This month, the American rapper Kid Cudi performed on Saturday Night Live wearing a floral ballgown. The rapper, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, wore the dress as a homage to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who once wore a similar dress himself. Overnight, Mescudi’s outfit went viral, with people praising him for challenging gender norms and even calling him a “fashion icon.”
Mescudi is just the latest in a string of cisgender men (those identifying with the gender they were assigned at birth) who are being credited with tackling gender stereotypes by embracing gender non-conforming clothing. In March, American actor Jacob Elordi was applauded for appearing on the cover of Man About Town magazine wearing a corset and earrings. At the end of 2020, singer Harry Styles appeared on the cover of American Vogue wearing a blue ballgown and was lavished with praise.
Yet while the majority of reactions have suggested that this flirtation with gender fluidity is something novel and exciting, the truth is it is anything but. Playing with gender through clothing has existed for as long as there have been clothes with gender identities attached to them, and we can trace this idea back thousands of years.
In Greek mythology, there are multiple examples of what we might today call “cross-dressing”; in the Odyssey, Athena frequently disguises herself as a man, while in the cult of the non-binary god Aphroditus, male worshippers wore women’s clothing. In both ancient Greek and early Japanese kabuki theatre, it was commonplace for men—partly because women were banned from performing—to dress in women’s clothing to play female roles. However, perhaps the best-known example of this comes from English Renaissance theatre, where men played the female parts in Shakespeare plays, and modern Shakespearean performance remains an arena for exploring and challenging audience perceptions of gender roles. Thus, manipulating the limits of gender with clothing isn’t a totally alien concept.
Besides, modern sartorial notions of masculinity—shirts, suits, boots—have not always existed. In fact, these characteristics are part of what the early 20th-century psychoanalyst John Flügel coined The Great Male Renunciation, a phenomenon that occurred around the 18th century when western men largely stopped wearing flamboyant and what we might now consider “feminine” clothing. “It was once very fashionable for men to wear bright colours, silks, jewellery and high heels,” says Lucy Moyse Ferreira, writer and lecturer at the London College of Fashion. “But that quickly stopped. Towards the Enlightenment era, men started wearing what we call more ‘rational’ dress, such as dark, plain suits. It fed into the idea that men were rational and practical, whereas women were characterised as frivolous and hysterical.”
As the sartorial gender divide deepened, there arose a staggering hypocrisy on who was allowed to experiment and how it was received. Largely, it has been cis-gendered (and usually heterosexual) men, the traditional gatekeepers of power in society, who have been able to do this with little consequence. But for marginalised people, the act has been viewed as dangerously subversive.
In 1870, two gay men named Frederick William Park and Thomas Ernest Boulton (also known as Fanny and Stella) were arrested as they left a London theatre dressed in drag and charged with conspiracy to commit sodomy. Though the pair were eventually acquitted, they admitted to appearing in public dressed as women, which was considered “an offence against public morals and common decency.” Conversely, someone like Brigham Morris Young had quite a different experience; a heterosexual man, he publicly performed in the United States from 1885 as a cross-dressing singer under the pseudonym Madam Pattirini. His family supported him and his wearing of female clothing was viewed as simply entertainment.
Moyse Ferreira explains that changes in fashion often reflect changes in society, so this renewed influx of men exploring feminine clothing becomes perhaps less surprising. She does, however, stress the importance of “recognising that privilege exists” for cisgender people here. “It’s great to have this representation, but it needs to be reframed and contextualised appropriately, because marginalised people have received abuse—and even worse—for doing similar things.” Jay McCauley Bowstead, also a lecturer at the London College of Fashion, adds: “It can be triggering to see people who don’t identify as queer or non-binary being celebrated for symbolic forms of gender transgression that you’ve been stigmatised or punished for yourself. But I think if you’re in favour of deconstructing patriarchy and gender, the important question is: do these representations ultimately contribute to that goal? Broadly, I think they do.”
While there may be nothing revolutionary about seeing men in corsets and ballgowns, it nonetheless hints at a shift in cultural mindset regarding current definitions of masculinity and femininity, and contributes to the deconstruction of archaic binary ideas of gender. Now the focus must remain on ensuring that this moment, like many in fashion, is not a fleeting one. “We saw this with Marc Bolan, Mick Jagger and David Bowie,” says design consultant and archivist Steven Philip. “It may not be new but it’s starting conversations. We need to see this as a movement though and not just a trend.”
Moyse Ferreira adds: “There’s work to be done but changes are happening. We’re already beginning to do away with the idea that fashion collections have to be for just men or just women. There’s also a growing openness, particularly among Gen-Z, who realise they don’t have to dress in strictly one way or another. As these people take up the higher roles in the fashion industry, we should see this more and more.”
While this moment seems to be here to stay, for the time being the debate suggests that there are many lessons still to be learned. Moyse Ferreira says: “These are still complex ideas that many people are grappling with for the first time. They won’t always get it right immediately. People might try something out and inadvertently offend someone. But as long as we take ownership and responsibility, I think this can only be a good thing.”
