Cross dressing: all the rage with none of the revelation

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

Cross-dressing, men dressing as women, is the in thing these days, the media's newest obsession.

It's on all the talk shows; it's the linchpin of the hottest movie; it's even the theme of the Institute of Contemporary Art's new show "Dress Codes."

From androgyny to hodgepodgegyny, it's just a great, big, anything-goes, totally Mardi Gras world.

Which wouldn't be quite so hard to take if this were all just honest exhibitionism. But it isn't. It's being stamped important. It's being marketed as depth.

"I love you, you love me, we all love each other, alone, together, male or female, male and female, what's the difference," is the mantra, and people who can't dig it are square, hung up, inhibited dolts. Because The Truth is we should see men and women not as men and women but as people, never mind what they wear and if they have breasts or not. Open your eyes, America, the transvestites and transsexuals are shouting. Look at the soul of a person and not his shell.

And we should. But they're not showing us any souls - just body parts, all different kinds, in all different positions and forms. They go for the shock to get attention, and boy do they get it.

But then what? Then nothing. There are no important revelations here, just the same old poor-me-I-have-a-tough-life-no-one-understands-me-in-this-white-male -dominated-world.

This is a tired old song. No one is equal. Life is not fair. We're all misunderstood sometimes. Everyone is discriminated against. So what new things are being said?

No new things.

Hanging on a wall at the Institute of Contemporary Art, directly across from an exhibit of red wigs shaped like sex organs, is a placard with these words: "She liked the discomfort her cross-dressing caused and enjoyed recounting examples of it. She dressed as she did not simply to make her sexual orientation public. She experimented with male costume because it allowed her certain privileges."

Discomfort and privilege are the mainspring of this exhibit. Having people squirm and garnering some fame along the way is what churns the wave of exhibitionism that is making this country list.

Some of the "art" in the exhibit is a just a joke to remind us not to take ourselves so seriously. Kay, an ex-Green Beret, is photographed lounging in a red silk jacket, black skirt, black and red pumps, and black gloves. (Yes, there is a whip in his/her hands.)

But this is such an old joke. Shakespeare did it. Jack Lemmon did it. Even Dustin Hoffman did it. It's no flash that guys have always liked to dress up as women.

But leave it to them to elevate it to art!

A young woman the other day tried to explain to me the reason she so enjoyed a popular film which stars a transsexual. She said that at her age she is confused about and consumed by her sexuality. Really? At her age I was confused about whether or not the world was going to blow up. At her age, my mother was confused about whether or not she'd ever see my father again. He was in Europe fighting a war. At her age, my grandmother was praying that the influenza that was killing everyone around her would leave her alone.

All this I've-gotta-be-me-but-WHO-AM-I?- stuff strikes me as a tad egocentric. People are being killed at work, gunned down on the street, attacked in high school, bludgeoned to death with baseball bats, stalked, terrorized and tortured by the thousands every day and America is focused on sexual identity?

I think the Creator of this universe must look at us and groan. We're like children in a barn, playing I'll-show-you- mine-if-you-show-me-yours while the crops rot in the field, while the animals starve, while a tornado approaches, while vigilantes take over the town.

This exhibit and our exhibitionism is about identity, the transsexuals and transvestites say. It's about who we are.

But it isn't. It's about getting attention. It isn't meant to enlighten. It's meant to shock. It doesn't undercut stereotypes. It reinforces them.

Art edifies. What it tears down it replaces with something else. Cross-dressing, in print or in person, isn't art. It's camp. Outlandish theater. And nothing else.