Living & Arts

No shame in drag in the post-feminist era

In print | April 3, 2008

It was sometime after dinner on Saturday night, and I was flopping about my room to the raspy crooning of Lil Wayne on his new single “Lollipop,” getting inspired for the night of debauchery ahead at the Sager Party. I wasn’t looking forward to witnessing the masses of drunks rubbing their bits all up on each other. What I was looking forward to was the moment when I could play dress-up with Mickey and Dwight. For Mickey, I picked a leopard-print, jersey-knit dress with a tiered, ruffled skirt, ornamented with a black satin bow on one shoulder and ribbon around the waist. Dwight’s was a black and white halter dress with a plunging neckline a la Marilyn Monroe. When I asked Mickey how he felt in his bouncy little dress after having his hair and makeup did, he replied, “Pretty.” Dwight went back to the lounge to resume his game of Street Fighter.

Miuccia Prada said that her most recent men’s collection was “revenge for what men do to women.” But in this case, I don’t feel particularly restrained or oppressed by the patriarchy on the occasions when I do wear these dresses, so I don’t see why Mickey and Dwight would either. In their case, the only punishment that might have been involved was having the dresses I picked out for them be really, really tight. A mere byproduct of their brawny to my shawty. Their ensembles encompassed a brilliant blurring of gender lines, a fitting nod to this year’s Sager Symposium theme, “The Boundaries of Queer.” The plunging v-neck of the dress Dwight wore gave the hint of some lovely lady lumps underneath. (Digression: Static Major, featured on the “Lollipop” track, weaves a shrewd allusion to this line from the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps.” This is just one more reason to keep “Lollipop” on repeat.) Furthermore, the waistline of the dress, already pretty high on me, hit him just below the armpit, amplifying the baby-doll effect to the nth degree. And Mickey’s outfit, with the ruffled skirt and fierce animal print, gave a flirtatious bounce to his step. It suggested that he was ready to indulge in some devil-may-care coquettery.

But imposing a feminine silhouette on a masculine frame did also serve to call attention to the fact that they are intrinsically still boys. (And sometimes even men!) Things bulged where they usually don’t and didn’t bulge where they normally do. The pattern of Mickey’s dress was stretched so that the broadness of his shoulders became more apparent. Dwight’s dress was so short that immediately, his hairy legs popped out at me.

If it wasn’t revenge, then what was it? A chance to cross-dress in a (for the most part) safe and accepting environment. And it can also be a very freeing experience, unless you were wearing dangerously short dresses like my friends, in which case extra … support … was necessary. Indeed, Mickey said that, as opposed to when he’s in jeans, he felt more eager to dance and jump around wearing the dress because the fabric of the dress was so stretchy and the skirt would bounce around when he moved.

In the mid-1800s, Amelia Bloomer made popular the first pants for women, eponymously dubbed Bloomers, because she felt that, “the costume of women should be suited to her wants and necessities. It should conduce at once to her health, comfort, and usefulness; and, while it should not fail also to conduce to her personal adornment, it should make that end of secondary importance.”

But in this post-feminist age, skirts don’t need to be loaded with patriarchal symbolism. Not only is it our choice to wear them, but in a waay, we can see them as giving women, and at least on one crazy night every year at Swarthmore, men as well, enough mobility to do as you please. My freshman year, on the way to the Sager party, a guy friend suddenly had to pee. So he walked up to a tree, lifted his skirt and relieved himself. So convenient! But highly uncivilized! In the end, though, that’s what the Sager party inevitably becomes, for better or for worse. And on this night, boys can experience the freedom of wearing a skirt. In the unrefined words of wisdom from the Geto Boys: “You better come prepared/ Cause I’ma let my nuts hang.”

Meagan is a senior. You can reach her at mhu1@swarthmore.edu.