Let's Play Dress-Up

In this course we read Silence, a tale of a child born female, at least according to its genitals, but who was raised as a male so that the child could inherit land. This book does not delve much into the interiority of how Silence identifies personally, but we do know that Nature and Nurture argue about whether or not it was a good idea for him to ever live his life as a female as his genitals dictate he should be living. Honestly, I don’t think Silence even knew which was better for him. In the end he ends up living as a female, even getting married, but unfortunately, as readers we have very little insight into how Silence felt about that.

                So what happens when the opposite happens? What happens when someone has been assigned male as their gender due to what’s in their pants and raised as such, but as they go through life they start to realize they identify with the opposite gender? The one society doesn’t think they belong as? Well in the C/I course I am a CL for, we read a play that explores this concept. The play is titled La Llamada de Lauren… or translated, Lauren’s Call, by Paloma Pedrero.

Carnvial - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

                The play takes place on the wedding anniversary of the two characters, Pedro and Rosa. It also happens to be Carnival. Carnival is a celebration that marks the beginning of Lent. During Carnival it is not at all unusual for men to cross-dress as women and the character Pedro in this play, takes advantage of that. Rosa comes home to Pedro completely dressed as a woman, saying that they should fully participate in this year’s Carnival as he has even purchased a costume for her. He wants them to be Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, actors who were co-stars in movies, but fell in love in real life. Pedro insists they fully commit to their roles, acting their respective parts and even going as far as to bind down Rosa’s breasts and gifting her a dildo. That he wants her to use.

Bogart & Bacall

                Well, Rosa becomes confused and angry, feeling that Pedro is going too far. But finally it comes out that Pedro actually feels more like himself when he can dress and act as a female. However, he feels he has to overcompensate now to act as a stereotypical man due to the reaction his father had to him dressing as a female with his sister when he was young, calling him a “damned queer”. Unlike Silence, we get a clear glimpse into the interiority of gender that Pedro experiences. We see the internal struggle Pedro experiences with feeling the need to satisfy societal expectations for a man, like getting married or being dominant. He says, “It’s as though what’s expected of me contradicts what… I am. I mean, sometimes it seems to go against… my internal desire or logic.” This is very different from Silence who never seems to explain to the audience that he identifies with either gender. It is as if Silence was raised as a male and does not know any differently, but with Pedro, he was raised as a male and he does know differently, he knows that acting as a male does not feel natural to him. So who's out-performing who - Silence or Pedro?

                And what does this say about our society? The fact that Silence was written in medieval times and Lauren’s Call is set in a different culture from our own but are still relatable in 21^st century American culture, to me, goes to prove that this is a persisting problem, of imposing expectations attached to an assigned gender and not understanding when someone does not fit nicely into the tidy boxes we create. So my question is – how do we address this? How do we create a society that is more open to people who do not conform to our expectations? Will we ever be able to be supportive as a society of people like this, or at the very least, neutral?