So what’s the difference?
Why is the reaction to a cross dresser different if the person is male or female?
Last night I attended two parties dressed at a member of the Blue Man Group. Obviously I had the blue face and even blue hands, and I was wearing one of my husband’s black shirts and a pair of black leggings.
I met a guy at the second party who was dressed quite nicely as a woman. I mean he actually looked good as woman, his figure carried that dress very nicely, though he does have short hair, the chiseled face, and very muscular arms. In “persona” he was “Stephanie” – I have to admit I’m blanking on his real name. In persona he really hammed up the feminine, which seemed perfectly in character considering his attire.
When I walked into the room I caught a few people staring at me out of the corner of my eye, but I was expecting that given the costume and the reaction from the last party. The conversation between these staring folks started because one guy in the group admitted he was “creeped out” by “Stephanie.” When his wife asked him if he was creeped out because Stephanie was in drag, the guy said “No, he’s just creepy.” She apparently probed further and asked about me, standing at that moment right next to “Stephanie.” The guy said “Why should I be freaked out by someone dressed as a Blue Man?” The wife said “Because she’s not a man, she’s a woman.”
I heard this story later from the guy in question after I told him I found it funny that other people at the party didn’t know I was a woman until I spoke. Then he told me in the context of admitting that he didn’t realize I was a woman at first either.
But his story got me thinking: Why is it more socially acceptable for a woman to dress like a man than the other way around? Why do I stare at the guy I see in my neighborhood from time to time wearing a full length black skirt, shirt and clod hopper shoes? He seems perfectly comfortable walking around like that – it’s just an every day thing for him, and counter intuitively, it does not seem to feminize him at all. Yet I stare. It’s not something you usually see, but why the heck not? What is “wrong” with it? Intellectually I know there is nothing “wrong” with it, yet I stare. Just like “Stephanie” and I were stared at last night.