Boy Meets Girl
Girls will be boys
Changing shape
How do four attractive
young women — Helen, Lisa, Fiona and Reshma — transform themselves
into strapping lads Bob, Lee, Adam and Abdul? As with the boys, the transition
for girls begins with reshaping. While the boys had to tuck away their
genitals, the girls have their chests bound to flatten their breasts.
The girls seem less upset about this than the boys were about hiding their
genitalia. For some though, it is easier than others: Fiona, who has a
double D cup bust, presents more of a problem than the others.
Next, the girls don
boxer shorts and stuff them with a sock. The sock is a revelation: immediately
it changes the way the girls hold themselves — they take up more
room when sitting down, and swagger when they walk.
For the girls, stripping
off their make-up is difficult: it is so much a part of their everyday
image. When they put on men's clothes, they feel uncomfortable at losing
their femininity. Almost immediately they start to describe feelings of
insecurity.
Make-up
Having stripped off
their own make-up, the girls must now be made up to look like men. Eyebrows
must be thickened and complexions roughened. A novel use is found for
mascara: it is excellent for imitating stubble.
Made up to look like
men, the girls' insecurities increase. They feel unattractive and unhappy.
Hair
Two of the girls had
to have their hair chopped off for the sake of the programme. A third
refused, but did agree for it to be put in braids in order to make her
transition to a man more convincing. Again, the girls felt they had lost
something significant when their hair was cut off. They felt that while
the men were adding things to their physicality, the transition
from female to male means losing aspects of their physique.
Behaviour
Teaching a woman to
behave like a man is very similar to teaching a woman how to assert herself:
she must take up more space, square her shoulders, lift her head and look
at people directly. When she walks, she needs to be more cocky. The toughest
thing for the women when learning to walk, is to get rid of the feminine
hip-wiggle.
The girls find that
being asked to behave like a man changes the way they feel. They immediately
take on a more aggressive attitude, become surlier and less fun. 'We're
really miserable as guys,' says one of the girls.
Voices
As with the men, the
women find learning to speak like the opposite sex extremely difficult.
There is so much to remember. The girls must lower the pitch of their
voices, but not so far as to make their speech monotonous and humourless.
They must learn to be more direct, to speak with greater strength and
confidence.
When the girls venture
into the outside world, they find they slip up in speech. When one comments
on how she likes another's haircut, she realises she has made the remark
in a tone and pitch that a man would never use.
Form
and content
The
contestants
Boys
will be girls
Girls
will be boys
Gender
bending
Find
out more
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