Female Masking: Bodysuit Blunder by Gregor Daniels

Something a little different for you this week, as we suit up, adjust our faces, and explore the world of female masking. This is something that really slipped into the mainstream over the last year-and-a-half, with a Channel 4 documentary, Secrets of the Living Dolls, and several newspaper articles that followed - all of them exploring it primarily from a fetish or cosplay angle. While I don't deny that aspect, I immediately saw a potential for transgender expression, so I decided to talk to the people who live it, love it, and write about it to learn more.

If you have yet to read this month's issue of Frock Magazine, then I urge you to give it a read as soon as you're done here - I think you'll find my article on Female Masking and the Trans Community a great sort of primer, and a natural lead in to this week's feature.

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We kick things off with Bodysuit Blunder by Gregor Daniels, one of the older pieces of mask or bodysuit fiction to find its way onto Kindles, Kobos, Nooks, and more. Plus, being that it's a shorter tale, it offer a perfect opportunity ease new readers into the world of female masking.

What I like about this one is the way Daniels introduces the technology and establishes it as a legitimately passable, almost magical, form of expression. He talks about its evolution from fetish latex outerwear to realistic skin suits that leave the wearer indistinguishable from the costume itself.

The exploration and experimentation as Timothy slips into the suit and attempts to cope with how it changes his perceptions is very well-done. Daniels makes you believe that such a suit can really exist, and that it can transform an innocent young man into a beautiful, sexually liberated woman. It's comical in parts, but also extremely sensual.

Of course, this is fiction, and that means we're expected to take some liberties with both the technology and our own imaginations. Perhaps Timothy is a bit too passable, a bit too insta-woman to be believable, but that's precisely what we want such a mask and bodysuit to do. His lesbian experimentation with his girlfriend is absolutely fantastic, and the twist the Daniels introduces towards the end really makes you wonder about the consequences of swapping our your old male identity for a shiny new female one . . . but to say more about that would be to deprive you of the fun.

Bodysuit Blunder definitely takes masking to an extreme, fantastic level, but I love that Daniels does talk about about how the technology got to that point, and I think he does a fantastic job of putting the reader inside the suit. Just a fun tale.

Reviewed by Sally