Veronica Vera - Miss Veras Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls: Tips, Tales, & Teachings from the Dean of the Worlds First Cross-Dressing Academy

Cinderfellas fairy godmother. Eric Kroll

I quickly felt myself riding the crest of a wave of success, uplifted on the broad shoulders of a sea of grateful men in skirts. Not only had I put my well-manicured finger on the pulse of every cross-dressers dream but I had tapped into the rich mother lode of the male psyche. Having gone through my own process of womans liberation, I understood my students as the flip side of the feminist movement. When women felt the need for balance in their lives, to share more in the male experienceto move from the home to the workplace, from the bedroom to the boardroom, to be financially independent, and sexually autonomouswe created the womens movement. Men, too, have this need for balance, to share more in what they view as the most desirable aspects of the female experience: to be pampered and protected, to be glamorous and sexually desirable, and, yes, even to do houseworkmany of the privileges that we women saw as confining. Cross-dressers are more fortunate than most men because their affinity for the clothing gives them access to these feelings of Venus Envy. The academy offers a mode of action. For every woman who burned her bra, there is a man ready to wear one.

The academy is my own private laboratory. With the matriculation of more than 500 on-campus students, I have been able to witness the positive aspects of this unique form of behavior modification. Contrary to what many assume, the student is not finished when he puts on a dress and learns to carry himself like a debutante, but rather when he can take the lessons and insights of his femmeself and integrate them into his male persona.

Robert is a student who came to the academy every six weeks. One of our early classes consisted of a field trip during which Robert and I visited a tiny lingerie shop in Chelsea. With the help of the shops proprietress, we chose some frilly bra and pantie sets and lacy nighties for Robert to try on in the shops private dressing room. Our plan was to leave the store with our purchases, to have dinner together, and then return to the academy where with the aid of cosmetics and prosthetics Robert would become Roberta and model her new finery.

During dinner I was aghast as I watched Robert eat. He hunched over his plate and shoveled the food into his mouth. Roberta will need lessons in table manners, I told him. Robert explained that his professional life as a doctor left him no time for table manners. Eating for him was just something he needed to accomplish in order to go on cutting people up. He proceeded to tell me that his schedule was overbooked, that he did not know how to say no to people, and that he feared for his health as he learned of colleagues who had heart attacks at an early age. Here was a man who wanted to dress in soft delicate clothes but was still imprisoned in a tough male hide.

Our breakthrough ad campaign created by Jeff Griffith and Joe Lovering . (photo: Jim Salzano)

But clothes alone do not make the woman. As I tell every student: Understand that when you dress there may be things that you also need to address . I saw very clearly that Roberta, the femmeself, could, through lessons in etiquette and table manners at the academy, learn to eat more slowly and with more appreciation for the nourishing pleasure of food. Robert would thus be led to a longer and happier life. As the butterfly Roberta emerged from her cocoon, she lessened Roberts chances of dropping like a fly. I am sure that her lessons with the knife and fork improved his skill with a scalpel.

Such success stories are the goal of Miss Veras Finishing School. Are we encouraging a band of defectors? Undermining the male power structure? I prefer to think that we are responding to a need. The tremendous popularity of the academy attests to the fact that people want to believe that there is a place where men can learn to be more like women. This is an idea whose time has come.