Month: November 2016

Jacinda, formerly known on Facebook as “Just A Sin to Look At” was our third place kitten category winner from last years Glamour Girl Contest. I am sure you all remember her in that stunning red dress. Let’s learn more about Jacinda, shall we (Glamour Girl Contest, winning phone entry) Jacinda is apart of a […]

The post Jacinda, Our Drag Super Star appeared first on Glamour Boutique.

When I first started going to Hamvention back in the late 1970's, there were very few female attendees. But since then, I have seen more and more women attending Hamvention each year (and I have done my part by attending as a woman since 2010).

The women I have encountered at Hamvention have embraced me as a member of their gender even those who are familiar with my roots.


A woman I had never met before and who is the wife of a prominent ham, came up to me after the awards dinner ceremonies. She introduced herself and then asked me if I prefer being called "Stan" or "Stana."

Once that was settled, she went on and on praising me profusely saying what an inspiration I was and how brave I was to do what I do. Then she added that the women at her table were very impressed with my makeup and wanted to know if I gave lessons. And then she invited me to her home. She lives 20 minutes from me, so I accepted the invitation and wait for her to get back to me to confirm a date.


One female ham I have known for many years and who is very familiar with my roots, lives in Connecticut, but I usually only see her in Ohio at Hamvention. She staffs a booth near my booth and we always meet up at one booth or the other to chat and catch up, as was the case Friday morning, when she stopped by my booth. After talking for about ten minutes, she had to go, but before she left, she said, "By the way, you look beautiful!"

I was speechless, but managed to squeak out a "thank you."

Then she added, "I really mean that!"


Now that I had been accepted as a member of the women's club, I decided to join the Young Ladies Radio League (YLRL), which bills itself as "an organization for women with amateur radio licenses and like radio itself, extends to women all over the world."

So I moseyed over to the YLRL booth, where I was greeted as an old girlfriend and encouraged to complete their membership application. The three women staffing the booth couldn't have been nicer and willingly accepted me as a member of their organization even one of the women who must have been familiar with my roots because she congratulated me for my award having seen my photo and bio in the Hamvention program.


With all the recent malarkey about bathrooms, I was a little nervous about using the women's restrooms during my trip, but I threw caution to the wind and used the facilities that corresponded with my presentation. No one called me on it and some of the women I encountered in the restrooms, smiled and/or greeted me with a "Hello," so I guess they felt I belonged.

The booth across the aisle from my booth always hires two or three 20-something women ("booth babes") to hand out stickers and literature during the convention. They always seem surprised that my booth has a 60-something booth babe (me), but they seem to accept me into their club. They were very friendly and were willing to chat about the biggest booth babe pitfall ― wearing high heels. For what it's worth, I was still wearing my heels long after those young whippersnappers switched to flats!

Wearing Caroline Constas.

An all-male cast performed Twelfth Night on stage in Buffalo, NY, 2015.

In my late teens and early twenties, I would occasionally take the train into Manhattan and explore The City. During one of my explorations, I was taking in the huge display of magazines and newspapers on sale at the newsstand in Grand Central Terminal, when what to my wandering eyes should appear, but a magazine titled Drag.

Now, this was not the typical drag magazine I was used to seeing back home ― magazines that featured hemis, gassers, headers, blowers, mag wheels, Garlits, funny cars, etc. No, this drag magazine featured guys in gowns, boys in bras, men in minis, fellows in fishnets, males in marabou, etc.

Wow! I had found a magazine just for me!

I looked around me to see if anyone was looking at me looking at the magazine sitting on the rack. The coast was clear, so I reached for the magazine and flipped through it quickly to make sure it really was a magazine about trannies and not trannies. Satisfied, I handed it to the newsdealer and paid the exorbitant (for circa 1970) cover price of $3 (that's almost $20 in 2016 money).

As the newsdealer put the magazine in a brown paper bag and handed it to me, he gave me a dirty look. No fan of drag was he, but I did not care because I had in my hands something I hoped would expand my knowledge of the world that I seemed to be part of.

Drag never showed up on the local magazine racks, so I did not buy the magazine unless I was in NYC and could dp so surreptitiously if I happened to have any company on those trips. As a result, I only acquired two or three issues of the magazine and cherished them until "The Great Purge of 1983," when they went out to the trash with all my other gurly paraphenalia.

Over the years, I saw clippings from Drag on various Internet places and I even saw complete issues for sale on eBay at exorbitant prices that I was unwilling to pay. But last week, Diana of Little Corner of the Nutmeg State fame e-mailed me with some good news: complete issues of Drag were now available for downloading from Internet Archive.

So I plan to reverse "The Great Purge of 1983" and rebuild my small collection of Drag.

Wearing JustFab.

Two pretty femulators from San Francisco, circa 1970

Zoe alerted me to a Huffington Post article about a youngster who will dress up as his hero for Halloween. His hero happens to be Bob the Drag Queen and the boy's mother and uncle are lending a hand putting his costume together and making it as authentic as possible.

It is a nice story and I think you will enjoy it.