Is it OK to laugh at men in dresses?

[Womanwearingtrousers]

Regular poster but NC as this is outing.

I've recently seen several different performances from a rep company and it's made me muse on the subject of men in dresses.

The nature of the company and the plays they put on means that in some roles the sexes have been switched so a woman plays a role originally intended for a man but as a woman, and vice versa. All quite standard.

In some cases however, men are required to play women and women to play men. Again, not unusual.

When the women play men, they may play it for laughs but it doesn't have much of an effect. Women in men's clothes or with fake beards aren't automatically funny apparently.

Where the men play women, simply seeing men in dresses provokes much hilarity. The hilarity is accepted and expected.

I'm assured some people find Mrs Brown's Boys hilarious. Again, largely due to a man in women's clothes. Same with pantomime dames.

There are some similarities with drag, though I know that's a grey area now with some claiming to be TW.

All these scenarios appeal to different audiences, but the reaction is always that laughter based merely on appearance and not the performance is accepted and expected.

If any of these men dressed in this manner and said they identified as women, they would be told how fabulous they were, how amazing they look. There would be no place for even the slightest snigger at a male with a beard in a dress. There would also be abuse, for sure, but that's not my point.

I don't personally find such things amusing because I don't think a man is demeaned by wearing a dress and we should be past that.

I'm just confused. Aren't actors / theatres all very progressive and TWAW? Does the BBC have no issue with Mrs Brown's Boys given their stance on these matters?

Why is it sometimes ok to find it funny/unexpected to see a male wearing a dress and other times not?

I don’t think the popularity of Mrs Browns boys in Ireland is as simple as the absurdity of ‘the man in a dress’. O’Carroll sends up the image of the perfect Irish mammy and gets away with being foul mouthed, (in the way many mammy’s probably want to be) because he is a man not a mammy.

Drag and panto dames are played to put women down, make them look pathetic but Mrs Brown feels different to me. It feels like O’Carroll is letting the Irish mammy step out of the genteel saint/martyr role Irish society has tried to force her into but in a way that wont scare the men. Mrs Brown is in control of the joke rather than being the joke.

Or maybe I’m writing a load of shite

It's interesting that a man playing a woman is funny, but a woman in man's clothing is not. I think that these sorts of things show up the power relationship in our society. Women wear mens clothes - trousers, all the time and there is nothing wrong with that because they are 'acting up'. A man wearing a dress is 'acting down' and this is why men, on the whole, don't do it. And why we find it funny when some actors do.

It would depend on the context.

Womanless weddings men in a wedding or bridesmaid dress etc. used to be a fund-raiser for civic and charitable organisations. Scroll to 2nd page to see a photograph. (Sorry for length of URL but I want people to be able to see what a URL.)

books.google.co.uk/books?id=laagEB2InacC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=male+weddings+charity+wedding+dresses+%22united+states%221960s&source=bl&ots=PBNNvusTWG&sig=bqtA9siu_jMibKZgs5n23BmmtLs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR6pn07vTbAhXhB8AKHWHtAMAQ6AEIUjAM#v=onepage&q=male%20weddings%20charity%20wedding%20dresses%20%22united%20states%221960s&f=false

There's some discussion of contexts in which "rituals of inversion" like this are intentionally supposed to be humorous and disruptive.

Men donning a frock etc for stags is common and the point is it's ridiculous and hahaha.

If no longer allowed to be funny then that will go.

I dislike it because it's about taking a step down.

Panto etc the dames are to me same idea as drag. More or less. Boobs! Slutty! Old prude!

Ha de fucking ha.

You raise some interesting points but I do think it works the other way too. I saw Katy Owen as Malvolio at the globe and she was bloody hilarious. Having said that, I think it was partly funny because of the some of those same sexist tropes. Having him played by a tiny woman in a fake moustache emasculated the character. I loved her in it, but you’ve given me food for thought.

Forgive me

I love old British comedies: Carry On ..., Norman Wisdom, Ealing, etc. I have never found drag funny, but it always makes me laugh when Norman or Bernard Bresslaw has to wear a dress for some reason, and though they look ridiculous many of the male characters are instantly attracted to them.

Maybe with drag I am never amused as the target seems to be women - just look at the names of the 'artists' - whereas in the films the target is the men who cannot see beyond their lust, even when Bresslaw is clomping around and towering over them.

Even i draw the line at Mrs Brown's boys though.

Shakespeare used to put a lot of men in women's clothes and vice versa.

I’ve always wondered what it must have been like at the time watching one of Shakespeare’s plays which feature cross-dressing heroines. You’d have had a male actor playing a female character playing a male character.

Dodging all the booby traps, the answer is: only if the men in question want us to laugh.

@GCAcademic

I’ve always wondered what it must have been like at the time watching one of Shakespeare’s plays which feature cross-dressing heroines. You’d have had a male actor playing a female character playing a male character.

I've also wondered about this.

@MiladyBerserko

Dodging all the booby traps, the answer is: only if the men in question want us to laugh.

Yes, you're probably right.

@GCAcademic

I’ve always wondered what it must have been like at the time watching one of Shakespeare’s plays which feature cross-dressing heroines. You’d have had a male actor playing a female character playing a male character.

It's the only way to make sense of 12th Night where no one can tell the difference between Viola and Sebastian.

It's interesting that a man playing a woman is funny, but a woman in man's clothing is not Maybe make and exception for Bob in Blackadder ❤

@MadameMinimes

You raise some interesting points but I do think it works the other way too. I saw Katy Owen as Malvolio at the globe and she was bloody hilarious. Having said that, I think it was partly funny because of the some of those same sexist tropes. Having him played by a tiny woman in a fake moustache emasculated the character. I loved her in it, but you’ve given me food for thought.

I saw a stage to screen of the 12th Night with Tamsin Grieg playing that role. I seem to remember it seemed to heighten the cruelty of how malvolio was treated.

Maybe make and exception for Bob in Blackadder

It's not really 'Bob' who is funny though, it's Blackadder's reaction to her.

Bob is in the performance though. I do think there can be humour in the performance.

In the productions I'm referring to the men in dresses needed to do no more than wear a dress and the audience was in fits of laughter.

@Womanwearingtrousers

Bob is in the performance though. I do think there can be humour in the performance.

In the productions I'm referring to the men in dresses needed to do no more than wear a dress and the audience was in fits of laughter.

Is it amusing because women's clothing is beneath men's dignity? Or because men look ungainly in it? If it's the latter, do we also laugh at ungainly women in dresses and skirts? I don't really think that's a staple of comedy.

I was thinking about this recently. Why I find some drag offensive and then find Barry Humphries funny. I don’t know if it’s because when Barry plays Dame Edna it’s the males in the room he delights in making uncomfortable not the women. I mean he’s a heterosexual man, overtly flirting with men. He’s making them uncomfortable not really the women. He’s out smarting the men in a power play, he’s tall, quick witted, and making alpha males look like chumps.

For instance if you ever see any of his portrayals of Dame Edna on Parkinson, he really makes Parky squirm, which is just what Parky deserves because he’s got an awful reputation with his female guests.

I don’t really mind men acting as women if it’s done respectfully to women, and not using it as another stick to beat us with.

@AlwaysTawnyOwl

It's interesting that a man playing a woman is funny, but a woman in man's clothing is not. I think that these sorts of things show up the power relationship in our society. Women wear mens clothes - trousers, all the time and there is nothing wrong with that because they are 'acting up'. A man wearing a dress is 'acting down' and this is why men, on the whole, don't do it. And why we find it funny when some actors do.

Like 'guys' or 'lads' for a mixed-sex group, which we women are supposed to think is flattering: imagine the reaction if you called everyone 'girls' or 'lasses'?

I don’t find Mrs Brown’s Boy’s funny because I think it’s boring, just don’t get along with it at all. But I think the humorous appeal comes not from the cross-dressing but the caricature of someone we all recognise - a bit like Catherine Tate’s ‘nan’ or the Still Game characters. They’re funny because we can say it’s just like Granny/Uncle John etc.

It’s also becoming more common to experiment with this type of thing - I saw a production of Hamlet featuring a lady playing Hamlet and a young man playing Ophelia. It was jarring at first but I liked it. Also very recently saw Romeo and Juliet at the globe featuring a female Benvolio - not played for laughs, just cast straight. It was fab and dd9 loved it. MIL explained to her afterwards all about how traditionally it would have been a young man playing Juliet and now it’s a young lady playing Benvolio.

If the audience where laughing simply at a man in a dress with no other dialogue/characterisation I’d think their sense of humour was not quite in tune with mine to be honest, but if it was because the character was funny I wouldn’t mind.

Opera presents plenty of "trousers/breeches roles", where women sing the roles of male characters (Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro is a famous breeches role), and sometimes sing roles originally written for men, esp. countertenors and castrati—I think Gluck's Orpheus was originally a castrato part. I think there are also female roles sung by men, and both of these types of cross-dressing are often called 'travesti'. This is different from a female character having to dress as a male because the plot demands it (e.g. Leonora in Fidelio) or vice versa, though there are cases where both happen in the same opera. Cherubino, for example, sung by a mezzo-soprano or contralto, is at one point dressed in women's clothes to avoid conscription. When we saw this opera at the LA Opera a few years back, the young woman who played Cherubino did a wonderful job of walking and standing like a gawky, clodhopping adolescent male wearing a traditional 18th century maid's dress. (The Cherubino role was also written for a boy whose voice is breaking, and his part often changes register suddenly, as in the aria Voi che sapete.)

This sort of "cross-dressing" is constrained in a way that exchanging parts in non-musical performances, as the parts are written for specific types of voices. It is part-and-parcel of opera, though now there are more and more countertenors taking these roles back!

Were, not where. If they were laughing just at a bloke in a dress with nothing else done or said I’d think they didn’t have the same appreciation for humour as me to be honest.

I think it's relevant whether something is over-egged for no other reason that comic effect, or not.

Think Joanna Lumley's mannerisms as Patsy. Stumbling around, make-up everywhere, always clutching a drink, it provokes peals of laughter before she even opens her mouth. Does that mean all middle-aged alcoholic women are inherently funny?

Man in a dress, obviously over-egging it, clearly making an effort to emphasise the ridiculousness of his appearance for comic effect, yes, funny. Any man in a dress in any scenario, not inherently funny.

When I was growing up, it was pretty much a staple of the summer carnival that the guys would dress up as the female popstars of the day, or sexualised women in the media (like Jordan) with big balloon chests. All massively hilarious (not).

Very strange thinking about it now. I wish it would go the way of blackface.

It's 'funny' because women are way below men in the male hierarchy.

Like how it's funny Apparently for a man to dress up as an animal. Gorilla suit etc.

Thinking about it women don't tend to do that either. Animals is bunny girl or something. 'sexy'.

A woman at a fancy dress in a gorilla suit... I don't think that happens much?!

Man dressed up as woman animal scary monster dustbin hilarious!!!