I grew up in the great "western television era. "Maverick", Sugar Foot", "Palladin" and of course "Bonanza" dominated the tube.
All this time I was mislead about all the "macho cowboys" according to the article:
Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past by Peter Boag (University of California)
I thought there was nothing new to write about the American West. I forgot cross-dressing.
In a scholarly account, Peter Boag writes that not all who came west were manly men or feminine women. He reveals that cross-dressing, while not exactly common, was far from unknown on the American frontier.
Some cross-dressers were homosexuals, transvestites or transgendered folks. But many women who dressed as men did so primarily for safety or comfort, to escape family or vengeful husbands. Some committed crimes, but most, perhaps, wanted jobs that were unavailable to women. Men, on the other hand, dressed as actresses or explained, when caught, that they cross-dressed as a lark.
Once exposed, cross-dressers were often ridiculed in the newspapers. Many were reviled but some, such as Colorado's Mountain Charley, became famous. Another was the thrice-married "Mrs." Nash, actually a male washerwoman with the 7th Calvary, who was wed three times.
In "Re-Dressing America's Frontier Past," Boag says doctors and early sexologists blame cross-dressing on everything from the suffrage movement to the evil ways of immigrants to the surfacing of atavistic tendencies.
Many cross-dressers lived undetected for years, their secrets exposed only upon death. Others failed to look the part of the opposite sex. In 1874, a man in San Francisco drew attention to himself not because of the dress he was wearing but because he was playing an accordion — badly. Call us what you want. transgendered, transsexuals or crossdressers. It seems we have always been part of society's fabric.
I feel better now about loving "Miss Kitty's" clothes!
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| Miss Kitty 1966 |
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