so and i think i told her Revlon 904 or something like that and we chatted a bit more. Once people get use to seeing people dress a bit non-mainstream they are actually pretty nice about it.

8 hours ago, Chorlini said:

It's probably meant tongue in cheek but why is it always assumed that anyone who says anything remotely critical about women is a rabid women hater who wants to roll back emancipation? I swear, in western society you are less likely to cause angry mobs with pitchforks if you say you went to Syria for fight for ISIS then if you say anything remotely critical about women and gay rights. 

Also, bring forth the angry mob with pitchforks but what's with all the women posting in the 'For Guys' forum? I refrain from posting in their forum, I encourage the idea that its just for them, yet I see more and more posts by women in this section which isn't for them. And frankly it changes the dynamics. Men amongst men talk differently then when women are present. For one it seems to bring out white knight behavior, and so what if our talk is on the edge? Nobody is advocating rolling back women's lib to the 19th century. 

 I get that the "battle of the sexes" thing makes for interesting banter but i dunno about you but i tend not to generalize about an entire gender of people because people are so very different and diverse. Male privilege exists in various degrees and and situations and in many instances guys don't even know they are experiencing it. I think one of those areas is in overgeneralization about women, not all men do this of course, heck many men are feminists in their own right, but many do. Maybe there should be no talk of " women's lib or emancipation" except in history studies and in the work that is yet to be done, because it is so abhorrent that we ever needed such things. We should talk about in the same vein with slavery. Complete equality should exist and it should have always existed.

As for Gay/bisexual/transgender etc rights - entirely different set of abhorrent history, but no less a moral issue. So yeah you can be individually critical about some women or some gay people and their behavior, we all are but to ask for the right to be critical of the movements in general is sort of like saying " you know slavery wasn't all bad, can't we discuss this? " No we really can't.

As for women in the guy's forum well that is up to the mods. I sort of wish for instance that i could have chosen F for my gender - the question was about your gender (or sex maybe i don't recall in detail)  at birth, and now we are getting into hair splitting. But, that is the right of those that run the forum. Their governance is what we all abide by. 

Cute flats!

A lot of women in general do not dress in their personal style to please men, but to look good to themselves in the mirror. Love yourself first and it makes someone else loving you much easier. 

Nevertheless, Good luck on your pumps mission!

A good thing to understand is how fashion has changed across age demographics. As we know, there was a time when fairly "formal" wear like heels, skirts, dresses etc along with their accompanying accessories would be worn to an everyday office job, to school, and shopping. Men even wore a jacket with tie to the movies and on planes etc. It was considered very casual to wear a sports jacket and no tie. T-shirts? those were meant for the beach, gym or working in your yard. This helped reinforce fairly rigid gender norms, traditions and a hierarchy of status. ("Jim must be poor, he only owns one suit and only changes the tie every day")

Then things fairly rapidly became less formal. Young women today do dress up and have dressy clothing like heels, but they tend to wear that stuff for special occasions or sometimes when going out in the evenings to events etc.

Just had a morning session with my therapist and she was dressed pretty nicely. Nice sweater with a mock t underneath, shorter skirt, tights and tall boots with high heels. She is no more than 30 yrs old.

So in a sense the drive for less formal dress was partially driven by the rush to cultural equality. That is a good thing and i actually like the less formal times. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt with sandals to the office - very comfy.

Great outfit and great outing. Love going to the mall. 

I will also add that i think with that length skirt, short booties would be the only good boot choice. Still, very nice boots too!