• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.21-37
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• 2002

The third sex implying a mismatch between sex and gender has been regarded as an extreme socio-cultural violation. In its earlier version, such a violation was expressed by cross-dressing; Women's cross-dressing was thought to invoke eroticism, while men's cross-dressing was considered comic or delinquent. However, as feminism developed more with the homosexual identity expressed openly, the third sex began to be visual. Thus, in 1990's, some homosexual monies began to develop to be pluralized enough to suggest the third sex and thereby, change the negative sex into a positive one. In this study, such a pluralization is discussed in terms of invisibility, dichotomy and androgyny. The cross-dressing movies show females in male attire or males in female attire to reflect the third sex. The cross-dressing may be divided into men's playful cross-dressing, women's political cross-dressing and homosexuals'cross-dressing or 'drag'. Gender identity is not an attribute fixed by some physical characteristics, but it tends to be changed or expanded by some social factors over time. In short, it may be a flexible, plural, individual and self-introspective attribute. Movies present diverse types of gender identities, and in particular, the movie costumes specify them. In other words, the costumes may be model means expressing the gender identities, and the gender identities shown in the movies tend to be imitated, re-created or assumed by the audience.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.35
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• pp.111-134
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• 1997

The purpose of this paper is to examine into the cross-dressing. Cross-dressing means 'dress-ing in clothes of the opposite sex' which has increased under the contemporary conditions. There also have been various cross-dressing phenomena in past but it appears strongly now that it would destroy the cultural stereo-types and give rise to the cultural insecurities in the contemporary conditions,. In this paper the author classified cross-dressing with the oppositional cross-dressing the perverted cross-dressing and the custom-ary cross-dressing. And the results are as follows 1. The oppositional cross-dressing has increased under the influence of feminism movements homosexual identities and subcul-tural identities. 2. The perverted cross-dressing has ap-peared in various social cultural contexts that is in the regional theratrical and the religious habits. Cross-dressers have used the clothes as an instrument for which the solve the contradic-tion between sex and gender role. And through the cross-dressing phenomena we can find all the category crises which are related with sex and gender but simultaneously we can search for all the possibilities through the open thought.