Cross-Dressing
Cross-dressing in Burlesque performance aided in the other-ing of women’s bodies. Women performers used men’s clothes to get away with wearing more revealing clothing and by doing so held audiences and society in rapt attention. Robert Allen talks about Adah Issacs Menken because she wore some of the most revealing costuming of the time, though it was men’s wear (Allen, 101). This act of sheltering their own bodies by “disguising” them is counter productive to the struggle to free women’s sexuality. By associating a less clothed figure of a woman with the clothes of a man, performers are distancing themselves from what a respectable woman could be. Respectable women could not show their figures and dress in men’s clothes—and so respectable women could not hope express their sexuality.
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The subject vs. object relationship found in burlesque performance turns the traditional theatre audience and performer relationship on its head. In theatre, and especially in spectacular theatre, the audience beholds the performers as spectacles to gaze upon. The purpose of the bodies onstage are to objectify themselves for the viewing pleasure of the subjects. But in burlesque this arraignment is skewed a bit, the writers and, by extension, the performers make fun of the audience members, and by doing so place them in the position of object. John Brougham exemplified this in his writing for the burlesque stage that attacked “the rampant corruption of New York City politics, justice and business” and made little effort to disguise these pointed attacks (Allen, 104). The relationship is not completely reversed, but those in either position (onstage or not) feel displayed.
