what a drag
kateorman recently posted a quote from donna jean troka regarding the acceptace differential between male-to-female drag (MTF; common) and female-to-male drag (FTM; much less common). and it got me to thinking.
of course, the blindingly obvious point is that 'performance' FTM drag is less common because it's actually MORE common irl: women can wear 'masculine' clothes like trousers and dress jackets and no one bats an eyelid. which makes me suspect that drag meets a psychological need that's more culturally prevalent in men than in women.
i think the impulse behind any kind of drag is NOT ridicule and mockery (as troka asserts), but the same as any kind of 'playing dress-up': wish fulfillment. a child dresses up as a superhero because they feel weak and powerless in their own world and they want to feel strong instead. another child dresses up as a princess because they feel plain and ordinary and desperately want to feel special (notice that i left genders out of it here: i dressed up as superheroes plenty of times as a kid, and i'm sure there are little boys out there who did the princess thing).
so, any kind of 'dress-up' is rooted in wish fulfillment: having the temporary freedom to embody a quality that you feel you lack, or to exhibit an aspect of yourself that, for whatever reason, you aren't free to express in your everyday life.
men are still, in this day and age, brutally prohibited from exploring or expressing their feminine side, so the need for MTF drag is pretty clear. women, otoh - aside from enjoying a much greater freedom of expression in the gender of their everyday dress - are finally starting to gain enough ground in society that they don't need that sort of 'power/prestige envy' wish fulfillment...which is why i think you don't see 'performance' FTM drag as much.
things start to get interesting when you think about the kind of FTM drag that IS still fairly common, though...women masquerading not as men, but as little boys: peter pan; mister b natural; bart simpson; etc etc etc. the 'wish fulfillment' allure of this kind of drag is a lot easier to understand: little boys can be loud, rude, naughty, dirty, graceless and irresponsible...all the things that a 'nice girl' or a 'proper lady' is certainly not permitted to be.
(thank the good lordy godiva that we seem to be growing out of that particular cultural phase, though. the sexual ambiguity of women dressing as little boys (or, as in shakespeare's time, little boys dressing as women) has always given me the creeps. as mst3k's own kevin murphy put it, 'a boy with great legs and boobs is just wrong.')
i think we're getting better as a society as far as gender roles having equal value. but we're definitely not there yet, and it'll be interesting to see if the need for MTF drag decreases as men gain more freedom to express their feminine side.
Q