A grown man lathers himself in baby powder as he prepares a smooth surface on his body so he can easily slide into his silicone bodysuit. He unrolls the smooth and rubbery material onto his body like a woman putting on nylons. It is constricting and hot once he gets himself the in the suit. Inside, it reeks of latex gloves and sweat, but it’s worth it. He did it all to be beautiful.

On the outside, she wears a silicone face with holes where her eyes are. Her makeup is perfectly done with bright red lipstick painted on the rubber lips that don’t move. The bodysuit is fully equipped with female genitals and breasts that look and feel real. She then dresses herself in a feminine outfit that she chooses from her extensive wardrobe. Finally, she picks a wig that represents her mood for the day. A long blonde wig is placed on her head and she’s ready to go. On the outside, she looks straight out of Silence of the Lambs, but on the inside hides a man fulfilling his deepest desires.

This is the process of a straight man transforming himself into a silicone sex fantasy. They call themselves female maskers.

Female maskers are a subset of cross-dressers that are consist of mainly heterosexual men who wear silicone or latex masks and torsos that make them look like a biological female. The result is a relatively immobile face, giving the impression of a doll or mannequin look. Unlike the transgender population, female maskers do not feel uncomfortable in their own bodies. They see masking as a way to satisfy a fetish, have fun, be artistic, and explore their sexuality.

“Its standard cross-dressing with a little twist to it,” said Kerry, a 53-year-old female masker and mask maker from Seattle, Washington. Kerry has been masking for 38 years and is considered by many to be the “unofficial leader” of the community.

“I have some old fetish magazines from the 1940s and ‘50s and there were people doing female masking in that,” he said. “So your grandparents were doing this. Well, maybe not your actual grandfather, but some of his college friends. So it’s been around for a long time.” Kerry chuckled as he said, “I certainly was not the first one to find pleasure out of something like this.”

Kerry explained the first time when the idea of wearing a female mask excited him while watching an episode of Mission: Impossible in the 1970s. Many of the female actresses were wearing rubber masks to dress up as other characters. This provoked his interest in dressing as a doll. “When I was growing up in the pre-Internet era, I would see women wearing rubber masks in movies, like in Mission: Impossible, and I just thought that was really exciting,” said Kerry. “I said to myself ‘I must be the only person on the planet with this fetish.’ Well, that’s not true. There are thousands of other people with this fetish and I sell them all masks.”

At 15, Kerry started experimenting with masks himself. He scoped out local costume shops and Halloween stores to find reasonably simple female faces that he customized to fit how he wanted it to look. “When I was a kid, you couldn’t find any [masks] so I decided to make my own,” he said. According to The Atlantic, Kerry was insecure as a child and wearing a mask “offered [him] a chance to recreate himself and become someone who didn’t care what others thought.”

Before he knew it, his business, MaskOn, was born. Other people saw his masks online and inquired about having custom masks and torsos made for them. “I have no training whosoever and no artistic ability. I just started messing around,” Kerry said, explaining how MaskOn came to be. “Then they invented the Internet and I started taking pictures and people said ‘hey that’s really cool, can I buy one?’ and I said ‘sure.’ And the next thing you know, I’m a full business person.” His masks and torsos come ready to wear with breasts and make up customized for his customers. Many maskers often own an assortment of masks and wigs to choose from. Finding this community of female maskers online was both a business opportunity and a sense of release for Kerry.

The process of making a latex bodysuit and mask is relatively easy for Kerry. “Typically, somebody is sculpted in clay first. I’m not a sculptor, so I’ll hire somebody to do it for me. There is a clay bust with a head and then you make a two-piece plaster mold from it. I’m really good at working with plaster and making these molds,” he explained as he worked on painting the final touches of make-up on a mask. “Then you pour latex in them. You pour in 16oz of latex, let it drain and sit for a few hours, do it again and then cure it in the oven. It couldn’t be easier.”

The “Jessica” mask made by Kerry (Maskon.com)

Although the process is simple for Kerry, it takes a while for the completed project to be ready for shipment. “It takes about four days [from start to finish] because most of my time is spent waiting for things to dry,” he said. “It’s not like I’m working eight hours a day for four days straight. But between the time it takes to pour, cure, put zippers on it, and paint it, it’s about four days of work.”

Once he became more involved with masking and his business was running, his intentions of masking turned strictly sexual. Kerry would retreat to his room and masturbate with the mask on. He explained his experience of the first time he ever put on a hand-made mask. “It made me very aroused,” he said cunningly. “I’ll let your imagination do the rest.” Enough said.

According to Dr. Ray Blanchard, a sex researcher and professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Psychiatry, female masking is just another way for straight men to experiment with their sexuality. Female masking behaviors fall under the definition of his term, autogynephillia “Autogynephilia is the general term for all behaviors in which men experience sexual arousal in association with perceiving themselves as female or making themselves in someway like a female,” said Dr. Blanchard. “The classic expression of autogynephilia is transvestism. This is because it’s so easy for other people to see. If a man puts on a dress and is sexually excited by that.”

He explains, “As far as I know, female masking is just one more way of a biological male feminizing his appearance either for explicitly sexual excitement or for other reasons that might have their origins in sexual excitement.” Similar to cross-dressing, most female maskers are heterosexual men who lead normal lives when they aren’t in character. Most maskers only put on their body suit and mask when they want to masturbate or take photos of themselves.

Dr. Blanchard explains, “It is not rare that married men will wear a bra, or nightgown, or some article of women’s attire during intercourse if their wife approves,” he said. “This makes it more enjoyable for them to have intercourse with their wives.” As for Kerry’s wife, female masking is “not her thing,” so he only engages in this behavior when masturbating or chatting online with other maskers.

In fact, maskers rarely go out in public because it tends to unnerve a lot of people. According to Kerry, “Its very easy to find webcam sites that I can jump on for about 20 minutes or so to hang out with other female maskers. It depends If I’m in the mood, have the time, and if there are other people around. I can go weeks without doing it because I’m too busy doing other stuff.” He then proceeds to explain that he only engages in female masking when “the mood is right.”

As for T-Vyrus, a female masker and editor of Hot Girls Magazine from New York City, dressing in character is about art and expressing himself. T-Vyrus is a 56-year-old self- proclaimed “tranny, drag queen, and female masker” who was married for twenty years until he found his passion for being a living doll. “I like to express myself as a living doll,” he muffled over the phone. According to T-Vyrus, his doll persona is “34 years old in doll years” and has a life of her own.

Formally known as Shawn English, T-Vyrus was bullied as a child due to being born with a cleft palliate.“I would wear paper bags over my head and cut holes where the eyes go and draw what I wanted to look like,” he said. Doing this gave him a “sense of escapism” as a child. He was ashamed of his appearance as a child, which played a large part in his fixation of creating a female persona of himself.

As a child, he was actively involved in theatre and dance productions. His first memory of wearing female clothing was when he “Performed as an inch worm in a third grade production of the Frog and the Mouse and costume consisted of a girls’ green spandex leotard and green tights.” At age ten, he was “secretly exploring female clothes and wigs and wore a rubber half mask at age twelve.”

T-Vyrus in ‘femme mode’

Although he explored his identity through out his early life, his living doll life did not begin until the end of his first marriage. He then started interacting with other’s who participate in female masking on a community website called DollPride. “The idea of expressing myself as a female and looking perfect intrigued me,” he said. “I wanted to be beautiful like the other living dolls online.” He then started wearing a FemSkin body suit and mask to express himself as his alter ego, T-Vyrus. “I wanted to be petite and pretty,” he said.

Once the daunting process of stretching the full silicone FemSkin bodysuit onto his masculine body is difficult, but “once you get in it and get past the initial discomfort, it’s actually quite comfortable,” said T-Vyrus. The longest amount of time he has ever worn the suit and mask for was approximately twelve hours. “You get past the discomfort of the suit and start to feel more comfortable and confident,” he said.

Making himself “into another completely different character” is the most exciting part about being a living doll for T-Vyrus. Once T-Vyrus is fully ready and in character, she spends hours taking photos of herself to post online. “Mirrors and cameras tend to be a living doll’s best friend,” she said with a chuckle.

As for Kerry, being a living doll is a way to explore his unique sexual fantasies and meet new people online. He tends to keep his photos within the small “female masking world” and does not quite understand why photography is such a large part of the experience as a female masker. “The thing with female masking is that they all have this weird compulsion to have their pictures taken,” he said. “I don’t know why that is, but they love to have their pictures taken. The photography has always been a big part of it.”

T-Vyrus finds it easier to express herself “I love expressing myself as a female, but on Monday morning, when it is time to re-enter the vanilla world, wiping away the traces of my weekend spent in femme mode can be concerning,” he said. “Female masking and FemSkins allow me to express myself with less effort and they leave me unblemished and ready for work without any residuals. Plus it’s great fun.” The “vanilla world” he speaks of is the outside world where female masking is out of the norm. According to T-Vyrus, when she sees people in public, most of them ask questions and see it as “a great photo opportunity.”

T-Vyrus advocates for self-expression and actively supports “lifestyle and gender choices.” “I dislike bullying of any kind, and I am happiest on sunny days and in pantyhose,” she said. As for Kerry, he sees female masking as a “variation of an old trick,” and believes that one “should express themselves and their sexuality any way they want.”