Gender Bending Party Reflection Essays

Gender Bending Party Reflection Essays Gender Bending Party Reflection Essay Gender Bending Party Reflection Essay We are living in a twisted world. When I first heard of this gender bending party, I did not feel special at all because I experience this gender bending process myself everyday in my life. However, this party did raise the old memories of my teenage days. I was a typical little girl when I was 3 or 4 years old. I behaved very gently and followed everything my parents said. I also dressed very girlish at that time. I remembered that I refused to wear trousers even we were off to the playground (I just could not believe that I wore a dress to climb up the monkey mountain) 2 years old. My hair was such a disaster! I did not wear dress (expect school uniform) since then until entering university. I kept this hair style for many years the recent year. For 9 years I was living a gender bending life. I was called little brother, mister whenever I was out in my casual wear. I am so used to be a boy or have a males identity that I would not feel embarrassing when the others misjudge my sex. My mother asked me if I needed a transgender operation or not. This is a very inspiring question indeed. I agree with some of the trans revolutionists that male / female norms are no longer objectively defined by the sex organs a person was born with, but subjective and socially constructed (LaBarbera, 2001). Here, the word socially is the focus. The interpretation of gender identity depends mostly on what society you are living in. Furthermore, the appearance cannot tell the whole story of a person. To me, wearing sports wear and clothing that are originally designed for men are just because I feel like to. : It is more convenience for me to dress that way. There is nothing to do with psychological abnormality. I like to be a girl. Nevertheless, the others are not thinking in the same way as I am. For many people, especially for my parents generation would think that you must be homosexual, bisexual or some kind of freak if you dress like the opposite sex. Boy meets girl, an experiment that carried out by a television broadcast company in England (2001). The participants of the program had to transform themselves into members of the opposite sex. They must walk, talk, dress, behave and think differently as they developed a character who they would play while living as the opposite sex. It was similar to our gender bending party, yet, more strict. People were free to join, but there was different stage of elimination. Girl to boy Our gender bending party was not that successful because the gender concept limited our creativity. Actually all of us should know what a typical boy / girl should like, yet, we were not open enough to play the new gender role that was different from what we were originally. We were not psychologically prepared well to join the party. From the Boy meets Girl program, I learnt that the most successful participant was the one who fear of nothing including the insecurity feeling that generated by him. The weakness of us was the characteristics of the gender were not emphasized enough. The Boy meets Girl program participants were to change from head to toe, including their body shape, voice, fashion taste and even behavior. To me, the most difficult thing to breakthrough in the party was to commit something that I was not. How can we face the public when we are not familiar to ourselves? How can we present ourselves? It was certainly not comfortable for us and the people would have contact with us. As I mentioned before, gender identity was closely related to social context. You wont feel strange if every boy wear dress in street. Actually, the history of cross-dressing stretches back a long way, to origins far removed from gay night clubs. In medieval Europe, women cross-dressed to overcome the gender hierarchy. Historical accounts reveal that abandoned wives often donned male disguise in order to live independent lives. The literature of the time reveals a fascination with cross-dressing. Some have speculated that Joan of Arc was a transvestite and there is even a legend of a female Pope. Cross-dressing was also found in China. During the Wei-Jin period, idle talk ( ) was popular among the upper class and the intellects. Only men could join idle talk. They would make up and wear beautiful garments like ladies to attend these idle talk meetings. However, the popularity of idle talk did not mean the disempowerment of machoism. It is not difficult to see why. First, under the patriarchal society, the power of male is always protected. Second, if men can successfully play the role as women, means they can take control of both sexes. They act or dress like women because they choose to be, on the other hand, women should dress properly what a women should dress. This was my interpretation of gender identity in Wei-Jin period. I do not think it is the case now in Hong Kong. Cross-dressing is always linked with fashion, uniqueness. In many fashion magazines, you can always see a male model dress very girlishly.