Review: Men Proud and Pretty by T.G. Cooper

Captured by mysterious aliens, four crewman must battle in the arena in order to retain their manhood. How will two former alpha males respond as they find themselves turned into young females and forced to live with and depend on the men who defeated them?

After first reading Allmyth, I have to admit I have been a fan of Cooper’s work in transgender fantasy erotica. There is a patience in Cooper’s stories, a willingness to establish characters and setting that so few writers in the genre have.
With Men: Proud and Pretty, Cooper transports the reader to the front lines of an alien world, where humanity and its allies are beset upon by a strange, matriarchal cultures. When four of the men are captured, including the captain of the ship from which the man hail, they are imprisoned and given new instruction – compete in gladiatorial combat, the loser of which will be transformed into a woman matching Earth standards of buxom beauty.
In some hands, this would be the beginning of a quick riff, sexual encounters building until a transformation was complete. But Cooper, as usual, likes to let the scenarios unfold. As Captain Stone and Garrett, a misogynistic crew member, begin their slow journey toward full womanhood, we are treated to the inner conflicts as their new bodies and attitudes conflict with their previous lives.
Interestingly, the end (don’t worry, no spoilers!) results in a somewhat ambiguous idea that womanhood itself is something of a curse, as the altered spacefarers confront their own culture’s views of women and the innate power structures.
That said, don’t let all that high-mindedness fool you. There are some very sexy scenes as the two women-to-be are subjected to new urges with former crewmates, but there’s emotional heft there, too.
The largest critique I have is one common to short erotica – grammar and spelling. There are multiple instances of the incorrect word used or a word missing altogether, things a cursory spell check just doesn’t find. It’s not so much to disqualify the book from recommendation, but it was frequent enough that I was taken out of an otherwise-excellent story multiple times.
In all, Men: Proud and Pretty is another great story from Cooper, one that takes its time to get in the heads and hearts of it characters, and I found myself rooting for the gorgeous Captain Stone Port as s/he struggles to maintain control of this new body’s urges and appearance. Highly recommended!

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