Why do men dress up as women?

Personally I don’t like men who dress up like women. But I have a lot of friends in the entertainment industry that make a pretty good living as female impersonators.

I can’t mention any names because of that damn google but here is one.

hahaha everyone in Tampa Bay will know now!

Should I delete it?

Awe screw em!

There's a man who dresses as a woman at the temp job I'm at.

I gather he's starting the transition phase for a sex change operation. His voice is totally male and it doesn't seem like he's had any hormone treatments yet. However, he's grown his hair out and it' highlighted. He wears makeup too. Even without hearing him though, you know it's a male.

I finally had the opportunity just today to have a brief coversation with him. He's obviously comfortable around the regular people in that department, and other departments on that floor, but he seems to keep to himself as far as people like me who are just there short term. I can totally understand. The conversation was brief, polite and work related.

Something I don't understand is why is seems that many people who are looking to change genders go overboard by trying to look uber feminine. I'm not talking about drag queens. They know they are over the top. It's their job.

I dunno, maybe it's that if you were born with the wrong parts, you feel you need to really prove who you are inside through your makeup and clothes?

Or, perhaps it's that some may be more enamoured with the idea of being a woman than dealing the the everyday. i.e. not particularly caring if you leave the house without makeup or the perfect outfit.

Ah!

Just you tubed this!

hehehe and then we have the campy drag queens like this one, hangs out at Flamingo. She’s a big one!

Alexis is going to kick your butt!

I'm interested in this Morgan, and have some comments. However, I'm running out the door, I'll be back this evening.

Have a good one.

It's easy to spot drag queens. They shave very carefully. However, women have hair on their faces, they just don't have whiskers (usually). So, if you see a "woman" with perfectly smooth skin on her face, no hair, it ain't no woman.

Liz Taylor and Marilyn Monroe shaved so that's not a fool proof approach.

A good female impersonator can easily make 500 a night plus tips. Of course we spend a lot on clothes.

Alexis deleted me off facebook after I told her she needed to shave her shoulders a little closer. No sense of humor.

A regular in town.

'k....I'm back home.

I don't see drag queens, whether they are being paid for it, or if on the occassions they do it "for fun" at a party or event as dressing up like real women, but obvious parodies of women.

I've known, let's see.... 3 men that performed onstage in drag, I actually worked with one of them, a nurse, who only did it part time, weekend gigs. While I appreciate the amount of work it takes to apply the makeup well, get clothes to fit a certain way, I'm totally aware that this is just a man in a dress.

From my experience I think there's an element of um....unfriendliness.... toward women in the process of dressing in drag. The gross exaggeration is not flattering, nor do I think, is it meant to be.

I had a friend Bob who I was best buds with from around age 14 to around 25, when we just drifted apart. He moved to Fl when he was about 19, I followed a year later. Not because of him, but it was nice having a good friend already there. By this time he had come out (as if no one knew), and he was going through his gay bar hopping stage. I really didn't care about gay clubs one way or the other. I'd go with him because he would ask me. I do remember being called a fag hag, being ignored when I approached the bar for a drink, and being impaled on more than one occassion by some DQ's rapier wit. The more a guy was putting on a show of dressing in an effeminate manner, the more he'd seem to resent me. Hey, I'm not saying I didn't often have a good time, and I was aware it could be seen that I was invading someone's territory, but I wasn't anyone's fag hag or fish. I was just Bob's friend. His friend from back in the day when we'd ride our bikes to the beach together to play pinball.

On the other hand, you have someone who is in the process of transitioning. There is that overcompensation thing in that youtube video I posted. Not just in the manner of makeup, but in his/her gestures.
I guess that person was in his mid twenties, but he didn't act like women in their 20's do. I wish someone who wants to change their sex all the best, but the change isn't about exaggeration.

Drag queens don't really interest me. Someone who really feels it's their identity to dress as other than their gender does.

Apropos of nothing, I haven't put on a dress or skirt in more than 20 years. If I did, I would feel very weird and akward.

Anyone who doubted that either of them was female would certainly be a fool.

Interesting post, chai.



Yes, that was part of what I was wondering about earlier in this thread.

I'm hoping some of the folk here who have more insight into these things will comment from their understanding of drag.

There's something about drag queens looking like mannequins, not women, that's a bit off-putting.

The transgender folk I've known just look like themselves, maybe with longer/shorter hair - a slightly modified way of how they used to dress - none of this plastic human look.

I guess the best thing I can say about the drag queen look is that it is striking - and means to be striking.

I had a time when I was working as a Probation and Parole Officer that I had the funnest group of drag queens and transexuals.

Some of them got done for prostitution, some came in with their brainless rough trade boyfriends. Anyhow, I enjoy the humor and nonsense and a bunch of them asked if they could come in together after a while, because they all knew each other and that they had to see me. Fascinating discussions about every aspect of their lives and the gales of laughter and tears.

I'd pretend not to know what their beepers going off meant.

Looking at what the deal was with the mouth breathing abusive dim wit boyfriends was very interesting.

My natural fingernails and make up free face were a great trial to them, though.

Ha, yes!

I had a good friend who did the weekend drag thing, and he had such a hard time when I became pregnant. He kept advising me on ways to hide my tummy, etc. And after casting yet another worried glance at my midsection he'd muse about women he knew who regained completely flat tummies only months after giving birth. Would I like their trainer's number? (This was when I was still pregnant mind you.) He was much happier when I was svelte and beautifully dressed!

Anyway, re: exaggeration, there is so much that we just learn in a completely automatic way about our own gender roles. Think of how awkward you were when you first tried to walk in heels.

I do know transgender people who get it eventually, but it seems to always take a while. (Unless they're allowed to just go ahead and be transgender from when they're little -- a friend of mine has a son who is apparently transgender, and she's just going with it, and he really looks/ acts like a little girl. If he stays with this I think he won't have the same transition problems that many people do.)

Drag queens are kind of their own thing, they have their own culture/ mannerisms/ codifications that are an exaggeration of femininity rather than truly trying to BE a woman in any meaningful way. They're trying to be drag queens.

I know some drag kings, too (women who dress up as men) and they're just as exaggerated. They do this shoulders-down, swaggery thing that doesn't look like a guy, it looks like a woman trying to be a guy. Their culture isn't as defined as drag queens, but similar ideas re: gender stereotypes I think.