THE Turner prize-winning artist Grayson Perry’s marvellous documentary Why Men Wear Frocks, on Channel 4 last week, explored the world of transvestites. Perry knows a thing or two about this: as well as creating his famous pots, he has been dressing as a woman since his teens and appears in public as his female alter ego Claire.
Transvestism is much misunderstood and Perry did his best to dispel some of the myths. Dressing as a woman, he showed, has nothing to do with being gay and it is mostly practised by straight men. The image of the evil cross-dresser of films such as Psycho only fuels prejudice against transvestites as mad or bad.
One of the finest moments in Perry’s film was a series of interviews with bikers at a racetrack. Perry is both a transvestite and a biker, and pondered what they might have in common. Both like dressing up, elaborate costumes and parading themselves in particular contexts. And if biking is a kind of apotheosis of masculinity, doesn’t it seem curiously feminine? Stereotypes of masculinity and femininity converge on costume and performance. The more a man tries to behave like a “real man”, the more affected his actions appear. This might explain why the actor chosen to play the world’s first pregnant man was Arnold Schwarzenegger. After the sequence of extreme macho roles that made him famous, the only logical thing Arnie could do was to become feminised in the film Junior.
The more someone tries to show their masculinity, the more feminine they appear. When a man dons a costume, we might assume that he wants to be observed and admired. And as the biking episode of Perry’s film showed, this may be assimilated to what seems feminine. But is this equation really so simple? Don’t our stereotypes actually suggest that what is feminine is not the desire to wear a costume and be admired — but precisely the fact of disguising the desire to be admired? A female actress who is quite open about her thirst for admiration will seem less “feminine” than one who conceals the same wish. Think, for example, of the contrast between Audrey Hepburn and Jennifer Lopez.
So where does this leave the transvestite? Perry’s programme recognised the difficulty in generalising. Each person has a different reason for their passion for women’s clothes. But still, Perry emphasised, they were men who liked to dress as women rather than men who wanted to be women.
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Not all transvestites want to be seen when they dress up. For many, it is a private activity. But for others who enjoy being looked at, there is the paradox that the very openness of this wish may be perceived as masculine rather than feminine.
Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst and author