About

Sandra-M-Lopes-Smoking-May-2014-256x256About me

Like many others, I’m a 100% heterosexual male crossdresser, living with my beloved GG companion for several years now in a happy relationship that is unlike to change in the near future.

Unlike many, however, I came relatively late into crossdressing. During my teens I was positively scared of exhibiting any “female” characteristics, and in panic of being a freak, gay, or worse (at least it was “worse” for me). I worked very hard to improve on a more masculine image and grew a beard. In a sense, I felt that “playing a male role” was something required of me, and I had to work hard at being one. The advantage I had, of course, was that I’m deeply attracted to anything female, and to this very day, I still have way more female friends than male ones, perhaps because I feel some affinity with their tastes and way of thinking.

Around 1995 or so, thanks to the Internet, I finally understood the difference between all types of transgenderism. I assumed then that I was “merely a crossdresser”, deriving pleasure of a feminine image of my own self, and nothing more. All the panic I had of somehow being fated to change my physical sex or being forced to have sex with males for the rest of my life faded away; male crossdressers have a completely different mindset — all they enjoy is to dress like a woman, and admire that image, usually in private, sometimes in public, aiming to “pass”. Once I realised that, I started to shop for some clothes, again through the Internet, where “everything is available”. Besides a few more glamorous clothes, it was quite clear to me that I would never look great in scanty and flimsy dresses — my male shape would never allow me that — so I focused a bit more on the pleasures of casual dressing, and applying passable makeup. These days, I’m not so sure if I’m “merely a crossdresser” or not and reflect a lot on it.

I crossdress much less than I would like to. I struggle constantly with postponing my urge to dress. My own psychologist hesitates between classifying me as ‘merely a crossdresser’ or ‘transgender’ — I have characteristics from both.

Curious about crossdressing? http://www.tri-ess.org/cd01.html

More information on transgenderity: http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gender-dysphoria/Pages/Introduction.aspx

About smoking fetishism

Sandra-Portrait-November-2014-animated-416x416Smoking is viewed by two thirds of the population as an obnoxious, health-damaging, socially disagreeable habit. If you’re the kind of person agreeing with these statements, it’s pointless to watch my pictures and videos. The remaining third smokes happily, but for them, it’s just another habit — like drinking coffee, eating chocolate, or having some beer. A very tiny fraction of us smokers has a slightly different view about smoking: it’s an art form that excites us. Women have traditionally developed their own way of smoking which is specially attractive and enticing, because it speaks of elegance, glamour, and sophistication. Add to that the obvious relationship with oral fixation, and it becomes more than merely smoking — it becomes smoking fetishism.

Now I obviously don’t encourage anyone to pick up smoking. It’s not just because it’s bad for your health (so many things are!); it’s because you’ll be ostracised for it, and unlike other kinds of nasty habits, smoking is very addictive. You’ll soon find out you’re running out of places where you can enjoy a quiet smoke, which you’ll crave all the time. But if you’re not convinced yet that smoking is bad for you — not only for your health, but for you as an individual exercising the free will of doing what you think it’s best for you — take a look at http://www.smokingfeelsgood.com/ where you will see how so many of us cope with the ostracism and the health issues because we just happen to enjoy it.

About this site

Crossdressing can become a form of narcissism: that means that you enjoy seeing your own image, as a woman. As such, crossdressers are never far from a mirror, or, in this high tech world, a camera. Thanks to the Internet, as we became more and more concerned about spreading out to the world what we do and what we enjoy, it’s only natural that crossdressers started posting pictures and videos of themselves all over the place. I think I started with a very crossdresser-friendly environment first, URNotAlone, but soon found out that it wasn’t enough, and started to post images, texts, and videos on each and every social networking site I could find. Some, like hi5 or Badoo, I had to leave because the amount of intolerant people over there slowly grated on my nerves and — yes! — there is a limit to my patience. Others started to become a pain to constantly update. These days I take hours until all my photos and videos from the last session are updated all over the place, and what’s the point? In most cases, they only reach a tiny audience. MySpace, for example, is just followed by a handful of friends. My account on Multiply is followed by many more, but not that many. Lots are on Netlog or Tagged, but neither is as popular as, say, Facebook — which, like Google+, are trying to shut down everybody who is listed under a pseudonym; also, for some reason, my English-speaking audience doesn’t follow me on Netlog, which is only read by the Portuguese-speaking audience. Flickr is great, but unless you go pro, you can only display the last 200 pictures — and I have over 1200. And besides all that I still update YouTube, Blip.TV, Photobucket, MSN Live, and Orkut regularly… and some get updated automagically (like Twitter).

Not to mention that people send me messages every day on all those different social networking sites, and it’s next to impossible to stay in touch with them all. And then my friends complain that I’m not paying attention to them…

So I had to make a decision. Starting with 2012, I’m going to cancel all updates on all social networking sites, with just a handful of exceptions: Flickr (and formerly Picasa as well) for images, YouTube for videos. All articles will be centralised on this site — both the ones in Portuguese and those in English (they’re not translations of each other; the audience is different) — and all updates images and videos will appear on this website as well. All others will have their albums, pictures, journals, blogs, etc. deleted and just a minimalistic profile pointing to this website. No, I’m not going to charge for viewing content (all my content is released Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution), but I’m just tired of updating so many different sites at the same time!

This will have an impact mostly on those of you who always send me nice messages and comments, specially on the articles — you’ll have to do them over here, but you don’t need to register — you can either do it anonymously, type your nickname and email address, or just use your regular Facebook/Twitter/WordPress/OpenID (which can be used by Yahoo! users too) account to post a comment. If you have neither of those, I’d suggest you to at least sign up with Gravatar, which will allow your comments to display a tiny picture of yourself next to your nickname. Note that comments will be moderated; I’m fine with constructive criticism, and I’m even fine with nasty, angry comments so long as you are polite. Overly offensive language without any content will rarely, if ever, be acceptable. If you’re an adult, behave like one 🙂
Google Profile for Sandra M. Lopes

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