Portrait of a Lady

The strange allure of cross-dressers

by Ashlea Halpern

My first exposure to cross-dressers was the granny-wigged Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire, followed by Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like A Lady." My inaugural in-person CD encounter was with a wayward high school boyfriend who occasionally wore lipstick and pranced around his parents' living room in my bra and panties. Sometimes with his buddies, who also wore bras.

Mrs. Doubtfire, of course, wasn't a cross-dresser — she was an out-of-work actor posing as a nanny. Steven Tyler's lady had the body of a Venus, but her story was only skin-deep. And the old boyfriend, well, he had other issues.

So what exactly defines cross-dressing? Is it merely a fetish? And does it have anything to do with sexual preference?

For answers, I turn to 58-year-old Exton-Lionville resident JoAnn Roberts, publisher of LadyLike magazine, author of the multivolume Art & Illusion: A Guide to Crossdressing, co-founder of the Renaissance Transgender Association, and organizer of the Beauty and the Beach cross-dressers' weekender in Rehoboth, Del. Twice married, with two grown children, the part-time cross-dresser and "recovering Catholic" was around 6 years old when she found one of her mother's nightgowns in a hamper and slipped it on. "I couldn't believe how soft it was," she remembers. "I slept in it all night."

It took Roberts most of the '70s and '80s, including a spell in San Francisco, to really get acquainted with her feminine side. "I finally decided, I'm not John Wayne. I'm never gonna be that. So what do I want out of life?"

Eventually she mastered the nuances: the sexy walk, the studio foundation, picking the right outfit. (Roberts says the biggest mistake CDs make is dressing like "tramps" and "teenie boppers.") Her voice is still gruff over the phone; "That's one thing I never tried to change."

It is commonly though mistakenly thought that cross-dressing, while often habitual, identifies a person as transsexual; in reality, pre-op and post-op transgendered folks rarely identify as cross-dressers. That's part of the reason she fought for the umbrella term "transgender," encompassing drag queens, drag kings, cross-dressers, MTFs, FTMs, androgynes and whatever other gender-identity labels float somewhere between our society's normative binary gender roles.

This has led to mild unrest within the TG community. "Transsexuals look down their noses at CDs and accuse them of playing," says Roberts. "[But] TSs tend to be very politically active with no money. CDs have all the money but are apathetic ... I wanted each to sympathize more with the other."

Roberts has counseled hundreds of CD couples. She says many wives know about their husbands' cross-dressing, but few accept it. Instead, they question their partner's sexuality, and sometimes their own self-worth. "They have to remind themselves that they fell in love with the person underneath the clothes," says Roberts. "But that can be hard."

Escaping the stigma that all CDs are homosexuals, perverts and/or sex workers has also proven troublesome. Distributors scoffed at Roberts when she first explained that LadyLike was not a porno mag, but rather a CD lifestyle publication. "They said, 'You're nuts if there's no genitals,'" she chuckles, adding that while sexual pleasure is a part of many CDs' lives, it's the emotional satisfaction that carries a far greater weight. Dude has to feel like a lady.

Next Week: I think I may have a thing for CDs.

Questions? Comments? What makes you think she wants to marry you? E-mail ashlea.halpern@citypaper.net. No phone calls.