How should I define androgyny? In my terms, I mean. What should be my androgyny? To make it definite in my project.
This struck me hard when I was browsing through The Sartorialist. Am I looking at dressing or physical features, or did I miss out something? How about character? If a girl has an absolute boy’s traits, does that make her androgynous? When I look back at my wiki entry, the winning statement got to be “a person whose look or build make determining their gender difficult”. Can I say that in all ways of androgyny, it will come down to looks?
The direct take on that statement is easy. Unable to determine the person’s gender, that’s androgynous. That’s easy, next please. If a person thinks opposite of his/her gender, he/she would instinctively choose to dress in the opposite manner too right? I mean as a girl, to think like a boy, she would pick trousers over dresses any day. And so the reverse-reverse comes in, what happens to the day she picks up the dress but still thinks like a boy? Does that un-androgynous this girl? Or can I dismiss it as the inner boy has become androgynous?
Okay let’s look at this at another angle. Let’s look at Kabuki. Male actors that hold the female roles, they are usually young men who have soft features and higher pitched voice. In such a context, androgyny is specifically picked out and definitely physical. I can’t confirm, or it’s actually not important to know if they actually thought like women.
Or let’s pick another area, Glam Rock. David Bowie, another icon of androgyny, is the face of Glam Rock. But dismiss all these images in your head, what does Glam Rock sound like? Okay correct me if I am wrong, I know I am being very generic here. It sounds pretty much like any other genre of rock music. But what defines Glam Rock is the look of Glam Rock – musicians in outrageous costumes. Here, though only loosely tied to my subject, yet again it’s all on physical traits.
And now, can I just say this, androgyny is physical.
