Take clothing, for instance: If someone (e.g. Michael below) refuses the gendering of clothing, then their "female" clothes effectively cease to be female. They are merely clothes which the local culture and history regard as female. Morphology (i.e. the body) might seem more straightforward, but if the person (e.g. Alex below) inhabiting a "male" body is not in fact male, what sex is their body then?
The important point is that the maleness and femaleness of things, such as clothing or bodies, is not a constant but depends on context. That which one person regards as female, say, may not be seen as such by someone else. They may regard it as male (opposite), or androgynous (either), or non-binary (neither), or not gendered at all (not applicable).
With that out of the way, for the purpose of this post all the pictures below show "female" clothing on "male" bodies.
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In a post (which I've quoted before) on his own blog, Andrew O'Neill writes: “I think I have a hardwired notion that it is desirable to be a girl. I also have over the years accepted and internalised the fact that I cannot be a girl. Therefore it is desirable to be like a girl, and because of our hugely gendered clothing split, the easiest way to achieve that is to wear the clothes of a girl. If I looked more feminine, I think I would probably act a lot more feminine, but as I don’t want to try and fail to pass for female, I ground what I do in an acknowledgement that I am male. The identity I project outwards is therefore feminine male, rather than woman. I want to dress as ME, not as something I am not.”
“I want to dress as me, not as something I am not” – I can certainly relate to that. And as a fellow transvestite, these are the questions I find persistent: Why does "feminine" presentation necessitate a female-looking morphology? Why aren't male-looking bodies sufficient?
Having just asked those questions, I don't intend to try and answer them right now, if indeed they can be answered. Ultimately, these are personal questions requiring individual and personal answers. Nevertheless, I'd like to suggest that the answers “it doesn't” and “they are” at least be considered as possibilities. To that end I'm going to show a few pictures of "female" clothes looking good on a "male" frame. The four "models" (Michael, Jasper, Andrew, Alex) identify quite differently – respectively, across the spectrum: freestyler, femme, transvestite, trans-female – but that's not actually relevant here. What is, is that all have developed a personal style that expresses who they are in an attractive and (potentially) inspiring way.
Have a look at the following photos and see what you think:
Michael
Jasper
Andrew
Alex
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My thanks to Alex Drummond, Jasper Gregory, Andrew O'Neill and Michael Spookshow for permission (last November) to use their photographs.
Further material: Andrej Pejic, Liu Xianping, Stas Fedyanin. Either Andrej (who featured in ‘In vision (2)’) or Stas would have been an obvious choice for this post, but rather too obvious. We can't all look like supermodels. (And anyway, Andrej would look good in a bin liner.) The point is for us to look good with what we have, or, at the very least, make ourselves feel good – this, after all, being the real function of fashion.
Hi, People (you) may say, it got nothing to do with me what other people wear and while that is of course true, and I suppose it is good that people are able to make do with what they've got...
ReplyDeleteStill... I can't help but to feel revulsed whenever I see distinctively male physique and distinctively female clothing mixed up together (those pictures of yours don't provoke quite as strong reaction as some, but there is still something there...)
While I am not absolutely sure, I suspect it is at least partially, because it is a reality check, a painful remainder... Whenever I see "men in dresses" it is like, someone took a sledge hammer and smashed the idealized picture of my self that I held in my head and forced me to confront the appalling truth behind it, which always makes me feel sad, hopeless, depressed...
No matter how I try to rationalize it as not being my bussiness what others wear, still when it provokes such reaction those rationalizations come to nothing...
“I want to dress as me, not as something I am not”
ReplyDelete"me" ? The actual me? There is just too much incongruity between my actual and ideal self for me to care about how I dress.. there is just nothing I like that would go with my actual physique.. so as far as dressing goes I feel I only got two options, the revulsive or something I feel nothing about.. there is no good...
But in the ideal area... I don't feel any particular need to be original.. often when I see something I like, I wish I could wear that, be that, do that.. It doesn't bother me if I didn't come up with it.. but I have never cared about any trends or pretending to like something to blend in or anything like that.. I like things that I like, because I like them... But of course this all generally stays in wishes and fantasies...
Hi Lilith. Thanks for commenting :)
ReplyDeleteStill... I can't help but to feel revulsed whenever I see distinctively male physique and distinctively female clothing mixed up together (those pictures of yours don't provoke quite as strong reaction as some, but there is still something there...)
Okay, that's a personal reaction (albeit no less valid for that). I've had similar reactions in this thread on the UK Angels forum. Whereas, for me, these pictures seem quite... I dunno... ordinary? Or, if not exactly ordinary, at least ordinary in my experience, because I'm very familiar with both the idea and image of such gender "disharmony". So maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it? On the other hand, I'm attracted to non-normative gender (in women), so that may have something to do with it too.
"me" ? The actual me? There is just too much incongruity between my actual and ideal self for me to care about how I dress.. there is just nothing I like that would go with my actual physique..
Speaking generally, I think the desire for a particular femininity is to a large extent governed and/or restricted by the prevailing gender culture. We don't have a culture where men are allowed to be – or, just as important, regarded as – pretty in this way, so the images of femininity and prettiness to which we aspire are nearly all female. I think we need to (re)claim the right to be pretty and feminine as men, and develop the aesthetics of that, not least for ourselves. Actually, Andrej and Stas might be regarded as icons here – even if, as I say in my post, we can't all hope to look like them. People (of any sex) mostly can't hope to look like supermodels, so we're not really at any disadvantage there ;)
Incidentally, please note that when I say "we" (or "us" or "our") here, it's not an all-inclusive "we". It only includes "you" (the individual reader) if you say it does. It may well have no resonance with you at all. But still, it's sometimes more meaningful to talk about "we" than about "I". Other times, the converse is true and it's only the "I" that's really significant. Indeed, on these extremely personal matters, I'm not very interested in other people's generalizing "we"s unless I know their "I" (i.e. where they're coming from) first. Oops, that's gotten a bit convoluted, hasn't it. I hope it makes some sort of sense.
Jon
"So maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it?"
ReplyDeleteOr.. you're not bothered by sight of such gender "disharmony" because you feel more positive and accepting of your self ?
I do feel positive and accepting, yes. But I don't think or feel that it is disharmony anyway.
ReplyDeleteOn these extremely personal matters I think the only meaningful attitude is this one:
It's not me that's wrong, it's everyone else. ;)
Why does "feminine" presentation necessitate a female-looking morphology? Why aren't male-looking bodies sufficient?
ReplyDeletewell, the male body is used to sell clothes to women - the slender male body with breasts. look at catwalk models, female shop dummies - look at the silhouette and remove the breasts, more men than women have that shape
over the last 100yrs the body of the slender male (long lean legs, narrow hips, small butt, shoulders broader than the hips) has been ported wholesale by women into their domain:
1. the flappers of the twenties - they bound their breasts and hips, arched their eyebrows. cut their hair in then male styles- the bob was called the dutchBOY, the eton crop from schoolboys. the flapper look was called the 'garçonne ' ["boy" with a feminine suffix]
look at the photos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flapper
very different from the 'gibson girl' . all this happened in just 10 short yrs
2. in the 1960s mary quant (a female designer) use twiggy to sell miniskirts
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how i see it is this:
the best body for showing off 'women's clothes' in their plain cut(that is, with the bodice unbloused for female breasts and the skirted area unbloused for the hips)is:
1. the body of the well built man. eg.virtually everything m.spookshow wears fits perfectly. this comes from having a wide body.
(perhaps overweight men also are placed in this category, i still havent decided yet)
whereas, i a slender man with broad shoulders have to take more care in balancing the same clothes, as i have a cocktail glass silhoutte - 20 inches from shoulder to shoulder, 15 inch wide hips. for my height my body width is too narrow - it should be 3inches wider in all measurements. or, if my shoulder width was equal to or only slightly larger than my hip width. then i too could wear clothes as easily as micheal does.
2. slender men with shoulder width equal to or only slightly larger than their hip width. and women with similar bodies eg catwalk models
3. slender men with cocktail silhouette. and the majority of women.
because of my narrow body n broad shoulders. ive found the skirts that are longer than 22inches(dist from my neck to waist) look balanced. skirts shorter than that, unless seriously flared out, look unbalanced. whereas m.spookshow does not have that problem , from what ive seen of his photos. he can wear virtually anything
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I will go on about the 'incredible hulk-ilisation' of mens and women's faces another time
well, the male body is used to sell clothes to women - the slender male body with breasts. look at catwalk models, female shop dummies - look at the silhouette and remove the breasts, more men than women have that shape
ReplyDeletein fact, dont even need to remove the breasts oftentimes . just look at the female mannequin next to alex in his photo.
on a separate point, look at the mannequin's silhouette too. i wonder if alex stood next to the mannequinn deliberately.
Hi again James.
ReplyDeleteYes, we had a bit of discussion about clothes and body shape on the Angels forum, concluding (more or less) that it all depends on the cut — i.e. while some items of clothing are designed for a female curvaceous figure, plenty are not. Indeed, as you say, given the propensity for ultra-skinny models, a lot of "women's" clothes seem actually to be designed more for boys.
Hadley Freeman (in ‘The Meaning of Sunglasses’) makes a similar (though not explicit) point about blouses:
“But the bigger problem with the blouse is you. Well, your bust anyway, This is not a garment made for breasts, which is why for the past forty years the blouse's demographic tended to be the under twelves. (...) It also explains why so many designers have become so fond of them as many of them do seem to find things like hips and breasts intolerably intrusive on their Art. Few things make a woman's breasts look more like a threatening cliff-like single mass than a thin blouse stretched out over them with an almost visible grimace, buttons pulling apart in palpable pain. So in this case the A-cups win”.
Obviously, I don't have any such trouble there myself :)
the Hadley Freeman quote is a fine point
ReplyDeleteYes, we had a bit of discussion about clothes and body shape on the Angels forum, concluding (more or less) that it all depends on the cut ...
i only quickly scanned the thread, but found it interesting to see the same severe resistance to a male identified, male body wearing 'women's' clothing, as in the rest of the population.
*shrugs*
thats life, the human ability to compartmentalise. to be heavily discriminated against, and the next breath to discriminate - is a thing of wonder
We are born more or less a 50/50 of mother and father. And that goes goes for everything. Now there are hormonal changes in the body that sculpture's us to male or female. The horrible reality that men go trough, that the feminine part of their energy system is to be eroded out, almost like lobotomy, unbalances your entire system. So instead of have a harmonious, empowered and complete system, you get crippled and powerless.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=530380157013056&set=pb.100001232283180.-2207520000.1364634413&type=3&theater
This is an interesting article, and it captures some of my personal feelings. I don't especially feel like a woman, though I am aware I am a man with some "feminine" inclinations and behaviours. When I am dressed, I don't particularly want to be a woman; I am quite happy to be considered a man in a dress. I don't particularly insist on fem pronouns, or a fem name. In other words, I just want to be me. I find myself nodding when I read your quote from Andrew O'Neill.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, when I am dressed, I want to be completely dressed. It needs to be top-to-toe and involve wigs, cosmetics, and everything. I try to make the very best of it.
In that way I agree with Lilith, that there is something deeply strange about seeing someone in a beard and a skirt. It's a little bit like the uncanny valley: neither fish nor flesh. I feel similarly uncomfortable when I see Grayson Perry dressing as a little girl.
I am not immune to the realisation that I might well evoke the same discomfort in onlookers, despite the fact that I try to present appropriately at all times!
Vivienne.
Hi Vivienne :)
ReplyDeleteI quite understand the urge to dress up fully (so to speak). Femininity and femaleness are culturally, experientially, psychologically, etc all mixed up. So even if we aren't actually trans (in a particular context), doing femininity as female has more resonance, we feel it more powerfully. And that's how I used to do it too - especially when I was only doing it occasionally. And there's nothing wrong with that of course. I just sort of got to the point of needing to sort out what I was really doing, what I was expressing or wanted to express, what I was, what I am. And then reading and reading and thinking and thinking about trans and gender and sex and sexuality – especially through the lenses of gender politics, gay/trans/queer rights, feminism and queer theory. And this is where I've ended up – at least for the time being ;)
As for beards and skirts: okay, yes, that does have some serious genderfuck connotations, but Alex likes what she's doing and looks pretty good I think. As for Grayson... well, Grayson is Grayson. Disturbing people is part of what he's about :)
Jon
Hi Jonathan,
DeleteMy correspondent Georgia from Broadblogs suggests that women's clothing (and accoutrements) are sexualised in a way that men's are not. That might be one of the reasons why I want to pursue every possible avenue of femininity when I am dressed.
Your use of fem pronouns for Alex made me laugh. I agree that "she" looks good, but there can be few outward things which denote a masculine identity, but a beard must surely be one of them? (Unless you're a dwarf. Dwarven women have beards, as we all know).
Vivienne.