Why men wear frocks channel 4

Perry interviewed a group of macho bikers in an attempt to show that choosing leathers and dressing up in leathers was similar to wearing dresses. There was also a section in an inner London school, where Perry asked a group of teenagers what they felt about trannies. Considering the lads looked and sounded like they were auditioning for Blazin Squad, they were remarkably articulate, and when it was clear than men who wore dresses weren't "shirt lifters", you felt that might have some sympathy for any TVs they might come across in the future.

Most fascinating for me was an interview with a woman who had been married to a transvestite for 20 years. She found out the "hard way" before she got married, discovering a large pair of knickers in her then boyfriend's drawers. She skirted round the issues of whether she felt gay or even less of a woman for sleeping with a transvestite.

There was also a rather confrontational and hostile interview with a transexual, who clearly had fairly unhappy relations with TVs. This was the most uncomfortable part of the programme with Perry and the transexual both arguing that they were men - even though one clearly didn't want to be a man and the other spent the majority of his life dressed as a woman.

It was also interesting that Perry was quite happy with the Little Britain rubbish tranvestites " they've got it just right ", but horrified by Dick Emery's "Ooh you are awful", Mandy from the Seventies. The dilemma of deciding which toilet to go into is apparently a very real one.

Whereas, not surprisingly, pulling your tights away from your knickers and walking along with bandy legs isn't. Search WorldCat Find items in libraries near you. Advanced Search Find a Library. Your list has reached the maximum number of items. Please create a new list with a new name; move some items to a new or existing list; or delete some items.

Your request to send this item has been completed. APA 6th ed. Note: Citations are based on reference standards. However, formatting rules can vary widely between applications and fields of interest or study.

The specific requirements or preferences of your reviewing publisher, classroom teacher, institution or organization should be applied. The E-mail Address es field is required. Please enter recipient e-mail address es. The E-mail Address es you entered is are not in a valid format.

Please re-enter recipient e-mail address es. You may send this item to up to five recipients. The name field is required. Please enter your name. The E-mail message field is required. Please enter the message. Please verify that you are not a robot.

There was something about this film that brought a new understanding to their previous opinion of someone who had been referred to as the Potty Potter by some people. They had been understandably concerned with the publics' perception both historically and currently of a man's motivations to crossdress in a little girl's frock. The first intimation I had that Grayson Perry wanted to make an innovative and somewhat unique documentary on the subject of why men or more to the point, himself wear frocks was contained in a phone call that I received back in early Summer from the executive producer of Twofour Productions.

It seemed that Grayson Perry, transvestite potter and winner of the Turner Prize in felt that he wanted to explain why he had the need to wear female clothing. His theory is that it is a 'flight from the stresses of masculinity and it is this that we should attend to and not the crossdressing.

As word of the intention to get the documentary commissioned spread there was a great deal of resistance to participate in it from the usual personalities who appear in similar programmes.

Such was the opposition to Grayson Perry's representation of Transvestism through the wearing of stylised little girls dresses, coupled with paedophilic images of children that were embedded in the artwork on his winning pot, that many shied away from any involvement with the film.

This attitude created a huge difficulty in obtaining enough contributors, particularly wives and partners, so that the producers' net was cast far and wide into the very heart of the trannie world.

Fortunately Grayson already had a loyal following of fellow transvestites who knew him as Claire in his alter ego and the Scarborough Harmony weekend became the setting for several scenes that encompassed the 'normalities' of the transvestite lifestyle.

The Scarborough Harmony weekend is run by Martine Rose of Roses Repartee fame and the forum on their website now runs to 41 pages at the time of writing on this thread alone. Grayson opens the film by observing that most people know what a transvestite is, "they are part of Britain's oldest sub-cultures, shy exotic creatures of the night stumbling to the bus stops in the dark".

Having been on several Harmony weekends myself in the past, watching those scenes were for me, very nostalgic. For the less informed viewing public they became a source of delight, according to many of my friends who 'happened to catch it' and they were almost mesmerised by the images of such an assortment of males fully attired in all manner of female clothing, make up and most of all ATTITUDE! Where were the guilty, ashamed types that one heard about but never saw of course? These girls just wanna have fun and they certainly knew how to enjoy themselves to the limit, regardless of the fact that half of them are probably very familiar with a pension book and bus pass.

My Cambridge TG friends some of whom were there were watching en masse in our local pub and whooped with joy as Martine Rose gave a Dick Emery stumble on the steps and they also took great pride in the fact that they stopped the traffic along the sea front, totally oblivious to the possibility of a sudden surge in RTA's in Scarborough that day. Grayson as Claire starts with a short explanation of the etiquette expected of the Harmony guests and the standards of dress and appearance that they wished to maintain throughout the weekend.

Grayson's own role model turned out to be newsreader Fiona Bruce whose 'groomedness' he responds to, thus adding a new adjective to the English language, at least for the duration of the evening. Sunday morning saw many sad trannies packing away their finery and already planning the next opportunity to wear it again. He identified positively with Dick Emery's 'Mandy' who he describes as 'a funny bloke who looks ridiculous'.

He still couldn't make his mind up as a teenager whether it was about the fact that he wanted 'that dress' or whether he was like him. When he first saw Little Britain's 'crap TV' Emily Howard he thought 'oh no, they've got it right, they've beadily explored everything down to her old fashioned dress sense and ridiculous hair' Reference was of course made to the tricky decision on which toilet to use as featured in the Little Britain clip used to illustrate the comic tradition while gently mocking the subject in an innocent way.

Grayson's attempt to imbue an element of honesty into the film becomes an endearing feature of his presentation. He admits that for him, a man in a frock is an intrinsically funny thing. He is particularly forthcoming about the sexual component apportioned to crossdressing, suggesting that it's like an elephant in the room, it's certainly there but no one's talking about it.

I was roped in as the wives and partners response, my scene being filmed in the less exotic London's King's Cross, as opposed to chilly Scarborough in November, where I would really have loved to have been.

Selected TVs waxed eloquently on the subject in general. One wanted to be fancied as a woman because it brought an erotic element to her dressing experience while others maintained that they weren't seeking sexual attention from men. I felt that it was a suitable time to mention that wives and partners as heterosexual women usually found it difficult to respond to a submissive husband or lover - it is like asking a right handed person to become left handed.

Nothing controversial there then. The motorbiking section at Brands Hatch could have fallen down badly had it just have been a vehicle for 'look how macho we blokes are, you can see we are not gay' Instead it took the stereotypical excuses straight into the epicentre of the leathered arena and came up with examples of gay and bi-sexual men as well as straight ones who apart from their love of motorcycling, admitted to their narcissistic delight in matching their bikes and clothing to create an attractive image that enhanced their masculinity and sexuality.