|
|
|
|
 Though male
Cross-Dressing
is common historically, cross-dressers have often been
misunderstood and maligned, especially in societies with strictly defined
gender roles. Despite this disapprobation, cross-dressing entertainers have
often been accepted and even celebrated in many cultures. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is an all-male dance troupe that combines
dance,
cross-dressing, and comedy to both parody and celebrate classical ballet.
|
|
| |
| |
| |
 Berdache or, more correctly, two-spirit persons, occupy gender-variant social roles once common among Native American cultures. Contemporary investigators have documented their existence in 150 tribes for males, and roughly half that number for females. |
|
|
|
| |
| |
Ray Bourbon (1892?-1971)
was a
legendary drag performer and recording artist who appeared in silent
movies, vaudeville acts, Broadway plays, and, from the 1940s
through the 1960s, performed across the United States in a gay
nightclub circuit. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Charles Busch (b. 1954) is an actor, writer, and director who has distinguished himself through his virtuouso performances of "grand dame" characters and through his writing of dramatic vehicles for these roles. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
 John Epperson (b. 1955) is a talented actor and writer who has had an extremely successful career performing as the glamorous and hilarious drag diva Lypsinka, among other characters. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
 Literary Depictions of Cross-Dressing often incorrectly conflate the male cross-dresser with the male-to-female
transsexual, a man who has either completed or wants to begin a "sex change" operation. The medical change from a man to a woman is seen as a "cure" for the "problem" of cross-dressing. |
|
| |
| |
| |
Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead, 1945-1988)
was a versatile character actor, nightclub singer, and international
cult star who generally performed his stage show and movie roles in
drag. He became famous through his appearances in
John Waters'
films. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
 Drag Shows need say nothing about sexual identity, but they have been
an almost institutionalized aspect of gay male culture for a long time. |
|
| |
| |
| |
Ethyl Eichelberger (1945-1990), an influential figure in experimental theater, was a writer and drag performer who is most remembered for his repertoire of self-penned solo plays based on the lives of the great women of history, literature, and myth. |
|
| |
| |
| |
 The Chevalier d'Éon (1728-1810)
was the most famous transvestite of the eighteenth century. The French diplomat and soldier lived the first half of his life as a man and the
second as a woman.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
 Harvey Fierstein (b. 1954) is an
award-winning playwright and an
accomplished
actor and performer.
He began his acting career as a drag performer in New York City in the
early 1970s. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
 The Galli of ancient Rome were castrated priests of Cybele, the Asian Mother Goddess, and of the Syrian goddess Atagartis. They were widely ridiculed for their effeminacy, cross-dressing, and sexual passivity. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
 The Hijras--men who dress and act like women--have been a presence in India for generations, maintaining a third-gender role that has become institutionalized through tradition. They are often defined as eunuchs whose emasculation ordeal is thought to confer special powers.
|
|
| |
| |
| |
 Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was a pioneering
German activist and sexologist.
A cross-dresser himself, Hirschfeld coined the term "transvestite." |
|
| |
| |
| |
 Barry Humphries (b. 1934)
is a character actor, singer, writer, poet, and painter known
principally for the stage personas he has developed. Of these personas,
the most internationally recognized is Dame
Edna Everage whose sheer force of personality has enabled
her to achieve the status of "International Mega-Star." |
|
| |
| |
| |
 Kabuki
is a
classic Japanese theatrical form incorporating fantastical costumes,
stylized gestures, music, and dance. Kabuki originally showcased female
and boy prostitutes, but now features all-male casts. |
|
| |
| |
| |
Charles Ludlam (1943-1987)
was an actor, playwright, and innovator in the "Theater of the
Ridiculous." He drew on many elements of camp and farce, but never
allowed them to obscure the seriousness of his themes. |
|
| |
| |
| |
 Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (1928-2002) was admired by many for her bravery in the face of persecution and for her openness as a transgendered public figure in East Germany. Her autobiography inspired Rosa von Praunheim's film I Am My Own Wife (1992). A Broadway play of the same name (2003) by Doug Wright, directed by Moises Kaufman, won a Tony Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and a Lambda Literary Award. |
|
| |
| |
| |
Miguel de Molina (1908-1993)
reinvented the Spanish flamenco performance, but his open gayness and
gender-bending stage persona provoked hostile reactions that plagued
his career. |
|
| |
| |
| |
José Peréz Ocaña
(1947-1983) was a fixture on the counter-cultural scene in Barcelona in
the 1970s. The Spanish drag performer and painter was the subject of a
milestone film in Spanish cinema by gay director Ventura Pons. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Charles Pierce
(1926-1999) was a self-proclaimed male actress who took an aggressive
stance against homophobia, believing that quick wit, a serious
attitude, and consummate acting skill could vanquish oppression. |
|
| |
| |
| |
Virginia Charles
Prince (1913-2009) was a pioneer in organizing social and support groups for heterosexually-identified male cross-dressers. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
Sylvia Rivera
(1951-2002) is
a legendary veteran of the
Stonewall Riots. Rivera is notable
for helping to spark the event that ushered in the modern-day Gay
Rights Movement. |
|
| |
| |
| |
 RuPaul (RuPaul
Andre Charles, b. 1960) is a six-foot five-inch tall African-American drag queen who usually performs in a blonde wig. He has given drag a
new visibility by infusing it with gentleness and warmth. |
|
| |
| |
| |
Craig Russell
(1948-1990) was one of the major female impersonators of the 1970s and
1980s and one of the last of the school that actually sang or spoke
live in the voices of the ladies he impersonated. |
|
| |
|
|
| |
 José Sarria
(b. 1923?)--also known as "the Widow Norton"--is a San Francisco singer, drag performer, and activist who exemplified gay pride before
the phrase was invented. As the founder of the International Court
System, he presided over the expansion of drag culture into a vast
network of charity balls and extravaganzas. |
|
| |
| |
| |
 The Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence is an organization composed primarily of
gay men who appear publicly in drag, dressed as nuns. The Sisters
combine radical politics, street theater, and high camp and participate
in a host of charity functions and political events. |
|
| |
| |
| |
 Transvestism in Film is often reduced to a mere joke, a harmless tease that
tacitly reassures us that people can change their clothes but not their
sexual identities. |
|
| |
| |
| |
 Variety and
Vaudeville and related theatrical forms featured cross-dressed
acts, as well as routines that challenged prevailing gender
constructions. |
|
| |
| |
| |
 Ed Wood
(1924?-1978)
was a transvestite film director who died a penniless alcoholic, but
posthumously became the center of one of cinema's most enduring cults. |
|
| |
| |
Related Special
Features |
|
| |
| |
| |
