I don’t know where the fuck I am half the time. I woke up here one day thinking I was in London. I’m coming from Australia and went to Paris for literally forty-eight hours just to change clothes. So this is where my confusion is now; do I take everything I may need for my next trip, or do I get to come back home before going away again? When you’re cross-dressing, what does one take?

I take the basic things that I wear everyday when I’m not working: T-shirts, jeans, a couple of cardigans and a good few pairs of shoes. I take more shoes than I should – sometimes I travel with ten to fifteen pairs. Mostly men’s shoes, and a few women’s shoes with a heel just in case I need them for TV. I always carry a black suit: I can dress it up or down. If I’m travelling between New York and Paris, I don’t take underwear and T-shirts because I keep doubles in both places, but sometimes I get really upset and freak out that I don’t have the shoes I need for an outfit.

My on- and off-duty persona is a combination of many things; it depends on what the duty is. If I’m doing TV, it depends on what my spirit is work-wise. For the 2016 Oscars, my outfit consisted of one-two-three different designers. I had a beaded bag that said ‘Queen of Fucking Everything,’ which was given to me. I wore a jacket from 1994 that I cut short and wore over a shirt from 2007, and a tulle and ostrich feather skirt over black sequin sweatpants. I just threw it all together. The skirt and the pants were from one designer, the shoes were Marc Jacobs, the jacket was from Mr Kim, a tailor in Korea, and the shirt was from another tailor in Thailand: I had it made when I was working there. And to another more recent event in Savannah with Carolina Herrera, I wore an old Marc Jacobs jacket, and I made this diaper skirt, like a harem pant, in satin chiffon. The fabric came from the donation closet at the Savannah College of Art and Design; designers often donate to them so when I’m there I’ll just go see what they have. Whatever they’re not using, I’ll just pull a few yards from. I wore the outfit with wing tipped, lace-up and suede Marc Jacobs shoes that I’ve worn twice before. Once for my boyfriend’s sister’s wedding, and then again for a fashion week event. I also wore a Tom Ford YSL clutch, and a scarf I made out of scraps of fabric. I had my hair in cornrows, so I just brushed it out. Everyone thought I was wearing a wig, but it was all my hair. This is the look. It’s an androgynous moment in hot-ass Savannah.

Marc Jacobs has been ever so generous with me over the past ten years. I’ve known him nearly all my life, and Robert Duffy who was the ex-CEO of the company too. So whenever I needed anything, and even when I didn’t need anything, they’d send me things. They told me that I’m the only person that they know that sends things back, but I don’t want to be greedy so if I’m not going to wear something I give it back. Good clothing should never be thrown away: you can always cut it apart and make something new with it.

I taught myself how to sew because when I was much younger, I couldn’t afford to buy designer clothes. I grew up in New York City, in the Bronx. I’m number seven of ten kids so I’d get my brothers’ hand-me-down clothes. There was Ronald, Stephen, Stanley and myself. We all went to the same school, and I didn’t want kids to make fun of me so I’d create something different. I would make the pants shorter, fringe the jeans, cut holes into a peace sign, take the collars off the shirts and make them short sleeved. Once a girl called Jennifer Brown showed me how to make a men’s suit with a pattern, but apart from that I taught myself by trial and error.

When I was twenty-three, I was working at Bergdorf Goodman in the city and some girls took me to Studio 54 for the first time. I realised that they only let people in who were dressed outrageous. So I did the same: I wore a crazy outfit, and they’d let me in. I would make a skirt out of tulle and wear it over a pair of tights and cowboy boots before I graduated to heels and then a T-shirt made with a ruffle collar. I’d do something crazy with my hair, and that was this outrageousness. As it got into the late Eighties and Nineties I discovered a shoe store on 14th Street and another on 35th Street called Tall Girls that made shoes for tall women. I’d get my heels from that store. I didn’t think about whether they were used to men coming in the store; it wasn’t important. I just went to get what I needed. ‘Do you have these in a size 13? Thank you, I’ll buy them, done.’

The rest of the week, I would wear no make-up and no heels. But I still made my own clothes. I would make duster coats, almost like bathrobes. I was very heavily influenced by the Japanese: big shapes, a coat that flowed at the bottom and was belted at the waist. I would make a tank top and a pair of loose pants to go with. It’s really funny, I just looked at something that I made back in 1984 and thought, ‘Oh my god, I should redo that outfit.’ Oh yes, people looked at me then, but I never thought I was being provocative. I was just wearing a maxi coat, loose pants and a tank top. For me, provocative would have been the high heels – during the daytime that is – and being in make-up and drag.

I had a friend called Michael Stein. Michael Stein was like the black Divine. He was 300 lbs, with alopecia so no hair anywhere. He would borrow clothing from the stores, hide the price tags and then take them back after he’d worn them. I was creating the clothes at home and eventually I started going to clubs in full drag. I was looking at magazines, trying to re-create whole looks from the catwalk or from ad campaigns. When I went out on the weekends, which was usually on Fridays and Saturdays and sometimes on Sundays, we would get dressed up together because I got into the clubs for free and I would be able to bring in a friend for free. I’d come to the city from the Bronx with all my stuff, my garment bag, my make-up bag, and get ready in a friend’s dormitory and then go with them to the club. After the club I’d go back to my friend’s place, get out of drag and get a train back to the Bronx at four or five o’clock in the morning. Then I became more daring. In the wintertime I would put half of my drag clothes on under a long winter coat and carry the other part in a garment bag. I’d take the bus from Castle Avenue in the projects to the subway. I’d put make-up on on the train. I would get off the train at 125th Street and get the express train, next stop was 86th Street, then 59th Street. I would get off there, get a taxi and do a quick change in the back of the cab so I would get out in front of Studio 54, like, ‘I just arrived – in a taxi!’

Sometimes I would get harassed by a bunch of boys from under the tunnel or over the bridge, you know, ‘That’s a guy, that’s a dude!’ and I’d be like, ‘Oh fuck off’ and keep on walking. I am 6ft4 or 6ft7 in heels, and I’d walk down the street with elegance, such elegance walking down that street darling, feeling fabulous. I never got tapped, never, ever, ever, no one came at me because I was ready and I was up in their face. Or you’d get men who was attracted to it.

My sister saw me for the first time doing the catwalk in a club; I was a bride I believe. She was like, ‘Oh.’ But my brother and sisters and mother all had their own lives. To them I was just their crazy-ass brother. If they went with me, they’d get into clubs that they could never get in to otherwise, you see. I would get there and people would open up like the Red Sea. I was just going right in saying, ‘They’re with me.’ And I’d sashay on in, hang up my coat and have my ball gown on.

I was looking at magazines, at Women’s Wear Daily, at Elsa Klensch. Elsa Klensch was like The Bible. I would look at all those small pictures in the catwalk reports of the models walking the runway in their outfits and I’d try to create that silhouette. It was just insane. I started imitating the make-up. The more I got into it, the more the make-up changed, the outrageous became more pretty, more feminine, more soft. It became more drag than outrageous. I would get inspired by looking at the models in the magazines and want to do that make-up or that look like, ‘Oh my god did you see that Oscar de la Renta ball gown? Did you see that Saint Laurent look? Did you see Mounia? Did you see Katoucha? She looked fierce!’ I would imitate those looks and the make-up, using my grandmother’s sewing machine to create the looks.

Then I decided I wanted to be more like a socialite woman who goes to the Met Gala, wearing ball gowns from Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Valentino. I wanted to have that ball gown on, I wanted to be fierce, I wanted to be fabulous. Like, ‘Girl, this is so-and-so from Park Avenue.’ I loved the luxury of it. The luxe. Those women would get out of their limousines and go up that staircase to the Met. When I finally started going to the Met, to the after party, me and my woman Glenda would go together. I’d make my gown, make her gown and we’d go. She was a real girl and I wasn’t but I made myself look like one. You could buy tickets to the party then. This was before Anna Wintour took over and decided, ‘You can’t come, you can come, but you can’t come.’ You could buy two tickets to the after-party for $125 dollars I think.

The first time I went up that staircase I thought I was one of those women. I wore an outfit by David Lee: he made me this black satin opera coat, big, huge sleeves, to the floor. There was this fitted dress underneath it, with a trumpeted bottom. He made me stand while he painted a design on it. So I stood there with my arms out, losing blood as he was painting on it. Then he applied all the stones, and made a big huge bow and matching gloves. I remember I showed up with big pink fuschia frosted lips and black and silver smoked winged eyes, my hair done in a French twist with a big bow. I showed up and I thought I was… it was all about me at that point. It was winter and the wind was blowing in my eyes, it was so cold. But feeling that wind blowing me up the steps – whoosh! – holding me up. Fantabulous honey, fantastic, just fabulous.

The people, they would just look at me, just look at me. And I would look back at the people I’d seen in the magazines. I saw this really handsome guy – I’d seen him in pictures and thought he was so sexy – and I remember seeing him leave the dinner with Diana Ross. I would show up at the museum and I was standing at the entrance of the main hall of the Met watching people coming out of the dinner and either going out of the building to another party or going to the after party. That was my catwalk. I would walk down that long, long, long corridor with the mummies, and people looked at me, thinking I was crazy. All the snobbish Upper East Side women with their designer ball gowns and their diamonds and their jewellery. Watching the celebrities come out of the dinner was fantastic to me, and we’d go dance and have a wonderful time and I’d think I was a rich white woman.

A few years later, I moved to Japan for what was meant to be two months but became almost three years. I hung around with the Elite modelling agency, they’d host parties and I’d be invited to go. I would get dressed up and go thinking I was one of the models they were booking: Iman, all these girls. My style of dressing changed: I became more fashionable. The girls were wearing jersey leggings, flat shoes or ankle boots and an Azzadine Alaïa jacket or a big overcoat to castings, and I would make my own version of that. I would get a piece of wool, cut it the shape that I wanted, put elastic into the waist to get a peplum waist and make a dolman sleeve. I made this big leather bag and wore it with a black turtleneck and a black scarf at my neck and these cheap $50 black suede pussy boots that I got from 40th Street. That was my look. I would imitate those girls. People would say, ‘You’re so androgynous,’ and I’d say, ‘Yes I know,’ with my hair out, blowing in the wind, feeling that moment.

At one point I did feel like an outsider because I wanted to be a part of that group but I couldn’t afford it. I couldn’t go to Biarritz, I couldn’t go to Gstaad, I couldn’t go to St. Barts or to the places where rich people go to have fabulous luncheons and dinners, but I could afford to buy some cheap taffeta and make a ball gown and go to the clubs where those people went, and walk into them like I owned them.

On a Saturday, sometimes even on a Thursday because the stores opened late, I would walk up and down Madison Avenue looking in the windows feeling like, ‘I wish I had on a black wool crepe dress, with high heels, a clutch, big hat and glasses and pearls.’ I would go into a store called Belloccio Uomo. It was owned by one black guy and one blonde guy, they were lovers. I would go into that store and talk to them for hours. We talked about fashion and clothes and what they were going to make me wear. They’d let me try on the clothes and say, ‘You look great in this’ and I’d be like, ‘I can’t afford it.’ But I’d try it all on, get inspired and go and try to copy the shapes.

Even today, when I can afford whatever I want, I very rarely just think, ‘Oh I like that,’ and get it. Spending thousands of dollars on something is not for me. I buy what I need, not what I want. A friend gave me some taffeta recently, and I made a plissé skirt, all by hand. I haven’t worn it yet but I know it’ll look really great over a black suit, worn with a white shirt. I’ve kept it open at the back because I’m going to add pleated tulle that comes out the back. When it’s finished I’ll wear it to a red carpet or black tie event, or maybe a fashion event. I made a sash from the scraps so I can tie the waist and make it a look. Now I want to make velvet embroidered silk grosgrain slippers in the same colour to wear with it.

I went to a charity event with my friend who’s the CEO of Kiehl’s some time ago. They travelled across the country with motorcycles to raise money for Aids. They gave people bandanas and I took all the leftover bandanas and made a kilt from them. It’s got little snaps to keep it on, and it’s pleated. It took me about four hours to make it, while I was watching ‘Le Petit Journal’ on TV. I made flowers from the bandana scraps to fasten to my shirt, and I’ll wear a bandana on my head too. I’ve already got my outfit figured out: I’m going to do a white man’s button-up shirt, low V, wear it low, pop the collar, roll up the sleeves, very casual, tuck it in and that’s it. I’ll wear white tennis shoes or a white lace-up shoe and there you have it. I’ll wear it to a little summer party. It’s been two years since I made it and I haven’t worn it because I’ve only seen my friends at winter events. I cannot wait to wear it so they can die.

A friend of mine made me a gown and I wore it to the Oscars in 2012. A man gown I call it. It was strapless, and I wore it with a man’s tuxedo shirt and a bow tie, over Marc Jacobs velvet tuxedo pants and velvet slippers. It’s funny, people keep asking, ‘Are you trans?’ Or they say, ‘Oh my god, Miss J is an inspiration to trans women all over the world!’ I keep going, ‘But I’m not actually trans,’ but they still think so.

I remember seeing a white man on TV fifteen years ago; he was wearing a skirt and arguing that men should be able to wear one, like, what’s the big deal? I was wearing skirts with full make-up and heels at the same time, but only at night, and I remember thinking, ‘You go!’ Men are still used to their suits and ties. A woman in a suit today is a power woman, but a man in a dress is a cross dresser, trans, a drag queen. Society still tells us pink is for girls, and blue for boys.

This interview was originally published in Vestoj ‘On Masculinities.’

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj’s Editor-in-Chief and Founder.

HE HAD BEEN LOOKING at the swirl of masks in front of him for a long time, suffering vaguely from the intermingling of their colors and the synchronized sound of two orchestras too close together. His cowl pressed his temples; a nervous headache was building between his eyes. But he savored, without impatience, a mixture of malaise and pleasure which allowed the hours to fly by unnoticed. He had wandered down all the corridors of the Opéra, had drunk in the silvery dust of the dance floor, recognized bored friends, and wrapped around his neck the indifferent arms of a very fat girl humorously disguised as a sylph. Though embarrassed by his long domino, tripping over it like a man in skirts, the cowled doctor did not dare take off either the domino or the hood, because of his schoolboy lie.

‘I’ll be spending tomorrow night in Nogent,’ he had told his wife the evening before. ‘They just telephoned and I’m afraid that my pa­tient, you know, that poor old lady… Can you imagine? And I was looking forward to this ball like a kid. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, a man my age who’s never been to the Opera Ball?’

‘Very, darling, very ridiculous! If l had known I might never have married you…’

She laughed, and he admired her narrow face, pink, matte and long, like a thin sugared almond.

‘But… don’t you want to go to the Green and Purple Ball? You know you can go without me if you want, darling.’

She trembled with one of those long shivers of disgust which made her hair, her delicate hands, and her chest in her white dress shudder at the sight of a slug or some filthy passerby.

‘Oh, no! Can you see me in a crowd, all those hands… What can I do? It’s not that I’m a prude, it’s… it makes my skin crawl. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

Leaning against the balustrade of the loggia, above the main stair­case, he thought about this trembling hind, as he contemplated, directly in front of him, on the bare back of a sultana, the grasp of two enor­mous square hands with black nails. Bursting out of the braid-trimmed sleeves of a Venetian lord, they sank into the white female flesh as if it were dough. Because he was thinking about her, it gave him quite a start to hear, next to him, a little ‘ahem,’ a little cough typical of his wife. He turned around and saw someone in a long and impenetrable disguise, sitting sidesaddle on the balustrade, Pierrot by the looks of the huge-sleeved tunic, the loose-fitting pantaloons, the skullcap, the plaster-like whiteness coating the little bit of skin visible above the half­-mask bearded with lace. The fabric of the costume and skullcap, woven of dark violet and silver, glistened like the conger eel fished for by night with iron hooks, in boats with resin lanterns. Overcome with surprise, he waited to hear the little ‘ahem,’ which did not come again. The Pierrot-Eel, seated, casual, tapped the marble balusters with a dangling heel, revealing only its two satin slippers and a black-gloved hand bent back against one hip. The two oblique slits in the mask, carefully covered over with a tulle mesh, allowed only a smothered fire of indeter­minate color to pass through.

He almost called out, ‘Irene!’ but held back, remembering his own lie. Not good at playacting, he also decided against disguising his voice. The Pierrot scratched its thigh, with a free and uninhibited gesture, and the anxious husband sighed in relief.

‘Ah! It’s not her.’

But out of a pocket the Pierrot pulled a flat gold box, opened it to take out a lipstick, and the anxious husband recognized an antique snuffbox, fitted with a mirror inside, the last birthday present… He put his left hand on the pain in his chest with so brusque and so involuntarily theatrical a motion that the Pierrot-Eel noticed him.

‘Is that a declaration, Purple Domino?’

He did not answer, half choked with surprise, anticipating, as in a bad dream, and listened for a long moment to the thinly disguised voice – the voice of his wife. The Eel, sitting there cavalierly, its head tilted like a bird’s, looked at him; she shrugged her shoulders, hopped down and walked away. Her movement freed the distraught husband, who, restored to an active and normal jealousy, started to think clearly again, and calmly rose to follow his wife.

‘She’s here for someone, with someone. In less than an hour I’ll know everything.’

A hundred other purple or green cowls guaranteed that he would be neither noticed nor recognized. Irene walked ahead of him nonchalantly. He was amazed to see her roll her hips softly and drag her feet a little as if she were wearing Turkish slippers. A Byzantine, in embroidered emerald green and gold, grabbed her as she passed, and she bent back, grown thinner in his arms, as if his grasp were going to cut her in half. Her husband ran a few steps forward and reached the couple as Irene cried out flatteringly, ‘You big brute, you!’

She walked away, with the same relaxed and calm step, stopping often, musing at the open doors of the boxes, almost never turning around. She hesitated at the bottom of a staircase, turned aside, came back toward the entrance to the orchestra stalls, slid into a noisy, dense group with slippery skillfulness, the exact movement of a knife blade sliding into it sheath. Ten arms imprisoned her, an almost naked wrestler pinned her up against the edge of the boxes on the main floor and held her there. She yielded under the weight of the naked man, threw back her head with a laugh that was drowned out by other laughter, and the man in the purple cowl saw her teeth flash beneath the mask’s lacy beard. Then she slipped away again with ease and sat down on the steps which led to the dance floor. Her husband, standing two steps behind, watched her. She readjusted her mask, and her crumpled tunic, and tightened the roll of her headband. She seemed calm, as though alone, and walked away again after a few minutes’ rest. She went down the steps, put her arms on the shoulders of a warrior who invited her, without speaking, to dance, and she danced, clinging to him.

‘That’s him,’ the husband said to himself.

But she did not say a word to the dancer, clad in iron and moist skin, and left him quietly, when the dance ended. She went off to have a glass of champagne at the buffet, and then a second glass, paid, and then watched, motionless and curious, as two men began scuffling, surrounded by screaming women. Then she amused herself by placing her little satanic hands, all black, on the white throat of a Dutch girl with golden hair, who cried out nervously. At last the anxious man who was following her saw her stop as she bumped up against a young man collapsed on a banquette, out of breath, fanning himself with his mask. She leaned over, disdainfully took his handsome face, rugged and fresh, by the chin, and kissed the panting, half-open mouth… 

But her husband, instead of rushing forward and tearing the two joined mouths away from each other, disappeared into the crowd. Dismayed, he no longer feared, he no longer hoped for betrayal. He was sure now that Irene did not know the adolescent, drunk with dancing, whom she was kissing, or the Hercules. He was sure that she was not waiting or looking for anyone, that the lips she held beneath her own like a crushed grape, she would abandon, leave again the next minute, then wander about again, gather up some other passerby, forget him, until she felt tired and it was time to go back home, tasting only the monstrous pleasure of being alone, free, honest, in her native brutality, of being the one who is unknown, forever solitary and without shame, whom a little mask and a hermetic costume had restored to her irre­mediable solitude and her immodest innocence.

‘The Hidden Woman’ (La Femme Cachée) was originally published in 1924 as part of a collection of short stories by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, a French novelist, short story writer and actress. She was celebrated, among other things, for probing female sexuality in an era when it was otherwise taboo.

YOUTH MARKS BOTH A period of transience and the promise for a future, existing within a state of becoming. What is the value of an identity that is defined by a period of becoming? The figure of the youth has historically been able to resist the categories of male, female, boy, girl through the process of self-fashioning. This resistance of gender categories is not simply a rejection of the control mechanisms of culture but also requires working within the existing cultural system of images. During the Edo period of Japan between 1603 and 1868, the distortion of gender categories was an encounter between the authority of a rigid society and the desire to subvert Edo society by cultivating the image of the self.

The gender ambiguities that existed within Edo Japan were visually codified in the eighteenth century with the emergence of the concept of nigao–e or ‘face-resembling pictures’: the imitation of an image, thereby constructing identities through images. This translation may seem awkward, but it suggests that images construct identities and that identities can only exist if there is an image to reinforce them. Our knowledge of what is male, female or in-between, comes to us through the images that are disseminated within our societies. In eighteenth century kabuki theatre, nigao-e was adopted in order to make the characters on stage more visually readable by the audience. Distinctive features were developed for specific roles, including the shape of the mouth, nose and eyebrows, creating a striking resemblance between the character and the subculture that they were representing. The likeness of the character to an existing image held greater importance than the psychology of the character that these actors were portraying. One of these characters in kabuki was the wakashu, traditionally played by teenage boys and representing a specific subculture within Edo Japan. Wakashu are described by kabuki scholar Imao Tetsuya as ‘floating between the polarities of male and female, synthesising the principle of both sexes.’¹ The wakashu, etymologically resisting gender identification, is translated into English most closely as ‘youth,’ constituting what many scholars consider a ‘third gender.’² Through the self-fashioning of their image, wakashu were able to resist gender identification, existing as a third gender within a state of becoming. By rejecting the imposed male identity, wakashu represented the possibility of an existence outside of Edo society along with the prospect of future transformation for Edo culture.

Although within language the definition of wakashu is extremely ambiguous, within visual culture and in kabuki theatre, the wakashu had a very distinct appearance so that spectators could identify this figure as existing outside of male and female identities. Wakashu are most easily recognised within visual culture by the small shaven patch on the top of their head (maegami), peeking behind their forelock which was pulled back over the head. This attribute allows viewers to distinguish wakashu from men, who shaved the top of their heads completely bald. The maegami also allows the viewer to distinguish wakashu from women. Wakashu are often dressed in almost identical clothing to those worn by young unmarried women: formal long-sleeved furisode robes, worn both in visual representations and on stage. In kabuki theatre, wakashu often played the role of the futanarihira, literally ‘the doubled body,’ referring to a state of becoming by moving between genders, also known as the ‘androgynous stunner.’³ Wakashu on stage are usually represented with a kerchief tied around their head covering the forelock and dressed in the female fursiode robes, making their gender even more ambiguous. While the civilian wakashu constituted another gender – a third gender – the professional wakashu of the kabuki theatre oscillated between male and female.⁴ The duality of the wakashu’s image was not a total rejection of male identity, but rather represented a state of becoming which followed the flow of their coming of age. The wakashu identity allowed male youths to represent not only a third gender but an alternative social class within Edo society.

The youthfulness of the wakashu not only characterised their transition from boy to man but was also a way of existing outside the social hierarchy of Edo society. Wakashu flourished during a period in which male social mobility was strongly discouraged. Wakashu, especially those within kabuki theatre, were often prostitutes and were depicted by Edo artists such as Suzuki Harunobu in amorous situations with both men and women, making it difficult to differentiate between wakashu and wakashu-prostitutes. Wakashu are often represented as prostitutes in visual culture because of kabuki theatre’s long history as both a place for theatrical and sexual entertainment.⁵ Although restricted by social class and occupation, wakashu experienced a different kind of mobility through the act of moving between, and existing outside gender. After wakashu reached the age of nineteen or twenty and transitioned into adulthood, they assumed an unmovable place as adult males within society. With the radical Westernisation of Japan during the Meji era (1868–1912), and the adoption of Victorian norms of gender and sexuality, representations of masculinity became more rigid, and the image of the wakashu disappeared from visual culture outside of kabuki theatre.⁶ Wakashu represented a period of fantasy in which youths were able to modulate the male identity and the restrictions of the Japanese social hierarchy. The image of the wakashu was codified and constructed within Edo society while resisting gender categorisation, existing between identities in the state of becoming.

Self-fashioning is the action of taking existing images circulating within a culture and creating one’s own image through them. Historian Stephen Greenblatt has applied the notion to Renaissance culture, describing in Renaissance Self-Fashioning how the fashioning of the self was inseparable from the fashioning of society.⁷ For Greenblatt self-fashioning is the process of constructing one’s identity in accordance with existing social norms. Similarly, it could be argued that the wakashu was able to exist in-between genders through the process of self-fashioning within an existing economy of images. Comparable to face-resembling-pictures, self-fashioning is aligned with representation, thereby presenting an ideal state rather than a reality. This third gender still requires an image that is identifiable in order to fashion itself outside of their social existence.

The re-fashioning of one’s image, at the same time, has the power to rupture how we understand identity and its relationship to society. In philosopher Michel Foucault’s discussion of sexuality in the Western world, The History of Sexuality, he asserted that self-fashioning was a response to a crisis in culture, which was for him also a crisis of the subject.⁸ For Foucault, self‐constitution and cultivation were what stood against the normalising machine of modern technologies. Both self-constitution and cultivation are processes of becoming through self-fashioning.⁹ Within every cultural crisis the desire to reconstruct life anew is as much a reconstruction of the social body as it is a reconstitution of the physical body. The desire to become a wakashu – beyond sexual orientations – could then be seen as the wish to resist the social body through the fashioning of the self outside of its imposed construction – a yearning that appears not to abate with neither time, geography nor culture.

Alice Tallman is an independent editor and writer based in New York. She assisted with the editing of the publication accompanying the recent exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, A Third Gender.

1. M Morinaga, ‘The Gender of Onnagata As the Imitating Imitated: Its Historicity, Performativity, and Involvement in the Circulation of Femininity’ in Positions: East Asia Cultures,10 (2), Fall 2002, p. 253, quoting Imao, Henshin no shisō, p.146. ↩

2. A Ikeda & J Mostow, A Third Gender, Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum Press, 2016 ↩

3. M Morinaga, ‘The Gender of Onnagata As the Imitating Imitated: Its Historicity, Performativity, and Involvement in the Circulation of Femininity’ in Positions: East Asia Cultures, 10 (2), Fall, 2002, p. 253 ↩

4. J Mostow, ‘Wakashu as a Third Gender and Gender Ambiguity Through the Edo Period,’ A Third Gender, Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 2016, p. 26 ↩

5. M Morinaga, ‘The Gender of Onnagata As the Imitating Imitated: Its Historicity, Performativity, and Involvement in the Circulation of Femininity’ in Positions: East Asia Cultures, 10 (2), Fall 2002, p. 253-254 ↩

6. A Ikeda, ‘Introduction’ in A Third Gender, Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 2016 p. 11 ↩

7. S Greenblatt. Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980 ↩

8. M Foucault, ‘The Care of the Self’ in The History of Sexuality, 3, R Hurley (trans), New York, Pantheon Books, 1986. ↩

9. M Foucault, L’herméneutique du sujet, Cours au Collège de France, ed, Frédéric Gros, Paris, Gallimard/Seuil, 2001, p. 490-93. ↩

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Further Reading:

But no matter how similar the clothes of men and women may appear, or how different, the arrangements of each are always being made with respect to the other. Male and female clothing, taken together, illustrates what people wish the relation between mend and women to be, beside indicating the separate peace each sex is making with fashion or custom at any given time. Without looking at what men are wearing, it’s impossible to understand women’s clothes, and vice versa. The history of dress, including its current history, so far has to be perceived as a duet for men and women performing on the same stage. There may come a time when sexuality is not visualized in clothing as rightly divided into two main categories; but so far it still is.

Anne Hollander, Sex and Suits, 1994.

The line of demarcation between the dress of women, priests and servants, on the one hand, and of men, on the other hand, is not always consistently observed in practice, but it will scarcely be disputed that it is always present in a more or less definite way in the popular habits of thought. There are of course free men, and not a few of them, who, in their blind zeal for faultless reputable attire, transgress the theoretical line between man’s and woman’s dress, to the extent of arraying themselves in apparel that is obviously designed to vex the moral frame; but everyone recognises without hesitation that such apparel for men is a departure from the normal. We are in the habit of saying that such dress if ‘effeminate’; and one sometimes hears the remark that such or such an exquisitely attired gentleman is as well dressed as a footman.

Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899.

“Anytime I do a men’s show, I’m thinking this would be fantastic for women—or at least for me. And more and more, it feels instinctively right to translate the same idea for both genders.”

Miuccia Prada on her spring/summer 2015 menswear collection.