The Perturbing Dress: Transvestism in Visual Arts

Abstract

This chapter describes how the representation of transvestite men interacts with Mexican culture and politics from the Porfirato to the last decades of the twentieth century. I will emphasize the relationship between transvestism and national identity from two perspectives: one, the exclusionary view that condemns effeminacy considering it an antinational mark, an ideological enemy, and a symptom of decadence; and the other, the recognition of the transvestite as an instrument of criticism of social prejudices and as a exploder which destabilizes identities. The discussion of visual representations of transvestites makes us recognize the Mexican gender system from the viewpoint of its most deconstructive character. As in the sensualization of the male body through nudism we studied in chapter 2, in the representation of the dressed male with nonvirile clothing, we can observe that the limits of the national are readable in the representation of men.