It's in the news!

Helping men look better (as women)
By Robin Uris, Courier-Post Staff

For years, "Darlene" had a real problem buying clothes. Store clerks stared. Kids chuckled. Other shoppers didn't want her in the dressing room. And just try finding a size 14 pump on the sale rack.

Darlene is a crossdresser, a man who enjoys wearing women's clothing. Corsets. Tailored dresses in pastel colors. Lipstick. The works. It's a lifestyle wrought with choices, choices a guy like Darlene has trouble making alone.

Enter Lynda Krupa. An image consultant who can really bring out the feminine side of a man. From choosing a flattering wig to securing private dressing rooms at ladies' shops, Krupa takes care of it all. The goal is to transform your average Joe into a classy, passable woman.

Krupa has been an image coordinator ever since she graduated from Moore College of Art in 1986. She used to serve straight people part time. But when she got laid off from her job as the office manager at a Philadelphia law firm last year, the 34 year-old Deptford native decided to go into business for herself.

Krupa advertised her services on the Internet and got 200 responses the first week. From men. Now she works with cross-dressers and transvestites full time from a rented office on the 22nd floor of a posh, Center City Philadelphia high rise. Her company, CDtips, boasts clients from as far away as St. Louis.

On this day, Krupa is working on Darlene, a 52-year-old South Philly auto mechanic known to his family and the guys in the shop as Frank. Frank arrives in navy blue Dockers, an Izod golf shirt and loafers. He is carrying a garment bag containing a pale yellow, crepe de chine business suit with gold buttons, taupe pumps, silk stockings and a black, strapless corset with foam rubber breasts sown inside.

He also carries a wig box. Krupa requires that all her clients have a wig box. "Wigs are expensive and delicate," she says. "A wig box protects your investment, helps the hairstyle last longer. It's just the proper thing to do. I mean, you don't want to walk all over town with your hair in a paper bag."

Frank gets to the apartment properly prepared. He shaved minutes before leaving home (it should be several hours before a shadow begins appearing beneath Darlene's foundation.) He followed with a, swab of toner, then moisturizer. He is also wearing a gaffe, a garment that hides the penis, and heavy, elastic dancer's underwear, which helps everything stay put.

The transformation into Darlene takes about two hours. It would take longer, but eyebrow waxing and porcelain nail tips are out. Frank will be working on cars the next day. "I don't think it would go over too good with the guys at work," he says. "When I'm on vacation, I'll do the whole nine yards."

The wig is a pale auburn number with cascading curls and a delicate, fringy bangs. Krupa uses a lot of warm earth tones on Darlene. The eyeshadows are muted browns and beiges. The lipstick, matte burgundy. Pancake makeup is used to cover the anchor tattoo Frank got in the Navy.

But the hours of effort are short lived. Frank won't stroll the city as Darlene. He won't go to lunch or make a quick stop at Ann Taylor. He's still afraid of the stares that may or may not come. Darlene is no Cindy Crawford. But she makes a better looking woman than Dustin Hoffman or Robin Williams. "For a lot of my clients, dressing up is the best part," Krupa says. "Once they're done, cross-dressers go back to being a guy. They don't actually want to live their lives as a women. They just want a few hours to live their fantasy." Trouble is a lot of services that help cross-dressers "live their fantasy" treat the clients like perverts. Darlene remember being charged hundreds of dollars to go to a dirty motel room and put on borrowed clothes for an hour. "I guess they figured that since you were doing something unacceptable, you should pay more," Darlene says. "I don't deal with that now. Why should I pay good money to have someone make me feel bad about myself? The whole point is to feel good."

So while CDtips requires a larger cash outlay, it is decidedly less expensive in the long run Darlene says. The clothes you buy are the clothes you keep, whether you're after Armani from Boyds or a simple evening suit from John Wanamaker. And there are no rush decisions to avoid stares at the Clinique counter.

"I have a ton of makeup that is absolutely wrong for me," Darlene says. "You feel so uncomfortable buying something that you just hurry up and get it over with. Then you get home and it's like, yuck! What was I thinking?"

Like many personal shoppers, Krupa has a special arrangement with better stores in Center City. Her clients use special, private dressing rooms. Clothes pre-selected by Krupa are there waiting, assuring complete privacy. Krupa also has discovered shoe stores and lingerie shops where the staff is friendly and tolerant.

In return, Krupa brings them scores of customers with more disposable income than the average shopper. She also knows a tailor who will remove shoulder pads and sew foam rubber "breast forms" into undergarments, no questions asked.

"The transgendered community is very skeptical. People aren't always nice," Krupa says. "And it isn't easy for a man to walk into a tailor's shop and ask to have a corset custom altered." Krupa has no problem making that sort of request. Her business is to provide a service to a paying customer. She doesn't judge. She doesn't snicker. She doesn't ask questions. And if a tailor or cosmetics counterperson isn't willing to be just as professional, Krupa will take her sizable business with her, thank you very much.

She also practices what she preaches with her customers. A stunning brunette, Krupa is flawlessly turned-out. Darlene calls her an inspiration. She is perfectly coiffed. She wears subtle makeup, elegant suits and pretty, sensible shoes. It's a look she pushes on her clients without shame, sprinkling her conversation with advice like "less is more" and "a classic look never goes out of style."

Krupa's customers packed away their white shoes weeks ago. "I've progressed more in five months than I did on my own in 30 years," says Darlene, her legs crossed at the ankles, like her mentor. "And Lynda wrote everything down, so I can do it at home. I'm not ashamed to admit that I need her. I really do."

© 1995 by Courier-Post & CDtips

Dressing for Success
Male cross-dressers find shopping for clothes can be a drag.
By Sono Motoyama, Philadelphia Weekly

It isn't easy being a cross-dresser. Just ask "Jessica Brandon," a 39-year-old cross-dresser who lives in West Philadelphia. "Things women have known virtually from Day One, we learn in our 20s, 30s, even 40s," Jessica says. Her own first forays into the female world, she notes, were often unintentionally ridiculous.

Her initial fascination was with women's shoes. "I was curious how women could walk in high-heeled shoes," she says. "I always viewed it as a magical act that defied the laws of physics and gravity." At 13, Jessica sneaked into her mother's closet and tried on a pair of black pumps with three-inch heels and fell three or four times just trying to stand up.

Jessica fared no better with the mysteries of cosmetics. She once hurried into a drugstore and bought the first foundation she saw. Imagine, if you will, Al Jolson in reverse, says Jessica. The low point during those early days was perhaps trying on her mother's Afro wig: "If you've ever seen The Mod Squad, think of Clarence Williams III in drag."

She can laugh about her proclivities now, but Jessica was not always so lighthearted. "Early on I viewed it as a deep, dark and terrible secret," she says. "At the time I didn't have any knowledge or information to explain what I do. I wasn't sure what I was doing was moral or even legal. That's how ignorant I was."

Though there is no single, accepted explanation for crossdressing, many experts believe the behavior may be "imprinted" early in life. Jessica says she never knew her father and identified strongly with her mother. "So strongly I wanted to be like her and look like her," she says. In any case, cross-dressing is not something these men choose - it is a drive many find difficult if not impossible to eradicate.

Through her membership in Renaissance, a national support group for cross-dressers headquartered in Wayne, Jessica has come to believe that self-acceptance should be the goal for cross-dressers. She has learned td view her urges as a part of her - and she has also learned not to have unrealistic goals for her female persona. Though she admits that she does sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to be a woman, she treasures her male identity. "As much as I like dressing up to the nines and going to a Renaissance function, I also enjoy kicking back in a sweatshirt and watching ESPN on my 35-inch TV with SurroundSound," she says.

A freelance desktop publisher who pulls in a pension from her 19 years in the Navy ("Many cross-dressers overcompensate by doing macho things," she explains of her military career), she also writes a monthly column, "Shopping With Jessica," for a Renaissance newsletter. Though she admits she is not a raving beauty, she has learned from past missteps and now knows how to put herself together. At a strapping six foot two inches, 205 pounds, Jessica prefers stores like Sears and JCPenney because they carry taller women's sizes (she's a 14) and Nordstrom for shoes (13W).

Though department stores are quite familiar with cross-dressing customers, some balked when contacted for the purposes of this article. "Our customer is most likely a middle-class American and this would not be representative of our customers," a Macy's spokesperson said icily. A Nordstrom rep had this to say on the subject of cross-dressing customers: "Nordstrom offers a wide variety of merchandise for men and women." Hmm. Faced with such fear and lack of understanding, it's little wonder, then, that many cross-dressers are uncomfortable shopping for clothes.

This is where someone like Lynda Krupa of CDtips comes in. Krupa, a 36-year-old genetic female, offers a variety of services for cross-dressers, including a personal shopping service perfect for the shy cross-dressing consumer. Her studio, in a comfortable West Philadelphia high-rise, is filled with wigs, makeup, clothing in all sizes, breast forms, corsetry, press-on nails and other gadgets of the trade. Here she performs "in-house transformations." Hommes metamorphose into femmes during, usually, a three-hour period; then most change back and go home, many to wife and kids. Krupa says she gets 15 or 20 such clients every month. Her shopping expeditions with clients are a more time-consuming affair.

"Diane," one of Krupa's satisfied clients, calls me nervously from Chicago. In a deep baritone, she explains she's in her 40s and married with a child in elementary school. She has a "visible position" in the public sector, so the fact that Krupa was in another city appealed to her. During the long weekend that Diane was here, "Lynda picked me up at the hotel to take me to a corsetiere who, after the store closes, fits crossdressers," she explains. "It was actually a pretty pleasurable experience." The next day they went to shop at Macy's at the King of Prussia mall. There Krupa had preselected a number of outfits, and they went into a secluded dressing room. Her purchases totaled $3,200, and she spent about $9,000 for the five-day spree. ("I spent my money on this rather than a psychiatrist who probably would not have been able to treat me anyway," Diane says.) A few outfits were sent to a tailor to be altered. Then it was time to strut her stuff. Diane and Krupa went out to dinner. The next day it was a museum and then dinner. "It was the first time I went out in public dressed as Diane," she says. "It was quite an exciting experience,no question about that."

"Lynda is so exited about what she does that it shows," says "Desiree," a 37-year-old New York restaurant owner, another CDtips client. "She's the Ferrari of this sort of thing."

Krupa says her clients include doctors, lawyers, pilots and veterinarians, ranging in age from 21 to 65. The majority are straight, she says. (Angela Gardner, executive director of Renaissance, says that contrary to popular belief, most cross-dressers are heterosexual. "If 10 percent of the total population is gay, then 10 percent of the cross-dressing population is gay," she says.) "Every client that comes here is desperate to have someone understand," Krupa says. "People are very, very much in need of me."

Even Jessica Brandon, shopping guru for the 400 Renaissance members, usually shops in what she calls her "boy guise," picking out things she thinks would fit, trying them on at home and returning them if they don't. Recently though, on her first shopping trip while dressed as a woman, Jessica found that for those who can't afford someone like Krupa, a department store's personal shopping department offers both privacy and personal attention.

On the appointed rainy day, she's wearing her Pulp Fiction wig, a gold bracelet and clip-on earrings, a purple velour shirt, tight jeans, black shoe boots and a trench coat. Her makeup is subtle - most cross-dressers simply want to "pass" as a woman, not attract a lot of attention ("Not all of us can pass," she notes, "but we like to try"). The personal shopper at the Center City department store is unfazed and says she's had many cross-dressing clients. In a private dressing room, Jessica tries on the outfits that have been picked out and chooses a tasteful camel skirt and matching sweater, all for less than $100.

She is satisfied with her expedition. "It turned into a really rewarding experience," she says over a chicken Caesar salad at the store's restaurant. "It gives you the feeling you're accepted." Though many people view cross-dressing as "perverted or twisted," she says, "I view us as being normal; it's just that we have eccentric taste in clothing." She hoists her fork daintily and gives me a slight smile. "Me, I just want to shop."