Gender has become a stylistic fabrication

Drag suggests that changing gender identity is as easy as changing one's clothes. While Butler herself has resisted such a voluntaristic interpretation of gender as performance in her later writings, nevertheless, many of those who have applied her ideas to the analysis of gender border crossings in postmodern fashion have treated gender as a kind of improvisational theater where different identities can be more or less freely adopted and explored at will. Thus, Schwichtenberg interprets Madonna's play with the various signifiers of gender in her performances as a challenge to the foundational "truths" of sex and gender. Madonna's constantly shifting persona is seen as typifying the postmodern blurring of boundaries and polarities, such as those of male versus female. For Schwichtenberg, the radicality of Madonna's gender-bending performances lies in the fact that she detaches the signifiers of gender from their association with particular "sexed" bodies, treating them as theatrical masks whose artificial status is thereby highlighted. Rather than being seen as expressive of an "authentic" identity, gender is revealed to be a stylistic fabrication. To quote Schwichtenberg: "Madonna's body, caught in the flux of destabilized identities, deconstructs gender as a put-on. This imaginary construction of the body as fragments reflects on the artifice of gender".

As well as playing fast and loose with gender signifiers, Madonna frequently hyperbolizes them, as exemplified for instance by her video Material girl, where she took on the appearance of the ultrafeminine Marilyn Monroe, exaggerating this to the point of parody. By putting the markers of gender in quotation marks, as it were, she draws attention to their culturally constructed and hence, essentially arbitrary, nature. As Schwichtenberg writes: ". . . Madonna bares the devices of femininity, thereby asserting that femininity is a device. [She] takes simulation to its limit in a deconstructive maneuver that plays femininity off against itself-a metafemininity that reduces gender to the overplay of style". The political implications that Schwichtenberg draws from Madonna's subversion of the categories of "sex" and "gender" is that a politics of "identity," in which one mobilizes around a particular gender category such as "woman," is no longer the most effective way to combat inequalities arising from sexual difference, since it perpetuates, rather than problematizes, the binary logic of gender distinctions. Rather than continuing to identify with a particular gender category, individuals should embrace the dissolution of gender boundaries epitomized by figures such as Madonna. However, is it really the case that gender distinctions are no longer relevant in the postmodern carnival of signs? While theorists of postmodern fashion such as Baudrillard, Polhemus and Schwichtenberg, present the play with gender codes as a freewheeling activity without limits, this occludes recognition of the fact that this "play" cannot be engaged in equally by everyone, but occurs in a context where gender inequalities persist. Indicative of the lack of a level "playing field" in the postmodern gender playground is the fact that there continues to be a marked asymmetry in gender border crossings that are governed by the dominance of the male principle. Contrary to the suggestion of reciprocity in gender borrowings in postmodern fashion, female appropriations of male items of attire continue to dominate.

While it is certainly true that men are taking on more features of female body adornment than was the case in the first half of the twentieth century, it is still the case that the adoption of male items of attire by women is the more common occurrence. As Fred Davis points out ever since the nineteenth century, gender border crossings in dress have been predominantly one-way, involving the appropriation of male items of dress by women, notwithstanding some movement in the opposite direction in recent times. Where men have flirted with the possibility of adopting elements of feminine attire, such as the long hair and beads of the hippy movement during the 1960s or the so-called "peacock" revolution of the early 1970s, these forays have tended to be short-lived. There is nothing comparable in male attire to the adoption of trousers, male styled shirts, and coats by women. Typical of the reticence of men to appropriate feminine sartorial features was the largely negative response to the attempt by Jean-Paul Gaultier to introduce sarongs and pants-skirts in his fall 1984 men's collection. As Davis points out even as he introduced them, Gaultier stated he was not seeking to feminize men, declaring: "I'm not saying men and women should look alike. It won't be like the sixties where they had the same haircut and everything. They'll share the same wardrobe but they'll wear it differently.

Men will stay masculine and women feminine." Similarly, where male celebrities such as Boy George have feminized their appearance, their popularity has been greatest amongst female fans. As Evans and Thornton point out in their analysis of Boy George, it was the female rather than the male fans who sought to model their appearance on his. For his female fans, Boy George represented a "safe" femininity that was both sophisticated and innocent. They write that: "[Boy George] claimed to prefer tea to sex, he was cuddly and loveable." He was "like a geisha girl for girls, meticulously confected and designed to please. . . ". The imbalance in cross border traffic can be explained by the fact that it occurs in a context where gender inequalities still prevail. Since the nineteenth century, when male and female dress became sharply differentiated, male dress-particularly the business suit-has become a symbol of the power and authority enjoyed by men in a patriarchal society. First adopted by the emergent bourgeoisie to signal their rejection of the excessive opulence and indolence of the aristocratic lifestyle, the business suit has become emblematic of a serious-minded professionalism that commands respect. For women to appropriate elements of a sartorial costume that is invested with such qualities is a much more attractive option than for men to feminize their dress, which would imply a diminution of their status.

This explains why, despite the fact that men sacrificed the pleasures of color and ornament when they adopted the plainer and more austere "uniform" of the business suit, it has been far more common for women to seek to emulate male dress than vice versa. Flugel described the adoption of the business suit as the "great masculine renunciation" in which men ceded to women the joys associated with elaborate and flamboyant modes of dress that had once also been a feature of male dress. However, at the same time, this was more than compensated for by the power and prestige associated with the sobriety of this new mode of dress. Thus, in spite of being deprived of the pleasures of sartorial decorativeness, men have been reluctant to embrace such elements from female dress, while women have been willing to forgo these pleasures in their adoption of male items of attire. It is clear from this, then, that not only are female to male border crossings more frequent than the converse, but the significance of each is quite different. Not all gender border crossings are equivalent, as the postmodern gender playground suggests, but occur in a context that is structured by the dominance of the male principle in which menswear is taken as paradigmatic. As Anne Hollander points out most examples of androgynous outfits in contemporary culture involve a feminization of male dress, rather than the reverse, whether the wearer is male or female.

Where men take on feminine characteristics in their dress, it involves a variation on the basic items of male attire rather than a masculinization of female attire. If we examine work wear for women as compared to that worn by their male counterparts, the paradigmatic status of male dress is clear. During the 1970s and '80s, the "dress for success" look that was promoted to professional women, and continues to hold sway today, was a feminization of the masculine business suit. As women increasingly entered into professions that had previously been the preserve of men, they were advised to emulate the dress of their male colleagues in order to gain their respect. It was felt that by appropriating the insignia of male authority and power, women, too, would be imbued with these same qualities.

The "feminine" version of the male business suit typically took the form of a tailored skirt with matching jacket, featuring padded shoulders and the same subdued colors as the male version. Today, tailored slacks may be worn instead of the skirt, but otherwise, it is largely unchanged. In investing professional women with a sense of authority, this new "uniform" was designed so as not to draw attention to the contours of the body of the wearer. As Molloy wrote, if a woman is to command the authority necessary in order to achieve success in her career, she needs to avoid looking too much like a "secretary," and therefore, not obviously "professional," and looking too "sexy." Thus, he advised women to wear jackets that were cut fully enough to cover the contours of the bust and were not pinched in at the waist. He also warned against the wearing of waistcoats for business since they drew attention to the bust.

Gender has become a stylistic fabrication

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