“Mom, when do I get to take this off?”, Willy whined, one hand behind his pink-clad hip, the other hand on the bent knee of his bare, chalk-dusty leg. Light reflected off his shiny pink leotard as bright camera bulbs flashed in his vision, causing him to blink his mascara-shadowed eyes.

His mom adjusted the focus on her camera, squinting through the viewfinder at the skimpily-dressed figure before her. To the casual observer, the petite, demure young child, standing in front of a featureless black photographer’s backdrop and highlighted by large mounted lights, would have appeared a female gymnast, a cute young girl, blond, with twin curly braids, and dressed in a shiny pink leotard with black x-marks down the right side. Any random passerby would have considered the girl the picture of feminine cuteness—and cute Willy was, but a girl he was not, his feminine appearance merely the result of hours of laborious trimming, cutting, curling, painting, dabbing, and styling, from his mother—the work of a master makeup artist.

Willy’s mother nodded, proud of her work. No one would ever suspect that the sweet little gymnast was in fact a very unhappy boy, crossdressed against his will as a punishment for earlier crimes. His mother worked as a photographer for a gymnastics wear company, and had pulled some strings to get Willy’s sister Sally a modeling job. Willy had made the poor choice of stealing his nearly-identical twin sister’s pink leotard the day before she was due to wear it for a modeling photoshoot. When Willy’s mother caught him, she decided that, to teach him a lesson, he would be taking his sister’s place in the photoshoot—as a girl.

“Guess what, Willy?” She had said cheerfully at the time. “Don’t be sad. I’m not going to punish you for stealing your sister’s leotard. Since you clearly liked it so much, I’m going to let you wear it for the photoshoot instead! Won’t that be fun?”
No, Willy had thought, it would not be fun, and he was not having any fun right now.

Since Willy and Sally were twins, of the same age, weight, and height, and when made up, even their faces were hard to tell apart—unluckily for Willy. With Sally’s help, his mother had worked for hours on Willy’s makeup to totally transform him into the image of his female twin. She even had a special garment for him to wear underneath his leotard that totally disguised his masculine bulge—a choice that his mother considered quite generous, since the hiding of his true gender from the world would also spare him from utter humiliation when she posted the pictures of him en femme online.

“When we’re finished taking pictures of you, dear,” she said in response to his question, then made a frown, in response to her son-cum-daughter making the same expression. “Don’t grimace so much, Lily. It’s unladylike.”