TVyNovelas Devotes Full Spread To Dudes In Dresses

TVyNovelas has devoted five pages of this week’s issue to highlighting the stories of several men who, as they put it, “Wanted to be Women. And Didn’t Die in the Attempt!” We’d argue that there’s a difference between wearing a dress and wanting to be a woman - and a difference between dressing as a woman for fun or sexual gratification and dressing in drag for a role in a movie -but, in any case, here we go.

The following are some of the more interesting response of the men they profiled for this particular article:

Gael Garcia Bernal

Gael called the experience of going to a club dressed up like a woman to get a feel for his character prior to filming Almodovar’s La mala educación “liberating,” but says he doesn’t understand how we, ladypeople, can wear thongs. 

Miguel Bosé

Man, Almodovar really has a knack for getting men into heels. Miguel Bosé also played a transvestite in the director’s 1991 movie Tacones lejanos, an experience he described as “breathtaking.” His take on what it took for him to “become” a woman was pretty interesting to us:

A real man is one who has the capacity to have a dialogue with the woman within him. There’s one inside every man.

Well. If he asks nicely. And has enough lube.

Héctor Suárez

Suarez has played various women throughout his career in TV and theater, and says that, for him, the secret is to “feel a vagina when I go into a scene.” Any takers?

Héctor Bonilla

In the play Yo soy mi propia esposa, Bonilla says he wears women’s clothing, but no makeup, to drive home that he’s a man dressed as a woman and to draw attention to those who are marginalized and treated unfairly because of their orientation.

Omar Chaparro

Chaparro dresses as a woman for his sketch comedy series No manches, and says he doesn’t do so as a way of making fun of gay people or transsexuals (Ay! People! Straight men dress in drag, too.)… just women! He also says he’s done such a good job at portraying a ladyperson that men have wanted to kiss him.

Gonzalo Vega

Vega makes sure to mention that he dresses as Martina in La señora presidenta because he’s playing a woman and not “some effeminate transvestite.”

So, you know. Dressing up in women’s clothing for a job doesn’t mean someone is understanding of what it means to dress in drag versus being guy versus being transsexual or transgender. It also doesn’t mean these men have any idea of what it “means” to be a woman, because, at the end of the night, the dress comes off and you’re back to being male. Like in the articles on men and plastic surgery, there seems to be an almost desperate insistence among some of the men interviewed that wearing a dress doesn’t mean they want another penis anywhere near them. Which does, in a small way, mean they at least understand one aspect of what it means to be female.