I Drew This

I think that sometimes you just have to resign yourself to the fact that you’ll never understand some people, and that that’s OK.

I was walking through the city today and saw a person with long hair, wearing a dress and makeup, who clearly was a male. Usually you can tell by the jawline or the brow. But nearly every time it’s the walk that gives them away. I’ve spent a lot of my time growing up watching the way women walk, very, very carefully. So I can usually pick it from the walk.

Now, I don’t think I’m an insensitive person. I like to think I’m pretty tolerant of any kind of need that people might have. I guess if I knew someone who felt the need to dress up as a lady, I’d be a bit more understanding, or open to understanding, or willing to make the effort to understand. My laziness probably isn’t an excuse for my attitude but, geez, there are a lot of people with different needs these days; taking the effort to understand all of them could be exhausting. Mind you, I’m not anti-crossdresser, I wouldn’t go out of my way to be abusive towards them or make fun of them (notwithstanding anything I may be about to write here but haven’t thought of yet) and if a person feels they need to dress up as a member of the opposite sex, or put on a gorilla suit for that matter, I have no problem with it.

I have to say though, that Little Britain hasn’t done much to advance understanding in that respect. And I think the point of this post was to say that I can’t walk past someone like that now without thinking of Matt & David dressed in Victorian-era dresses, curtseying and proclaiming their ladiness. It does make me snigger. I know it shouldn’t but it does.

And I think cross-dressers probably got a bad deal from Little Britain because they were the ‘victims’ of the parody in the sketch(es). My take is that Little Britain were making fun of anyone who puts on airs and graces. The exaggerated speech was as much a part of the humour as the dresses.

But they weren’t supposed to be convincing. And what I don’t know is whether cross-dressers think they look like real ladies or whether they know they look like men dressed up as ladies. Because they do look like men dressed as ladies. The makeup sometimes hides the facial hair and the shoes are too big for dainty lady-feet. And the walk…

Of course, it’s entirely possible that there may be some men dressed as ladies that do look like ladies and I can’t tell the difference. I may know a cross-dresser and not know it. I could buy my coffee/train ticket/lunch/small electrical appliances from them. And if they’ve practised their walking very, very carefully… yep, I may even have admired their gait. (Which kind of contaminates my sample group doesn’t it, so that could throw out the whole study… I may have to start again from scratch, admiring walking styles I know to be of ladies. I guess I’d just have to have confirmation that they are really ladies before I analyse their walking style… I dunno, I’d probably have to see them all naked or something.)