Transvestites and Fashion
By Petal Jeffrey
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Transvestites are by no means the only ones to have fun manipulating the way others see them. There was, for example, a business woman in the seventies who held conferences sat at her desk in a plain blouse and sober jacket. It was only when the business was concluded that she stood up to reveal suede thigh boots and pink hotpants. No doubt the reactions she got were interesting...
Perhaps most importantly of all, the way we're dressed affects the way we feel about ourselves. It may often be difficult to distinguish this from the way in which dress determines how other people see us. After all, if we're treated with respect our confidence increases, and the more confident we are the more respect we're likely to receive. The two things feed into one another. However, if our clothes made no direct difference to how we feel about ourselves, it would make no sense for transvestites to dress in private. Almost all of us pass through a phase of doing this, and many continue - never receiving a second person's reaction to their fmeinine presentation. We all know that we feel very different in lingerie and a skirt from the way we are in masculine things.
When transvestites emerge into the public gaze, many people fail to understand why the feminine presentation is primarily for its own sake, rather than to seek a reaction from others. Even looking (and feeling) like a tart, the transvestite does not necessarily welcome male sexual advances.
Another example which demonstrates the importance of dress in the way that people see themselves is the the association between uniforms and good order in schools. It is unlikely that it makes much difference in the way that teachers view their pupils. Rather, I strongly suspect that uniforms affect the self-image of the school children.
All of this being so, it is not surprising that fifties women's clothing contrasts with that of the forties not only in terms of austerity, but with respect to the role that women were expected to fill. After the war, it was widely expected (especially by men) that women would return to more or less their position of the thirties. Indeed, many of them did just that. Those who managed to remain in work generally found that it was more humble - and worse paid - than their wartime occupation. A capable woman who had served as a WAAF Aquadron Leader might find that she was now considered fit for nothing more demanding than typing. In retrospect, it seems not only monstrously unfair, but a strange waste of national resources during a period of reconstruction.
Even on an entirely practical level, a woman was limited in her activites by those full skirts and masses of petticoat. They were certainly not well adapted to minding machines. And the pencil skirt, fashionable in the late fifties, could be almost as restricting as the Edwardian hobble skirt.
Little white gloves surfaced as an accessory. One doesn't often see them worn by transvestites in fifties styles - perhaps they represent too much bother with too little reward - but there was a time when women did not consider themselves properly dressed without the gloves. Unlike the sexier long opera gloves, the little white ones were very demure. All gloves restrict what we can do with our hands, and white ones are also apt to show any trace of dirt.
More likely to appeal to transvestites is the corsetry which underpinned the New Look of the nineteen fifties. Not since edwardian times had strait lacing for a tiny waist been so much in vogue. On the effects of this I quote from A History of Corsetry elsewhere on this site:
"There can be little doubt that imprisoning and often embarrassingly restrictive corsets, when really tightly laced, put the wearer into an extremely vulnerable physical position - a position that demands a submissive and placatory response towards threatening or aggressive behaviour from a male - or in the case of a TV, another male.
To attempt to 'stand up' for yourself in such a physically handicapping situation would be little short of foolhardy. Indeed, one cannot help asking oneself to what extent corsets have played a part in ensuring that women have been conditioned to accept a submissive role in society..."
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