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?

That's another issue completely. That's about the pervasive sexualisation of women. Men can just dress up as a vampire or a footballer or Santa. Women are pressurised to be a sexy vampire, or a sexy footballer or a sexy Santa.

I think panto dames are not quite the same thing as drag. To me, the humour in a dame comes from her being a female character who does not act the way women are supposed to behave. The dame is clumsy rather than elegant, grotesque rather than dainty and pretty, she swears and hits children and tells dirty jokes.

It's a minority of men showing everyone how to 'woman'. Highlighting the characteristics that they want to exaggerate.
They believe their own hype.

If the men in dresses are being funny, I will laugh.

Men in dresses isn’t always done for laughs. Look at Harry styles recently, he’s doing it in the name of fashion dahling.

Which I think is a bloody good thing, we need more people like him smashing gender stereotyping while not claiming to be anything other than a man wearing a dress.

It was frowned on by the authorities during the war

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6030767/World-War-Two-photos-showing-soldiers-dressed-drag-banned-not-damage-image.html

I like the dresses painstakingly made from handkerchiefs.

I vaguely remember some student union banned 'dressing as a woman for amusement'. Which would mean it was to stop men taking the piss out of women rather than stop people laughing at transwomen.

The tradition of men wearing dresses & performing female roles goes back to Ancient Greece! Through to the 17th Century & Shakespeare to the rich history in Pantomine, we have had men playing women. Pantomine also inverts this tradition, with the lead male characters (Dandini I. Cinderella, Dick in Dick Whittington and so on), being female, heroic roles. Opera, as suggested above, have inverted usual convention based on vocal ability. In fact, in the late 18th & 19th century, Drag Kings and females playing male roles was commonplace in music halls, and today Drag Kings are often seen in the huge revival of burlesque.

Theatre, and the stage, has always been a place where convention & the suspension of disbelief is possible, if not a requirement of performance. That arena for self expression & stretching normal boundaries through millennia makes this such a broad topic I could never fit it in this post!

The advent of television just places this stage for you to view a performance in your home (everything you watch is constructed, even the news is a constructed medium). Hence the logical step for tv to share this same arena of self expression & inversion.

Mrs Brown’s Boys isn’t about the ‘dressing up as a woman’, the humour comes from the situational comedy & situations the characters find themselves in.

Although in my house, it makes me want to punch the TV (not the drag element, the whole thing is about as funny as herpes. I’d rather get my eyes scooped out with spoons than watch it).

We do see this inversion in dramas like Gentlemen Jack or Victor/Victoria or Albert snobs, but these aren’t inherently funny because the dramatic situations are not inherently funny. They are not comedy roles or situations. They are characters where to gain an advantage in their situations they must masquerade as men, which in itself is mind blowing within today’s moral & ethical parameters.

*Nobbs

I don't agree that women playing men are not funny - they can be very funny when they are played in the same kind of way, which is about the contradiction of what we expect vs what we are seeing.

A good example is the Dakey Dunn character, played by Mary Walsh, who might not be familiar to UK viewers. But very funny in large part because Walsh is not in fact a man.

I do think however that there is less of a taboo or ring around women doing male-coded things,. There are not many clothes for example that are associated exclusively with men that women also can't wear and be perfectly socially acceptable. The closest might be a suit and that isn't actually much of a taboo at all. We also have plenty of aspirational roles in books and film with women who do male-coded things or behave like male heroes.

Since those roles are seen as being pro-woman and something to be aspired to, they don't so easily seem funny, unless they are clearly being used to take the piss with regard to gendered expectations by the viewer. Male actors however don't need to do nearly as much to create a contradiction between the of the audience and what they are actually seeing, often wearing the right outfit alone can do it.

I don't think that reflects some sort of sexism by the actors, directors, or writers, rather it reflects the different ways society as a whole related to depictions of men and women in the arts.

Context, surely? David Bowie or Mick Jagger in a dress not funny. Les Dawson or Ronnie Barker dressed as women funny. Man who travelled to work on the tube in the 90s wearing a smart A-line skirt, ankle socks and brogues, not funny. Local eccentric with a long grey beard, a frilly red sleeveless blouse, short black leather skirt, fishnet tights and towering black patent platforms for a lunchtime visit to the chip shop not funny.

One of our older neighbours had no idea that Mrs Brown wasn't female. She still found it funny. I have watched two episodes, under duress and don't find anything funny in it.

I think men in women’s clothing in entertainment depends on how good the comedy is written.
Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough as Sissy and Ada mimics the women who were around when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s. Strong no nonsense women who had little quirks. (and who would whisper or mouth words if the conversation had anything to do with sex)

I think the art to good comedy writing where you have a man playing a woman is about making the character real. Something people can relate to

Danny La Rue I never found funny I think because he portrayed someone so OTT glamorous and I didn’t know anyone like that so there was no one to compare to.

I think women playing a mans role struggles as women now already wear trousers and suits and it is so everyday that no one blinks an eye.
Bob from BlackAdder though is the exception to the rule.

Pantomime dames though are a tradition, although the Prince Charming character that used to always be played by a woman seems to now be played by a man.

I read somewhere that the main reason the Prince Charming character came to be played more often by men was because it became a vehicle for certain kinds of young, male, box office draws. Get a famous young hunk in the role and it had an appeal that an attractive young women in the male role might not.

Not being particularly keen on young male hunks, I'd just as soon see a young woman who would likely be quite funny, but I suppose if that sort of thing appealed to me I might feel differently.

I didn't find David Suchet playing Lady Bracknell nearly as funny as if one of the many brilliant older women actors had taken the part. Him doing female impersonation was just a distraction, it added nothing to the role. Afterwards I overheard people gushing 'wasn't he marvellous' but honestly, no.

I find it's often a distraction too, I'm not crazy in general about switching out the sexes in rolls outside of comedic and sketch type settings. So either the switch is part of the contradiction, or it's pragmatic because you only have a certain number of people to play the roles and that's the form.

In historic theater I find it interesting to see productions done with original practices, but I don't find them better narratively and it's an intellectual interest rather than about being immersed.

I just don't think most people can convincingly play the opposite sex, especially in a sustained role. If they can, great, but generally, there is always an awareness of the divide and so it changes the experience as a viewer. It's like the actors have appeared onstage with their underwear over their costumes, you are more aware of them acting.

Overall, I don't think there should be ideological boundaries on who can play what role, be it around ethnicity or sexuality or class or whatever, and as far as i'm concerned that includes costuming to make it work seamlessly. But it's very difficult to truly disguise sex.

I don’t think it’s to do with “punching down” or whatever. Basically most men make very ugly women - big bandy legs, big shoulders, a big head…. In fact apart from a very tiny number, no man passes for a woman and that is what is funny.

@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?

Mrs Brown's Boys - no laughing matter!

There are quite a few cases in British comedy where men play female characters without it being degrading for women. Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett playing cleaners and using equipment as musical instruments would be as funny if they were played by female comedians. The costumes and sketches in their show weren't really sexualised.

In Blackadder, Lieutenant George playing "Georgina" is mostly funny because of the fact that Melchett fails to see through the disguise and falls for "her".

I never thought of all the Monty Python characters dressed as women were disrespectful of women—they were too ridiculous, too mannered, too old-fashioned for that (suits, hats, handbags, or ancient, filthy dresses and shawls). It was obviously no more realistic than a group of these "ladies" going to Paris to ask Mrs Jean-Paul Sartre [a.k.a. Simone de Beauvoir] some complicated question about existentialism while Mrs S. was trying to clean the room with the aid of a goat...

What was disrespectful is how few parts they had for real women, and the ones there were were usually in the "hot blonde" category—clearly none of the team thought they could pull that role off! The one exception I can think of was Dinsdale Pirahna's ladyfriend, played by John Cleese, and he identifies himself as a 'female impersonator'.

I remember there were also all the MP in-jokes based on Graham Chapman being gay, rather like the jokes in the Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies that were also about his being gay.

The past is another country. Or something. I used to hate Les Dawson's drag and his mother-in-law jokes even back then, though.

I loved Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough as Cissy and Ada. So did all my family, including my grandmother. We knew them. And my granny recognised herself in them, more than any other depiction of a middle aged woman on television at the time. Cissy and Ada were more sensitively and intelligently written than many of the female characters we watched.🤷‍♀️

It would have been just as funny if 2 women had performed it. But you didn't get any much observational comedy from women back then.

Well let’s be honest, men look ridiculous in dresses. They just do!

@LadyCatStark

Well let’s be honest, men look ridiculous in dresses. They just do!

The Romans would disagree. They considered trousers to be a barbarian garment. They only wore trousers if they were riding a horse.

@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.

French & Saunders had the dirty old men Jim and Jim, but they weren't funny at all. Nor was wee Jimmie Krankie.

Kathy Burke's Perry the Teenager was.

@LadyCatStark

Well let’s be honest, men look ridiculous in dresses. They just do!

To be honest I think you're right. I suppose it's moderately interesting to think why that is but it's not something I'm going to lose sleep over.

I see Bowie and Jagger are mentioned yet again as examples of men in dresses. Googling "Bowie in a dress" brings up lots of photos of the same 2 dresses- both are artfully posed for magazine shoots so I'm slightly sceptical at the idea of Bowie being the shining example of a man comfortable in a dress. The stage costumes don't count as they are stage costumes and not particularly "dressy"

So far as Jagger other than the Hyde Park concert (dress worn over trousers) is he a famed dress wearer?

Cobain is a better example- dresses actually did look ok on him- although he also wore them over cut off jeans.

The Romans would disagree. They considered trousers to be a barbarian garment. They only wore trousers if they were riding a horse.

Maybe not trousers, but I wouldn't say dresses. The kinds of unisex clothing like robes worn all over the world by both men and women tend to be very basic and boxy, loose fitting.

To me this is kind of where "everyone can wear anything" begins to go off the rails. There are cultures where men don't wear trousers, sure, and they often look great. But they still aren't wearing women's dresses as such. They are wearing robes or sarongs or kilts, made to fit a man. Often a women in the same thing doesn't look as good, even though some might call it a dress or skirt.

Women can more easily wear some men's clothing, but even so they often look better when it is women's clothing in a more traditionally male style - like a suit cut for a woman.

Really cross dressing just tends to look awkward on most people because the clothes tend not to fit well, and even if tailored the basic styles may not suit the frame.

Depends what you class as a dress.

They look ridiculous in the sort women wear purely because our society sees them purely as for women.

Anyway the paras I saw out once in skin tight mini dresses looked extremely tasty. The dresses left nothing to the imagination.

It's a real eye opener how revealing some women clothes are when you see them on men.