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Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety

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first off, i can't say i would recommend this book to someone who doesn't have a more academic background, flitting as it does from foucault to freud & back again, but i have to say that it's critique & thesis are well-reasoned, well-argued, & definitely well-referenced! it's like a cross dressing field guide in some ways... i found myself making up a list of movies/books to check out. even moreso, it's a great book for anyone wanting to study gender construction in general... as it gets at that shadowy figure inbetween the genders, who belies/affirms all the constructs...

thank you marjorie garber!

I read the original 1992 hardcover edition. Which means, this book is dated. Definitely missing yet is for example the concept of metrosexuality. The newest films analyzed are Tootsie (1982) and Yentl (1983), already a decade old when this book was published.

Marjorie Garber uses a very rich vocabulary, some of which I was even able to stump internet dictionaries with. On the other hand, she uses unintended racist vocabulary. She may have known better in 1992.

Many parts of the 390-paged book (+ 35 pages of footnotes and 38 picture pages, some of which are in color) are very interesting to read. Usually, when playing topsyturvy with our Western concepts of gender. For example that the pink-blue baby colors were reversed before WWI. When and in what circumstances Muslim societies appear to harbor more gender freedoms than the West. (Though the author doesn't mention everything possible.) Many history lessons are to be learned, e.g. that Joan of Arc wasn't tried under the inquisition for heresy, but transvestism.

Lengthy chapters are reserved for classic films, sumptuary laws, Peter Pan, Salome, detective stories, M. Butterfly, the posthumous Harold Washington scandal, Josephine Baker and the image connection among Valentino, Liberace and Elvis. With most of these chapters I had the feeling that they were somewhat arbitrary or that separate long articles, worthy as they may be individually, were compiled for a book, which often loses sight of its overall coherence. Even though I liked reading about all of that, it felt too much like a patchwork text instead of clear messages.

If you are interested in gender studies, don't miss out on this one. Just make sure, this will not remain the only one. Some other books include The Mismeasure of Woman, Myths Of Gender: Biological Theories About Women And Men, Revised Edition, The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge Studies in the History of Medicine) and Nature's Body: Gender In The Making Of Modern Science

Marjorie Garber
Vested Interests:
Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety

(New York: Routledge, 1992) 443 pages
(ISBN: 0-415-90072-7; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ77.G37 1991)

A wide-ranging book on the public manifestations
of wearing the clothes and adopting the manners of the other sex,
especially as seen in the mass media--television, movies, magazines.
Cross-dressing for the following reasons:
entertainment in the theatre and movies;
respect in the workplace;
to express the other-gender side of one's personality;
for personal sexual interest, arousal, & orgasm;
as an element of one's homosexual sex-script;
to 'pass' as the other sex;
transsexualism--because one believes one is 'really' the other sex;

This book explores cross-dressing as a cultural phenomenon,
rather than a psychological phenomenon.

If you would like to read better books on cross-dressing,
search the Internet for this bibliography:
"Cross-Dressing Bibliography".

James Leonard Park