To wear clothes traditionally worn by the opposite sex. While a woman wearing a tailored Armani suit, for example, might be seen by some as overtly erotic and may even raise a few eyebrows in certain circles, in the 21st century, this term generally applies more to men than to women.

These days, society is very accepting of women wearing trousers, for example, but in the middle of the 19th Century, French novelist and baroness Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, better known by her pen name George Sand, scandalized the upper crust of Parisian society by wearing men’s clothing in public.

Men wearing women’s clothing is another matter altogether. There is a long history of men wearing women’s clothing for intentional comic effect. During the golden age of television, Milton Berle often dressed in women’s clothing, usually in costume as some famous character like Cleopatra, Little Bo Peep, or Carmen Miranda. The joke was that Milton Berle, who was not a traditionally handsome man, made an extremely ugly woman.

For some men, the object of cross-dressing is to “pass,” i.e. to be perceived as genuinely female by strangers in public, while for others the object may to be highlight the inherent eroticism and glamour of cross dressing while embracing one’s feminine and masculine sides simultaneously. This seems to be the culture of the modern-day drag show, a predominately gay subculture in which performers cross-dress in outlandish costumes to both poke fun at and pay homage to popular culture while celebrating a broad spectrum of (primarily queer) sexuality.

1. Why is it that so many men end up cross-dressing for Halloween? I think they’re just expressing a long pent-up desire to embrace their feminine sides while pretending the whole thing is a joke.

2. Howard wants to have a cross-dressing bachelor party, but Kyle doesn’t want to do it because he doesn’t think he can pass.

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Fetish

Tranny