::Skips the usual "sorryIneverupdatenotmyfaultnohomeconnectionwishIweremotivated"::

So after a fabulous weekend at the Texas Renaissance Festival (Mer and I had decided to run away and follow the Ren Faire, sort of like joining the circus, only cooler), I came home and, within ten hours, had two flat tires. My front passenger-side tire burst about forty feet from my driveway. I had to go and get roommie supermer's cousin, who doesn't know me, from across the street to come help me change to my spare. I didn't know that I had a spare, but I did. I had a deposition in Clinton the next morning, and I was told I could make it on the spare if I got a new tire right afterward.

I didn't make it.

My spare burst on the highway, and I had to pull over and call tripleA and get towed to a tire place. Fun times.

But for some reason, my mood has dramatically improved since last week. I am really chipper today, notwithstanding the fact that I worked over twelve hours yesterday. (I had a deposition in Whiteville, two and half hours away. It started at 3:00 and finished at 6:30. I wasn't home until 9:00.) Today, however, I got off at noon. My inexplicable cheerfulness hasn't worn off.

I have pictures from the Texas Ren Fest (roommie's digital pictures). Can I post them here just from the CD, or do I have to get a website to host them? I don't know much about such matters.

And now, what you've all been waiting for:

Recent movies that portray men dressed as women are usually comedies. Examples: Some Like it Hot, White Chicks, Sorority Girls. However, movies that portray women dressed as men are usually more serious. Examples: Disney's Mulan, Yentle (sp?). Men's dressing as women is funny while women's dressing as men is more serious. Why so?

My experience with women-dressed-as-men movies is that the cross-dresser is doing so to gain respect or to do something that she is told is outside of her gender role. Rarely is it an issue of homosexuality. She wants to protect someone or to earn more money or somehow improve hers or others' lives. Her cross-dressing is a statement that she is a man's equal. It is serious.

My experience with men-dressed-as-women movies (those that aren't examining a theme of homosexuality) is that the cross-dresser is forced into the situation and wishes to get out of it as quicly as possible. He is quite uncomfortable in his feminine disguise, probably because he knows how laughable he looks. We find men dressed as women funny, hilarious even. The cross-dresser is indignant at and made miserable by being treated as a woman.

One explanation might be to take a feminist approach and say that the patriarchy is biased in favor of that male and that the male is better treated, better appreciated, and better respected. Although sexism may certainly play a part, I do not find this explanation satisfactory.

Consider some of Shakespeare's comedies that involve cross-dressing. He has far fewer men dressed as women than he has women dressed as men. In Shakespeare's day, women dressed as men were funny, as men dressed as women are funny today. Why so?

My theory is that it has to do with how defined each gender role is.

I will be the first to admit that gender (not "sex") is a continuum, a range. I am a female who thought myself a tomboy growing up because I preferred blocks to Barbies. When I went to college, I was told I am ultra-feminine because of my liking for skirts and the color pink and romantic literature. Nevertheless, we human beings still have individual and collective concepts of what is masculine and what is feminine. It is these concepts to which I will be referring below.

In Shakespeare's day, women had the more defined role. Women were supposed to be meek, mild, sweet, modest, chaste. Men could be anywhere on the scale from a testosterone-pumped warrior to a monk to a simpering poet. Theirs was the wider gender role. So it was funny to take these women from their very confined gender role and to put them in doublet and hose and make them swagger and talk loudly, something far beyond their role.

Because of the feminist movement, the width of gender roles has reversed. Women are encouraged to work outside the home, to build up muscular strength, to engage in physical activity, to be in positions of power. It is still acceptable for a woman to be a stay-at-home mom or a seamstress. It is now acceptable for a woman to be an athlete or a CEO. Where do we leave the men? To preserve their masculinity, they are forced into a role of ultra-masculinity. They must be better athletes than their athletic girlfriends, make more money than their CEO wives, in order to feel masculine. And since their role is more circumscribed, we now find it funny to make them dress as women.

That's my theory. Comments welcome.