Hands up all those who remember the bad old days when crossdressers who wanted a photo record of their beautiful selves had to either use a relatively low-quality Polaroid instamatic camera to take a “selfie”, or set up their SLR camera on a tripod, and try as hard as they could to capture that perfect shot—wasting roll after roll of film in the process?
Of course, the advantage of a Polariod camera was that the photograph was almost instant (ie you’d wait about 60 seconds whilst the image began to materialize in front of your eyes, shaking the paper dry as fast as you could); the key disadvantages being that you never knew if the lighting was good enough or the shot was in focus or the angles to make you look feminine were right.
The good old SLR had different pros and cons: better photo quality if you got the lighting and focus right, plus the opportunity to practice multiple shots with your 24 or 36 frame film. The big downside, apart from having to make sure the film was wound on and exposed correctly? You had to take your undeveloped roll of file to the photo shop (often a pharmacy) to have your precious photos developed—and wait with bated breath for 4-5 days while the shop did its work. Then there was the overriding fear of the photo developer scrutinizing your photos with bias or disgust, maybe even reporting such obscene photos to others and or telling someone who knew you about your strange habit of dressing in female clothes.
Thankfully, most of these issues with photos are now in the past and, with the rapid development of digital cameras and, perhaps more importantly, high-tech smartphones with excellent photo and video taking capabilities, crossdressers can show, present and exhibit themselves to the world while dressed in their En Femme finery.
YouTube was really the first video platform which allowed people to upload their own videos or collections of still photos for others to see and, when you think about it, this has opened up so many opportunities for crossdressers and transgender people to connect and reveal themselves and, hopefully, educate others about us and advance the level of social acceptance.
involve crossdressers changing back from female mode to male mode, although these types of videos are rarer—possibly as the changing back is more deflating than exhilarating—and many crossdressers don’t enjoy the change back anyway!
tutorial videos, showing cross dressers how to: o apply make-up, starting from face cleansing preparation to beard cover to foundation to eyebrows, to mascara and eyeliner and so on; how to take care of your nails and apply nail polish; or do your hair or select and care for wigs.
For those of us who grew up feeling isolated and unaware that there were other crossdressers, the ability to, by pressing a few buttons, tune into a fantastic resource such as YouTube has transformed isolation into connectedness and community.
Whatever you need to know about crossdressing and expressing yourself can now be found on YouTube—but I guess the only real downside is information overload - but that is something you have to manage for yourself!