skygiants | (no subject)

bookblather asked about crossdressing for December 15th, which is a surprisingly difficult post to write. OKAY.

So pretty much everybody knows that PLUCKY CROSSDRESSING GIRLS is one of my ultimate instant-sell tropes. Like, show me a crossdressing girl and no matter how cheesy the narrative, I'm there. AND I'LL PROBABLY LOVE IT. Like, I really, honestly loved She's the Man. Which tells you a lot.

(If you're curious, here is a post I wrote about some cross-dressed girls in fiction that I love. Please note that this list TRAGICALLY EXCLUDES a whole slew of kdrama characters I encountered since I first wrote it, most notably Kim Yoon Hee from Sungkyunkwan Scandal.)

I've spent a lot of time sort of squinting sideways at this particular susceptibility of mine -- so much so that I eventually wrote my undergraduate Honors thesis about crossdressing in YA novels, and what makes it such a viscerally appealing plot for teenaged girls. It was not a very good thesis and I'm afraid to run a count on how many times the word 'liminal' appears in the text. BUT IT'S VALID, because the thing I was sort of trying to get at there is, like --

Okay, so one way to look at the trope of the cross-dressing girl, as it plays out in narrative fiction, is that it's as problematic as it is progressive; the heroine dresses like a boy to achieve agency in the narrative, because you have to act like a boy to be an active agent, but she's really a girl, it's really okay for her to make out with her boy love interest because we all know what's real under her boy-clothes, and that's not questioned. It's cheap girl-power, it's a way of pretending like you're transgressing gender boundaries without really destabilizing anything at all. And I'm definitely not going to argue with anyone who sees it that way, because in a very real way that's true, and it's part of the reason I've spent so much time trying to put my id under a microscope.

But I'd rather look at it this way: the trope of the cross-dressing girl is, I think, kind of like a training-wheels trope. With the cross-dressing girl, you can start to dig at at complex ideas about gender and identity and the kind of relationships between people that transcend the boxes they start out in. What if the physical traits you're born with don't have to determine your identity? What if attraction between people doesn't fall neatly along gender lines? What if most of gender is performance, anyway?

It's a gentle destabilization -- unthreatening, because everybody knows how the cross-dressing girl story goes, that everything goes back to gender norms at the end. Except it doesn't always. Start from the familiar, unthreatening trope of the cross-dressing girl, and you can get to Jacky Faber, who swaps gender performance as rapidly as she swaps boyfriends and girlfriends; you can get to Go Eun-chan, whose hitherto-straight boyfriend, finally and happily invested in his gay relationship, is shocked and betrayed when she reveals to him that she's a girl; you can get to Dororo, who isn't actually a crossdressing girl at all, actually; who will never become a woman, who is a man forever.

Or you can stay with Alanna, and her journey to accept that, hey, femininity is not an awful thing or something to be ashamed of; that's still an important story to tell, too. I LOVE CROSSDRESSING GIRLS, OKAY.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/359703.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

alias_sqbr

I am too tired to articulate my thoughts but yes! This! I love them too :)

From:

skygiants

:D I also love how many people I have on here who love crossdressing girls like I do!

From:

ceitfianna

I love the idea of a training wheels trope and that completely fits my use of it. I recall that when I first discovered The Lord of the Rings sometime in middle school, I created a self-insert who I think cross-dressed, I know there was definitely one for Newsies. Now it all makes so much more sense, I've also been to a dinner party with lots of wine so not my most coherent but still. Honestly, Becca, you are the best for explaining things in my head that I don't fully understand.

From:

evewithanapple

Oh man I remember SO MANY CROSSDRESSING NEWSIES OCs back in the day. They always spoke terrible slang, usually dated either Racetrack or Kid Blink (or occasionally Mush) and they were frequently menaced by the Delanceys. Ahh, memories.

From:

ceitfianna

Mine always dated Racetrack or sometimes David, I loved Jack but he was taken.

From:

skygiants

Hee, I don't know how coherent I am either, I feel like I'm just word-dumping on the page mostly . . . but thank you! I'm glad it made sense to you. :)

From:

jinian

I LOVE THIS POST, OKAY.

From:

skygiants

WELL OKAY FINE THEN WHATEVER (<333)

From:

bookblather

Okay, this is much more scholarly and much more awesome than I was expecting. Also, I'm glad that Alanna turned up because I was reading Alanna: The First Adventure when I asked this.

From:

skygiants

I guess even five years after writing the damn thesis it's hard for me not to get a little pedantic on this topic. >.> But yes! Alanna was one of my close-reading texts for my thesis -- I had a ton of fun doing it.

From:

bookblather

....Iiiiii kinda want to read your thesis now. Anything that close-reads Alanna, man.

From:

sandrylene

I second this thought. Not entirely for Alanna, but in general.

From:

swankyfunk

Have you read Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters or seen the BBC adaptation? Definitely recommended!

From:

skygiants

I have not, but it's on my list! Both miniseries and book. I loved Fingersmith enormously

From:

actiaslunaris

♥ Having just finished watching You're Beautiful because I'm a sucker for the trope, I heartily enjoyed reading this post. Also, you're one of the few people I've encountered who understands that Dororo is trans* so all my particular love for that.

From:

skygiants

HAHAHAHA OMG YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL. What an amazingly ridiculous piece of television. Every so often I shriek "NUN CROSSDRESSING TO JOIN A BOYBAND!" at people just to remind myself that that really happened.

And yeah, I mean, Dororo makes about as clear a statement on the matter as is possible in the time period and circumstance! I actually kind of love the bait-and-switch of it, with the scene where Dororo's mother is all "you can become a girl again when you meet the right boy!" and then HAHAHA NO.

I'm glad you enjoyed the post! :D

From:

thistleingrey

Yes--because of the experimental factors and pressures, I'm willing to put up with a lot in narrative for the sake of crossdressing girls.

From:

skygiants

Right! It's like the crossdressing-girl-story is a playground to fool around with this stuff.

From:

thirdblindmouse

The first week of high school my freshman English teacher taught all of us to hate the word 'liminal'. I'm fairly sure that wasn't what he meant to teach us, but good job all the same, Mr. M.

I must read this Jacky Faber book. It sounds like The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle with more crossdressing.

From:

skygiants

I cringe every time I catch myself using it! BUT SOMETIMES IT'S SO USEFUL. My feelings are conflicted. :(

The first few Jacky Faber books are GREAT, although not without their problems -- and as Jacky gets older, there's a lot more experimenting with gender and sexuality, because Jacky is basically a lady Tom Jones who gradually shifts from making out with all the dudes she meets to making out with EVERYBODY she meets. And eventually it starts to feel kind of sketchy, because these started out as children's books! So, like, on the one hand by the seventh book Jacky basically spends a cheerful stint as lady pirate Cheng Shih's sexy bath slave, but on the other hand, Jacky basically spends a cheerful stint as lady pirate Cheng Shih's sexy bath slave. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

. . . BUT THE FIRST FEW BOOKS ARE GREAT WITHOUT QUALIFICATIONS. A+ wacky crossdressing picaresque hijinks!

From:

buymeaclue

I just yesterday put in an ILL request for the first of these in audiobook because I heard that the reader is great. EVEN MORE EXCITED NOW.

Love the idea of a training-wheels trope. That makes so much sense!

From:

skygiants

Ooh, let me know how it is! I've only read them in print form, but they're the kind of books with an amazing first-person narrative voice that would do SO WELL in audiobook form.

From:

buymeaclue

Two thumbs up!

From:

buymeaclue

Although I have seriously side-eyed the age group recommendation! I mean, twelve year old me would have loved this and I hope twelve year old not mes are loving it, too! But I don't want to know about it lalala.

From:

cest_what

Linked here via pinboard, and I really like this! The idea of non-threatening tropes that can nevertheless take you somewhere more radical, and do it without ever putting you on guard or making you feel like you're reading something virtuously worthy, is really appealing.

From:

skygiants

Yeah, I mean, obviously it is important to have the works that go all the way and make the radical steps and we need more of those! But the nice thing about the less obviously threatening stuff is that it slips past the gatekeepers - both external and, uh, internal? mental gatekeepers? Stuff like this is probably a lot of kids' first exposure to some of those more radical ideas, I think.

From:

katta

A bit late to the party, but chiming in to declare my love for crossdressing girls. It started with Skuggan över stenbänken and Dårfinkar & Dönickar and sort of just moved from there.

I think for me, it's largely because I find androgynity and pansexuality attractive as traits. So watching Caroline seduce both Arild and Rosilda in SöS, or watching the Simone-Kattis-Isak triangle unfold in D&D, really started me off on a journey that I'm still on.

It doesn't go just the one way either. I am massively attracted to many crossdressing male characters. And when I say As You Like It at the theater and I couldn't tell whether Celia was played by a man or a woman, it really appealed to me. (Turned out to be a guy.)

Which is all very shallow, and I hope I do have some motivation beyond "ooh, pretty!" But it doesn't come to mind as easily.

From:

skygiants

Hee I mean, I'm not going to say none of my motivation is shallow either. >.> But I glommed onto the cross-dressing girl so young that it was really before I had much attraction to anybody!