Crossdressing without Intention

Viola’s crossdressing in Twelfth Night is one of the more unique crossdressing narratives in existence, if you ask me. It has a unique attribute that sets it apart not only from other stories, but even from its own adaptations, at times. Even in movies like She’s the Man, directly based off Twelfth Night, the crossdressing involved has a significant difference at hand: it’s fully intentional.

In She’s the Man, Viola wants to play soccer, so her choice to switch with her brother is a specifically chosen act. In Disney’s Motocrossed, loosely based on Twelfth Night, Andrea (the Viola character) takes her brother’s place in the race. In other Shakespeare tales, such as The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It, the audience is given the impression that the crossdressing can be undone at any time. Portia in The Merchant of Venice hopes to fix Bassanio’s debt to Antonio, ensuring the safety of her marriage. Rosalind in As You Like It maintains her disguise to continue wooing Orlando.

Yet, in Twelfth Night, none of that flexibility seems to be present. Sure, Viola makes the choice to dress as Cesario, but it’s not out of any personal benefit. It’s for the sake of her safety. In Illyria there are only two great powers, Orsino and Olivia, and Olivia is grieving and won’t take new staff. Orsino, on the other hand, will likely only accept a man, or at least, Viola doesn’t seem to feel like going into his service as a woman.

Then Viola, as Cesario, woos Olivia for Orsino – but it backfires. Olivia falls for her instead. And Viola then reaffirms the idea that she is crossdressing mainly because she has to, not because she wants to, because of how much she seems to regret that Olivia has been tricked. “Poor lady, she would better love a dream,” she says, mourning Olivia’s unluckiness in falling for her. She also mentions that “time” must untangle this problem, because “it is too hard a knot for me to untie!” Viola feels that there is nothing she can do about Olivia’s doomed love.

"Arry" with Gendry, a fellow recuit, among other things.

The only other instance I can think of where a female character crossdresses out of necessity, not opportunity, might be something like Arya’s situation in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire. At one point early in the story, when her family is in trouble, Arya is forced to flee for her life. She joins up with some Night’s Watch recruits, but in order to do so safely, she dresses as a boy and takes on the name “Arry.” A few interesting incidents come up as a result of her disguise. At times, Arya shows frustration with her disguise, similarly to Viola in her position in Twelfth Night.

Perhaps it’s just that these situations are more difficult to write and deal with, but it’s still interesting how crossdressing women in fiction usually seem to have some degree of agency in their crossdressing, and to point out the exceptions to that guideline. I would argue that it often paints a more sympathetic picture of the crossdresser in question – fiction often demonizes women being selfish and taking action, or pursuing “usurp’d” masculinity, so a woman forced into those situations, rather than choosing them, becomes more palatable to a generally sexist audience.

Gay? Hahahah!

When I was little, I can remember there being a skit on MadTV that involved two 'heterosexual' men watching football. They were both very involved in the game, and whenever their team made a point, they went wild. At one point, they just started making out, and the audience laughed. My sister laughed, too. I didn't; I thought it was love at the time. In our society, and in other society's in the past, same-sex attraction has been seen as a threat to the norm(Two men cannot produce a child, two women cannot 'properly' consummate a marriage, etc.). Since this has been a problem for an ongoing period of time, there's only one way for homosexuality to be seen as 'acceptable' in the eyes of the heteronormative public: as a punchline in a homophobic joke. For example, in 'Twelfth Night', the situation Viola is in is comedic, rather than tragic. Most people see it as, 'oh, how funny! Olivia, a woman, loves Cesario, who is actually another woman! How funny!' I see this situation as tragic. Olivia has fallen for someone she can never have, both by law and Viola's wishes. I feel as if Shakespeare is using this 'joke' to get people to understand homosexual attraction, but they just don't get it. Nowadays, homosexuality is used as a punchline in too many heteronormative comedies. In the Kevin Hart movie that I refuse to look up because I do not want it to have any more attention than it deserves, he pretends to be the best man at a guy's wedding. In a scene, Kevin teaches the guy to ballroom dance, but they end up doing the Douggie instead. An older woman watching says to her friend, 'Oh, those gays are just so talented.' This is degrading to me as a homosexual man. It's a stereotype that is overused first of all and it's boiling down my sexuality to a joke. All in all, I'm just ranting about a problem that probably doesn't exist and I'm over it.

What Qualifies as Homo-erotic?

In Twelfth Night, the attraction between Duke Orsino and Viola-as-Cesario can be interpreted as homoerotic pretty easily. The duke takes an instant liking to Cesario, noting the "young man's" beauty and even taking pains to describe it. He tells Cesario that "Diana's lip / is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe / is as the maiden's organ, shrill and sound" (1.5.30-32). He clearly admires Cesario's looks, and describes them as more beautiful than Diana. Orsino does emphasize Cesario's feminine traits, but this desire can still be categorized as homoerotic since he believes himself to be attracted to a man. In fact, even in the end of the play, when Viola's plot is revealed, Orsino refers to her as "boy" and leaves the stage with Viola still in drag. Her true "women's weeds" are never shown, leading us to believe that the desire here, at least from Orsino, is homoerotic and homosexual.

I find this attraction very interesting. In Shakespeare's day, homosocial bonding was the norm; men had relationships with other men that they simply did not have with women. Male friendship was certainly idolized, but I would argue that it was often homoerotic as well. This is certainly the case with Cesario and Orsino's relationship; there is an underlying homoerotic tension throughout every interaction.

What I thought was interesting was how this has changed. Today, the terms "homosocial" and "homoerotic" are fairly uncommon, even unknown to some. However, I would argue that the underlying culture has not changed. Homosocial bonding is still very prevalent, even flaunted and celebrated as the highest level of friendship.

I think the idea of underlying homoeroticism is very interesting when applied to ideas of masculinity today. What came to mind immediately were Men's Health covers. Here is a magazine marketed towards men and largely written by and for men, with health, dating, and sex tips. Here's an example of a recent cover featuring Shaun T, fitness guru known for his Insanity and T-25 videos.

This feels incredibly homoerotic to me. All of the covers are similar; men set up to be admired for their physique. However, I'm willing to bet that were we to throw out the word homoerotic, most of  the "Men's Health" audience would recoil. Interestingly, Orsino is attracted to Cesario for his boyish, feminine traits, while chiseled, muscular men frequent the cover of Men's Health. Regardless, I view both situations as homoerotic, and I would be interested to see what you all think about this and how our views of homoeroticism have changed since Shakespeare's day.

In Twelfth Night, the Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia. Viola falls in love with Orsino, while disguised as a boy, Cessario. Olivia falls in love with Cessario. This love triangle is only resolved when Olivia happens to fall in love with Viola's twin brother, Sebastian and at the last second, Orsino decides that he actually loves Viola. The movie She's the Man some-what mirrors this play and twists it into a more modern version. The title page of this movie goes something like... “Everybody has a secret… Duke wants Olivia, who likes Sebastian, who is really Viola, whose brother is dating Monique, so she hates Olivia, who’s with Duke to make Sebastian jealous, who is really Viola, who’s crushing on Duke, who thinks she’s a guy…”Sounds about right except some major homo-social/sexual tensions they leave out of the movie that are included in the play. While I think the movie does a great job of "destroying social norms" like this buzzfeed article suggests, there are still homophobic qualities that were pretty disappointing, but that's just how Hollywood and our society still work right now.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lilyhiottmillis/21-times-shes-the-man-totally-destroyed-gender-norms#.yraMYmYo5

What fascinates me the most about these differences between the actual play and the movie is that the differences mostly surround the homo-social/sexual relationships found in the play. Like the fact that Duke Orsino is definitely attracted to Viola when she is dressed as the boy, Cessario. After they are married, while she is still dressed as a male, and even calls her "boy." In the movie, there is no sexual tension between Duke and Viola ( while she is dressed as Sebastian) and there is even some homophobic qualities that come out of Duke when she sometimes forgets to act more manly and when they are jumping on the bed scared of the spider.
And in opposition to the play, when Viola and Duke end up together, she is in a dress at a ball.



Also, there are a ton of derogatory comments from the coaches made toward the soccer players in the movie referring to them as "girls," or "playing like girls," etc. While I understand athletics is added into the movie version, why is a film that is "destroying gender norms" adding these comments in and then having one of the same characters saying his team doesn't discriminate. This seems contradictory to me but maybe it's because I'm so conscious of these issues, especially after taking this Shakespeare course!

So, my question is, why is our society less progressive in this take on the play than Shakespearean society, especially when we claim to be so progressive towards these homophobic issues? 

Parable As You Like It: A Consideration of Cross Dressing

In Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, the audience is presented with a character, Lauren, who chooses/if forced to cross dress as a man due to the circumstances of her environment. She makes it clear to her travelling companions (Henry and Zahra) the importance of keeping her true gender a secret from any others they should encounter in their travels, the potential risk the group faced should it be revealed. However, despite this, Henry still proves incapable of keeping said secret, referring to Lauren as her in front of another group of wanderers. When called out on this, “smiling embarrassingly” (Butler 212) he replied “I’ve known you all my life. It isn’t easy to remember to switch all your pronouns.” (Butler 212)

            Yet in As You Like It, no such slip is made, nor even apparently a worry. Celia shows little apparent difficulty in altering her referral to Rosalind/Ganymede, and is able to keep the truth of the matter a secret until the appropriate time. This raises the question then of whether or not Parable of the Sower’s presentation of Henry’s difficulty in adapting is reasonable and truly a simple mistake on the character’s part when compared to the fluidity shown in Shakespeare.

            I believe much of the variation in these situations can actually be attributed primarily to the underlying needs of the narratives themselves, and the differing themes Shakespeare and Butler were concerned with addressing. The comedic nature of As You Like It might have potentially benefited from an accidental reveal of Rosalind’s identity; however, the removal of the actual “reveal” would have cheated the piece of a measure of its ability to play with and blur the lines of gender. Alternatively, the far more grim nature of Parable of the Sower, the society it chronicles spiraling into dystopia, creates a greater necessity for this accidental reveal. The added tension of Lauren’s true gender being revealed, even if only slight, builds on the already substantial strain placed on Lauren, and sets in motion key events of the narrative. The accidental reveal in this case, the questioning of Lauren’s “true” gender, is something the text needed to address to continue to build on its concepts, where the same accidental reveal/questioning would have likely proved damaging to the pursuits of As You Like It. 

The Cross Dressing in the Room

As we have discussed heavily in class, cross dressing female characters within the play AND their cross dressing boy actors are a huge elephant in the room that must be addressed.

In both The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It, the two main female characters, Portia and Rosalind, disguise themselves as men in order to gain the power they need to make things right for themselves and those around them in their respective plays.

If these women were not in drag they wouldn't have been able to assert themselves in the same way they were both able to dressed as men. They are both clearly strong women (and human beings in general…) but unfortunately their position against the male characters would have fallen short in the end. SO, they both do what they have to in order to achieve their successes.

The big reveal in the end of both plays is the best part of this mixed up situation! Portia reveals to everyone when they are finally back in her home and she calls Bassanio out for giving her ring away and confesses that she was the lawyer who saved Antonio’s life when he was about to be skinned alive by Shylock. In As You Like It, Rosalind comes back from removing her disguise and the men were all like oh we knew it was her all along….. Okay, maybe but no. Let her have her success since this was the only way she was able to get it in a patriarchal society.

The Epilogue in As You Like It twists this crazy situation even further by having the boy actor who played Rosalind give the epilogue saying something along the lines of…. I know women aren't usually the ones to read the epilogue and this play really doesn't even need one but we’re just going to trip you up because I’m really a boy still just dressed up like a woman. Wait…. Who are you? 

Sneaking Around the Censors

Perhaps the funniest part of As You Like It, to me, is the way it screws everything up so badly that Hymen, the literal god of marriage himself, has to swoop in just to make heteronormative sense of everything again.

It’s hard not to come away from As You Like It with the impression that Shakespeare was taking on the task of accessing homosexuality, or at least, homoeroticism of some sort. In the world of comedy, Shakespeare can slip in depictions of love between characters of the same gender, because it’s all a joke, right? All he has to do is make sure the higher-up governing officials of London – his era’s dreaded Network Censors – are pacified by the onslaught of heteronormative marriage at the end.

Shakespeare’s specific vehicle for accomplishing this mess is through crossdressing, and perhaps “cross-acting” in a sense as well. Ignoring the boy actor playing her for the moment, Rosalind’s triple nature makes her the perfect way to draw everyone in.

Dressing as Ganymede, Aliena’s companion on the road, Rosalind seems to act more as a lover than a brother to Celia in her new identity, even they're called ‘cousins.’ The way their relationship is described as “dearer than the natural bond of sisters” makes me think more of the Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune version of cousins, though. As Ganymede, Rosalind also finds that Phoebe falls in love with her, and towards the end of the play she says to Phoebe, “I would love you, if I could... I will marry you, if ever I marry woman,” showing some degree of requitedness in that relationship. Then, she begins to act as Orlando’s “Rosalind,” adding a third identity to the mess, and allowing Orlando to act like a man in love with a man, Ganymede... Because he’s acting in love with Rosalind.

And all of this homoeroticism going around is allowable because of Rosalind’s crossdressing. These romances can occur and Hymen can detangle them at the end, combing them out into four neat male-female couples just like that.

In the modern world, devices like crossdressing aren’t always necessary any longer. While queer representation on TV is still flawed, it exists – an impressive step forward.

However, children’s television has yet to catch up to the crowd. There have been a few recent strides forward, such as a kid on Disney with two moms, or the eventual romance between Korra and Asami, but for the most part the censors won’t allow even hints of queer relationships to slip through. Not even five seconds of a literal Love God doing his thing. Not even a couple of unnamed characters kissing briefly in the background. That’s a pair of recent examples out of many. Ouch.

So, like Shakespeare, some creators of children’s television have resorted to more covert means, hoping to get some queer representation out in the world. Recently, the show Steven Universe has done a pretty impressive job of it. Shakespeare imagined women dressing as boys to cause a stir. Steven Universe takes the idea of messing around with gender and identity to produce queer relationships a step further.

In the world of Steven Universe, there are alien characters called “gems.” Steven himself is half-human, half-gem, and has many of the abilities of other gems. One such ability is fusion: the ability to combine himself with another person to create a bigger, stronger person made of their combined identities. At first, Steven doesn’t know he possesses this particular ability, but when he tries in the episode “Alone Together”, he finds that he can fuse with his female friend, Connie.

The first time they meet, Steven accidentally uses his gem powers and they get trapped in a bubble.

The result is Stevonnie, an individual of unknown gender, seemingly in their teenage years, and absolutely gorgeous.

Stevonnie likes to dance.

In fact, Stevonnie is so gorgeous that when they go to get a donut at the local shop, both Sadie and Lars, a teen girl and a teen boy, are equally stunned and start blushing everywhere.

Maybe the humor of Lars and Sadie both finding Stevonnie attractive makes it okay, like the comedy in As You Like It?

And the censors are fine with this! After all, Sadie’s attracted to the boy part of Stevonnie, and Lars is attracted to the girl part of Stevonnie, right? Or at least, that’s the excuse you can give to any nosy execs who might think you’ve gone too far. Since the Stevonnie episode, the creators of Steven Universe have even used gem fusion as a smokescreen for queer content a second time, revealing in “Jailbreak” that the character of Garnet is the fusion of two gems who are pretty obviously in love, but still just sneaky enough to get past the censors.

But not that sneaky.

Shakespeare had his crossdressing, and here in the future, we have our… uh… strange alien power combination identity analogue. Hopefully at some point these kind of tricks for pulling off romances that aren’t straighter than a block of wood won’t be necessary, and queer kids can see themselves in their media without this kind of hassle. But, even so, it’s still entertaining to see how ways of sneaking queer content in have evolved over the past centuries, expanding into new genres with new smokescreens. Pushing the boundaries seems like an important part of writing that will never change.

Pyrrhic Victories

Shakespeare’s As You Like It explores the consequences and goals associated with female crossdressing and societal power dynamics. From a historical perspective, crossdressing has often played a role in pop culture, but hidden crossdressing has also revealed how established power structures react to violations of gender roles and how those reactions speak to the outlooks of transgressive women. DeAnne Blanton’s piece “Women Soldiers of the Civil War” in the National Archives documents women who secretly served in the military during the Civil War by disguising themselves as men. Unlike Rosalind’s guise as the notorious Ganymede, these women appropriated generic male aliases to not raise suspicion.





Rosalind/Ganymede and Orlando's mock marriage in the forest

            Blanton writes, “The reading public, at least, was well aware that these women rejected Victorian social constraints confining them to the domestic sphere” (Blanton). Yet was their primary goal to rebel against these constraints and experience a more independent life outside the household or fight for the victory of their respective allegiances? No one knows, but regardless of their motives, the consequences of such actions appear to be the same in the context of mid-19^th century America and Shakespeare’s play. Even though Rosalind and Celia apparently wish to avoid conflict with their disguises as men, they, like the women who fought in the Civil War, end up seizing a measure of unconventional authority only to circulate more collective powers to men.

As Valerie Traub cites in her essay we read, Louis Adrian Montrose frames Rosalind/Ganymede’s power as a temporary misrule that ultimately transfers “authority, property, and title” to other men (Traub 136). Similarly, the female soldiers would have ended up doing the same, for their actions were ineligible for measurement in terms of merit while other male soldiers became heroes, garnering praise and material rewards. “The press seemed unconcerned about the women’s actual military exploits. Rather, the fascination lay in the simple fact that they had been in the army,” Blanton writes (Blanton).




Frances Clayton serving in the Missouri artillery during the Civil War

            The single instance in Shakespeare’s work where women take an interest in combat comes as Orlando prepares to wrestle Charles. “…are you / crept hither to see the wrestling?” Duke Frederick asks Rosalind and Celia (1.2.127-8). His comments indicate that he is  somewhat amused by their presence and does not think these women could ever have a serious appreciation for violence. In the context of the female soldiers, this hints at a tendency for male-driven social structures to discount the possibility of women serving in the military in the first place. Ironically, this tendency leads to rigid defense mechanisms to maintain systematic pride when evidence of crossdressing women in the military surfaces. In one letter, General F. C. Ainsworth writes, “I have the honor to inform you that no official record has been found in the War Department showing specifically that any woman was ever enlisted in the military service of the United States…at any time during the period of the civil war” to a researcher even though abundant evidence suggests the opposite (Blanton).

            So what does this mean for the outlooks of crossdressing women in the Civil War and Shakespeare’s play? In my opinion, the aforementioned parallels between the female crossdressing in As You Like It and the Civil War along with the reactions of individuals and institutions suggest that any amount of power, agency, and/or opportunity drawn from such actions by women are very limited and rely on others for their fruition. Rosalind/Ganymede demonstrates this after binding other male and female characters into marriage agreements. “I have left you commands,” she says before leaving (5.2.111), demonstrating that instead of her agency backing her commands, the force of the imperatives rests between the promises and enforcement of and by the other characters only. So although crossdressing women have the ability in these contexts to channel authority normally reserved for men, such victories are pyrrhic victories because they ultimately return authority and circulate rewards back to men in relation to their inability and unwillingness to view the actions and intentions of female crossdressers outside of gendered expectations. What do you all think?

Here's the link to that article if you all are interested.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1993/spring/women-in-the-civil-war-1.html

Cross Dressing Women

Out of the plays we have read so far, Shakespeare continually questions gender roles and politics. Within The Merchant of Venice, Portia is introduced as a desirable woman before we even meet her.

Portia’s wealth makes her an immediate meal ticket for Bassanio, and she immediately takes on the masculine quality of being in power or control because of this wealth.

When Portia cross-dresses as a lawyer and saves Antonio’s life during the big trial scene she also crosses the gender lines (quite literally) and not only is she clever enough to save Bassanio’s BFF (or possible lover?) she also makes it so both men owe her big time.

Portia maintains these male traits when she tricks Bassanio into giving her the ring (the one she made him promise to never part from) In doing this, Portia is able to regain agency within the limited circumstances that her father left for her to live in. She basically tells Bassanio that he better not fuck up again, and that she can do presumably whatever she wants. By the end of the play, Portia has successfully tricked the men into believing she was a male judge, and she outsmarts everyone and winds up on top. 

After Portia, Shakespeare gives us Rosalind in As You Like It. Rosalind takes cross dressing to an even greater level than Portia does. Not only does Rosalind cross dress as Ganymede, she causes all sorts of a  cluster fuck of relationships that cannot possibly work. Rosalind is an interesting character because she not only breaks the hetero-normative status of women, but she also breaks the traditional homoerotic relationships as well. The younger partner is supposed to be the more receptive one, but Ganymede controls the relationship with Orlando.

Finally, Shakespeare destroys all boundaries between men in women in  The Merchant of Venice. Viola, the main female character uses cross dressing as a way to get what she wants as well.  Instead of discussing the play itself, I want to discuss the plays modern day portrayal of  The Twelfth Knight She’s The Man. This movie maintains similar character names and plots to the play. 

This movie was produced in 2006 and stars Amanda Bynes and Channing Tatum. Viola (the main female character) wants to play soccer for a school, but is rejected because she is a female. Viola conjures up a plan to take her brother Sebastian’s place at a boarding school so that he can go to London and perform with his band, and so she can play soccer. Though the stories are not exactly the same, a female is cross-dressing in order to get what she wants. Like Portia and Rosalind, Viola is willing to act as a man in order to attain the things she wants. 

At the end of the movie, Viola tells her team that she has been impersonating her brother and she convinces them of this by showing her breasts. Similar to Portia and how she was able to fool everyone, Viola successfully fooled her teammates into thinking she was a man, and is able to remain on the team at the end of the movie.

Just like Portia and Rosalind fooled their 'lovers', Viola (Sebastian) has fooled her roommate Duke who has met the actual Viola and has feelings for her.

Cross-dressing within all of these plays  allow  Portia, Rosalind, and Viola to carry out a role that they would be unable to do as women. Portia and Nerrissa can attend Antonio’s trial and set him free, Rosalind is able to marry the man she wants, and Viola (from the movie) is allowed the chance to play on a male soccer team. Before each of these women cross-dress they are only permitted to pray and hope for their causes, but the instant they are transformed into male characters, they can single-handedly help and get what they want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofIzQbTGQ2E