Additional thought for the woman dressed as a man thing. When we talked about this is college we talked about how romances involving this trope are inherently bisexual, so that’s something too.
I have serious Thoughts and Feelings about this.
Historically, women disguised as men (or vice versa) have been used to encode literature, plays, and media with queer subtext. Most prominently, you have Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – a gloriously queer work of art, whose homoerotic subtext has been brought to the surface in modern adaptations. What I’m getting at is, if y’all haven’t seen this image, you need to, because it’s the hottest thing my sapphic ass has ever seen:
And I don’t think I even need to mention Mulan. We all know Shang and Mulan are a queer power couple.
In film, one of the most famous examples of this phenomenon is 1959′s Some Like It Hot, which remains one of THE single most subversive films I’ve ever seen. To hide from a gang, the male protagonists disguise themselves as women – and, in an astounding plot twist, enjoy bonding with other women and exploring their femininity. Oh, and it ends with one of them romantically ENDING UP WITH ANOTHER MAN. In 1959. Don’t believe me? Have a look for yourself.
Essentially “sneaking” queerness in via subtext and loopholes also paved the way to the contemporary era in which gender identity and sexuality could be more freely explored, arguably starting around the late 1990s and early 2000s, with movies like 1999′s Boys Don’t Cry, 2005′s Brokeback Mountain, and 2005′s Breakfast on Pluto. Breakfast on Pluto being my personal favorite of the three, as it’s protagonist – a young trans woman – survives the movie, and gets a happy ending in which she gets to fully embrace her identity. Something that contemporary media still seems to struggle with. It also taught me that I’m attracted to Cillian Murphy characters of every gender.
Watching this film back-to-back with Peaky Blinders would probably give me bisexual whiplash.
Over the past decade, films like Boy Meets Girl and shows like Sense8 and Euphoria have made tremendous strides in portraying queer sexuality, and gender identity, as well as taking great steps by employing trans people to portray trans characters.
But there was a time when virtually everything non-heterosexual and cisgender was virtually banned, and bizarre, rigid censorship laws forced queer characters to either be killed or “converted” by the story’s conclusion. During that time, one of the few ways to portray queer sexuality was by disguising a character’s gender, so that a same-sex love interest could be shrugged off by censors as an amusing accident. For a long time, it was all queer audiences had, and I will argue that the trope will always be queer coded.
That concludes today’s unsolicited rant on queer media history. And I’ve typed “queer” so many times in this post, it no longer feels like a real word.
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