A Short History of Cross-Dressing in Media
    12:01 pm Saturday Feb 19, 2011 by Emily Temple

http://flavorwire.com/153705/a-short-history-of-cross-dressing-in-media

    All the hubbub about Brian Bedford's spectacular performance as Lady Bracknell in the recent Broadway revival of The Importance of Being Earnest has gotten us thinking. So much media in our culture revolves around, or at least includes, elements of cross-dressing or gender confusion, whether to comic or dramatic effect. Is this an evolution towards greater acceptance and understanding of all, or just, in some way, a deeply ingrained human impulse? Of course, cross-dressing is no new trend. The phenomenon is evident in everything from Norse and Hindu mythology to figures that shaped actual historical events (usually in the form of women dressing up as men to fight wars or be pirates, for some reason) to literature, theater, film and every kind of media in between. There are hundreds of examples, so there's no way to document them all here, but the trajectory of our favorites still has some bearing on the largeness of the phenomenon. Click through for out brief history of cross-dressing in media.