Today was toga day at our sons’ high school. Unlike the all-white styles I wore to college parties–or worse– the flowered yellow twin sheets snagged from my own dorm bed, today’s teens are looking to make a statement or to poke fun at themselves.

So it was my oldest son’s sincerest wish to show up at school today looking like “Animal House’s” Eric Stratton (”Damned glad to meet ya!”) in a toga fashioned from a Batman sheet. He considered, for about three seconds, wearing a “My Little Pony”-embossed bedsheet, though he changed his mind before I drove to Target to make the purchase. Had the middle son not been heavily influenced by friends who decided that toga-wearing wasn’t something they wanted to do, he would have shown up in a blue-flannel number festooned with the images of sock-monkeys watching television. Just the thought of a six-foot tall baseball player wearing something like that makes me giggle and make a dash for my camera.

As we were brainstorming about what would make for an entertaining ensemble, I wondered what lengths the female students would have to go to in order to elicit a laugh from fellow classmates. Interestingly enough, I don’t think the sight of a girl wearing a G.I. Joe costume or dressed as an NFL linebacker is much of a rib-tickler. Isn’t it just as humorous for a girl to wear something atypical for her gender as it is for a guy to do so?Someone once pointed out to me that a man dressing up as a woman was funny and that a woman dressing up as a man…well…wasn’t. Their reasoning was that, through the centuries, women dressed as men in order to partake of the rights and privileges denied them as females. To serve in a war or be part of a ship’s crew or, like the character in the movie “Yentl”, receive an education, required a disguise. A woman was “trading up” for a better life by wearing the clothes of her male counterparts.

Yet, when a man dons a dress and speaks in a high-pitched voice, he’s lowering his status. Picture the men of Monty Python and it all becomes rather clear, no? This phenomenon doesn’t make me angry, but it does make me a little sad. I love a sense of humor and I believe that some of the greatest comedians in the world come from both genders. That said, I know that, in many ways, the male of the species is better represented. I can’t deny it and, as a feminist, I can’t explain it. Can you?

Bookmark to: