Celebrity crossdressers

[Anonymous]

Peter Wherrett was a cross dresser also into motor racing a very male sport i would think also wrote a book The Gender Trap which examined the compulsive nature of cross-dressing, im yet to read it.
I did find this comment interesting the thought of a celebrity being a serious crossdresser that i had to look it up but apart from peter wherrett the others i found only dressed as a dare or it was part of there act, john travolta in hairspray for example who was somewhat convincing, if only we could get hold of the staff that do there make up.

[Anonymous]

Peter or PiP was very well known on TgR and was very well respected and sadly missed by many people.
She regular attended many functions, and the newcastle people still hold their resturant nights in her honour.

Judy

[Melissa_Mills]

Eddie Izzard is a well known crossdresser

Ed Wood who was that director who made awful movies (in the 50s I believe but I could be wrong on the era)

[Anonymous]

J Edgar Hoover – head of the FBI for many many years was supposedly a dabbler. Watch out for a new bio-pic about him by Clint Eastwood, due for release in November :

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1616195/

But he was just one of many – some historical ones:

* Hua Mulan, the central figure of the Ballad of Mulan (and of the Disney film Mulan), may be a historical or fictional figure. She is said to have lived in China during the Northern Wei dynasty, and to have posed as a man to fulfill the household draft quota, thus saving her ill and aged father from serving.

* Several tales of the Desert Fathers speak of monks who were disguised women, and being discovered only when their bodies were prepared for burial. One such woman, St. Mary of Alexandria, died 508, accompanied her father to a monastery and adopted a monk’s habit as a disguise. When falsely accused of getting a woman pregnant, she patiently bore the accusation rather than revealing her identity to clear her name, an action praised in medieval books of saints’ lives as an example of humble forbearance.

* The legend of Pope Joan alleges that she was a promiscuous female pope who dressed like a man and reigned from 855 to 858. Modern historians regard her as a mythical figure who originated from 13th century anti-papal satire.

* Joan of Arc was a 15th century French peasant girl who joined French armies against English forces fighting in France during the latter part of the Hundred Years’ War. She is a French national heroine and a Catholic saint. After being captured by the English, she was burned at the stake upon being convicted by a religious court, with the act of dressing in male clothing being cited as one of the principal reasons for her execution. A number of witnesses, however, testified that she had said she wore male clothing (consisting of two layers of pants attached to the doublet with twenty fasteners) because she feared the guards would rape her at night.[1]

* Catalina de Erauso (1592–1650), known as La monja alférez (The Nun Lieutenant), was a Spanish woman who, after being forced to enter a convent, escaped from it disguised as a man, fled to America and enrolled herself in the Spanish army under the false name of Alonso Díaz Ramírez de Guzmán.[2] She served under several captains, including her own brother, and was never discovered. She was said to behave as an extremely bold soldier, although she had a successful career, reaching the rank of alférez (lieutenant) and becoming quite well known in the Americas. After a fight in which she killed a man, she was severely injured, and fearing her end, she confessed her true sex to a bishop. She nonetheless survived, and there was a huge scandal afterwards, specially since as a man she had become quite famous in the Americas, and because nobody had ever suspected anything about her true sex. Nevertheless, thanks to the scandal and her fame as a brave soldier, she became a celebrity. She went back to Spain, and was even granted a special dispensation by the pope to wear men’s clothes. She started using the male name of Antonio de Erauso, and went back to the America, where she served in the army till her death in 1650.

* Anne Bonny and Mary Read were 18th century pirates. Bonny in particular gained significant notoriety, but both were eventually captured. Unlike the rest of the male crew, Bonny and Read were not immediately executed because Read was pregnant and Bonny stated that she was pregnant as well.

* Ulrika Eleonora Stålhammar was a Swedish woman who served as a soldier during the Great Northern War and married a woman.

* Bonnie Prince Charlie dressed as Flora MacDonald’s maid servant, Betty Burke to escape the Battle of Culloden for the island of Skye in 1746.

* Ann Mills fought as a dragoon in 1740.

* Hannah Snell served as a man in the Royal Marines 1747–1750, being wounded 11 times, and was granted a military pension.

* Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée Éon de Beaumont (1728–1810), usually known as the Chevalier d’Eon, was a French diplomat and soldier who lived the first half of his life as a man and the second half as a woman. In 1771 he stated that physically he was not a man, but a woman, having been brought up as a man only. From then on she lived as a woman. On her death it was discovered that her body was anatomically male.

* George Sand is the pseudonym of Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, an early 19th century French novelist who preferred to wear men’s clothing exclusively. In her autobiography, she explains in length the various aspects of how she experienced cross-dressing.

* Dorothy Lawrence was an English war reporter who disguised herself as a man so she could become a soldier in World War I.

* Rrose Sélavy, the feminine alter-ego of the late French artist, Marcel Duchamp, remains one of the most complex and pervasive pieces in the enigmatic puzzle of the artist’s oeuvre. She first emerged in portraits made by the photographer Man Ray in New York in the early 1920s, when Duchamp and Man Ray were collaborating on a number of conceptual photographic works. Rrose Sélavy lived on as the person to whom Duchamp attributed specific works of art, Readymades, puns, and writings throughout his career. By creating for himself this female persona whose attributes are beauty and eroticism, he deliberately and characteristically complicated the understanding of his ideas and motives. More contemporary artists like J. S. G. Boggs, Yasumasa Morimura, and Grayson Perry have also explored cross-dressing.

* Shi Pei Pu was a male Peking Opera singer. Spying on behalf of the Chinese Government during the Cultural Revolution, he cross-dressed to gain information from Bernard Boursicot, a French diplomat. Their relationship lasted 20 years, during which they married. David Henry Hwang’s 1988 play M. Butterfly is loosely based on their story.

* Billy Tipton was a notable jazz pianist and saxophonist in the United States during the Great Depression. He was born Dorothy Lucille Tipton in 1914, but began living as a man in the 1930s. He was married five times to women, and adopted three boys. He led a full career as a musician and, in later life, as an entertainment agent. Other than his birth family, no one knew of his birth sex or cross-living until after his death in 1989.

* Willmer “Little Ax” Broadnax was a lead singer in several important gospel quartets, most famously the Spirit of Memphis Quartet. When he died in 1994, it was discovered that he was female bodied.

* Because female enlistment was barred, many women fought for both the Union and the Confederacy during the American Civil War while dressed as men.

* Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon, colonial governor of New York and New Jersey in the early 18th century is reported to have enjoyed going out wearing his wife’s clothing, but this is disputed.[3] Hyde was an unpopular figure, and rumors of his cross-dressing may have begun as an urban legend.

[bee]

I know this may be off topic, but if members are interested here is the text of a speech about Pip made on Mar 28 2009. It may be of interest for those who did not know her that well.

http://bambi.freeo.net/pip.html

Moderator

Quote:

Well..its about a celebrity who was a “crossdresser”… so sounds on-topic I guess… except of course Pip would never have labelled herself as a crossdresser…and no… this isn’t an excuse for another covert thread on labels!!!

[Brenda]

it is alleged, Catherine the Great of Russia was was Russia’s best known Crossdresser, daughter of a tsar who never understood her ask for freedom, soi she dressed as a male for a decade without being detected, even leading a revolt against her father’s rule on a certain topic {which evades me}