Artist Grayson Perry Honoured by the Royal Academy

[Susan]

Probably the UK's most famous cross dresser is given a new honour.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/ ... ician.html

I am very happy for him/her

[Paula G]

some of Grayson Perry's work is very challenging, but always extremely well done, sometimes I wonder if he is himself one of his own a works of art. He has certainly brought cross dressing into the public arena with many apperances on national TV and Radio. More power to your elbow Grayson / Claire

[Martina]

I think Claire is fantastic but I also think that her tendency to dress up as a little girl might freak out people who don't get crossdressing. I would dress like Shirly Temple if people accepted crossdressing but I am of the opinion that it could be totally misinterpeted. I used to dress up in a school uniform for role play with a friend of mine and always felt much more "deviant" than in more age appropriate dresses. Even crossdressers who are brave enough to go out tend to dress to suit their age. I would love to see adult women dress in childish styles but society would not accept it. I do admire Claire and I would love to live a life where my crossdressing is accepted but if all CDers started going out dressed like underage girls there would be a backlash against crossdressing in general. Maybe she can get away with it because she is an artist. I would like to be wrong about this. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Absaroka]

I never watched him. But Martina I think you are right. The age thing comes in several varities. There's the 50 year old man trying to look like a sexy 25 year old. Not to mention some 50 year old women trying to do the same thing. It just doesn't work. Then there is trying to look like a 10 year old. Ask yourself about dressing like a 10 year old of the same gender and you'll get a lot of thoughts on immaturity. Switch to a 10 year old of the opposite gender and you run into the fact that often there is a sexual component to crossdressing (I think currently it's then refered to as transvestism, I'm not sure) and it starts to remind folks of pedophilia.

The age dynamic to crossdressing is something that isn't talked about that much here but I think it's a big part of it for some people. After all most men start to do this when they are young boys. As I learned when I had my own children, a 7 year old boy being fascinated by lingerie is pretty normal. And it makes sense that a certain percent will then just say let's try it on.

At this point I'll speak just about my own experience and thoughts. Please everyone, if it doesn't apply to you then disregard it. I started about age 8. When I'd been married a year or so I told my wife about this. Her reaction was that it all seemed childish, and that she married a man, not a boy. Note the man/boy dichotomy as opposed to a man/woman dichotomy. For me, the positive way to look at this is that dressing is playful. In touch with my inner child to use jargon from a few decades ago. Not that much different than being in amateur theater except I have no audience, or playing golf or basketball. Not that different than sex, which is the ultimate grown up type of play.

Another thing I read here is middle aged men saying they wish they could be a beautiful young woman. News flash, a lot of middle aged women feel the same way. But a middle aged man can't be a young woman even with SRS. The most they can hope for is to become a middle aged woman, with all that entails. Quite possibly not a conventionally attractive woman either. This is to me the mark of someone who is truly transexual, that they decide that being a perhaps not attractive person of their current age, quite possibly without a partner and maybe rather lonely, is worth expensive and complicated surgerys. But when I think about the beginning of the above paragraph I have to admit that perhaps for me the operative word in beautiful young woman is young. Of course I'd also like to be a young man, or at least have a young mans body. But that isn't something that would raise any eyebrows, not a surprise to anyone.

Here's another age dynamic. When we were 8 or 10 and dressed up, wasn't it usually in the clothes of our mother, aunt, older cousin or older sister? Back then we were boys wanting to be women. We get older and become men wanting to be girls.

So anyway these were just random thoughts. No I'm not trying to resurrect Freudian Oedipal stuff, at least not for anyone except myself.

[Anthony Simon]

I also find Grayson Perry's "little girl" persona disturbing. But then if you argue that the presentation is akin to an artform (like Paula does), you could say it's like the rest of what he does in his art. "Challenging" on sexually charged issues etc... So I dare say it's pretty self-aware.

I can't say that I'm all that typical on the youth/age thing, in that, despite my age (57) I have a rather youthful face (maybe late 30s). And, bizarrely that can go up and down, depending. I mean it can look distinctly boyish (or when I'm dressed up, girlish). I kind of feel I have a great big hit coming my way and one day I'm going to wake up having aged. But anyway that pleasure awaits me.

The funny thing is that, of late, when I dress up, I nearly always get a middle-aged woman's face. Basically of someone more or less my age. I do think we all have different aspects of ourselves (and others) within ourselves and we can access them when we dress up. Obviously this is one attraction of it from the point of "freeing our female side", but you could just as well argue that it allows us to free our youthful (Or aged, in my case) side. In that case it becomes like an actor playing a role (to a degree and with some people). Say like Noomi Rapace chanelling Lisbeth Salander from "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (there's an interesting interview on the DVD where she talks about this a bit).

On the "dressing up is childish" thing, one aspect of the dressing is a wish to be a woman. When you're a child you can't tell the difference between a wish and reality. So, when I dress up, I kind of really think I'm a woman - like I feel like that (whatever that means). It kind of allows me to live out my wish (to be a woman).

[Paula G]

First on Grayson / Claire, I don't believe that he thinsk he is dressing as a little girl, it is as much characters from fairy stories. Much of what he does, both in his art and as Claire comes from the problems he had as a child. I have heard him on the radio quite a few times, and he comes across very well.

Now, as far as the age thing goes. I have recently had a cull of my wardrobe, and a lot of the age inappropriate items have been consigned to the charity shop, why? well I want to go out and be accepted as a normal woman, as someone past the 50 mark this won't happen if I'm wearing a pink suede skirt that would be short on a seventeen year old four inches shorter than me! Why would Paula buy such a thing, well when she did buy it she was very young, indeed possibly only a few monthes old. Paula is still very young, it's just that the body she inhabits is older from use by Him. So Paula is young enough to wear that skirt, unfortunately the body she is in isn't, so Paula has had to grow up, and old very quickly, maturity can stink, but it also has the advantage of being less conspicouse.

[Absaroka]

Paula your comments about age reminded me of something I have read a number of times in the autobiographies of transexuals. When the hormone therapy starts, suddenly they are experiencing the rush of either estrogen or testosterone for the first time. And so biologically they are feeling a bit like 13 year old girls or boys, respectively. Part of growing up is that we learn to handle this stuff, but they have to start at a much later age.