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ladybusiness2025-04-23 08:54 am
forestofglory) wrote in ladybusiness2025-04-23 08:54 am
Adventures with Crossdressing Sword Girls
In recent months I have been consuming so much crossdressing girl in disguise media! It’s become my major comfort trope of the moment.
I grew up on a certain kind of girl power story about how women are just as good as men and can do all the same things. I later came to see how this kind of story undervalues feminine things and domestic labor and to value those things more, but this type of story still holds deep appeal to me. There’s something so satisfying about seeing young women succeed against the odds.
However, before I got into Chinese media several years ago I hadn’t read or watched many stories like this in a long time. I was mostly reading adult SFF where I wasn’t aware of many stories like that. Even as I started to get into Chinese stuff it took a while to get back to this beloved trope, as I started with stories that centered men. These shows aren't all crossdressing girls but they make a thematic cluster.
I slowly started watching dramas featuring extraordinary young women succeeding in traditionally masculine fields like in The Moon Brightens for You orA Girl Like Me and remembering how much I enjoyed this kind of thing
But watching The Long Ballad really reawakened my hunger for this kind of story. The main character in that drama, Li Changge, not only crossdresses and is good at fighting, but she’s exactly the kind of super smart chaos muppet that I love. Plus while Changge falls into the “not like other girls” trope, her best friend Li Leyan is more traditionally feminine and they are the most important people in each others lives. (It’s just a really good show! The character arches for everyone are also excellent!)
At the start of this year I was really craving something comforting to watch, so I watched my first ever Korean drama, Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung. This is not actually a crossdressing drama. Instead, our main character is one of the first women allowed to become an official historian, the officers of the court charged with writing down everything that happens as it happens for posterity. It's a show that gave me a lot of thoughts and feelings about history and an institution and practice.
While this show doesn’t have crossdressing, I do want to call attention to the way the male lead is extremely princess coded. He’s a prince who has been locked in a tower his whole life, he leaves out rice for the birds, at one point he wears a flower crown, and he’s always the one swooning or having his wrist grabbed. (He’s also a chaos muppet and I love him so much!)
Another thing that I love about Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung is that it deals with people in constrained circumstances taking what agency they can. That makes it sound kinda grim and it's not really. It's also one of the few stories that I know of that depicts monarchy but doesn't endorse it. Overall I really like how this show talks about political change and personal agency.
After that I watched Sungkyunkwan Scandal, another Korean drama about a woman scholar. This one does feature crossdressing. The main character disguises herself as a man to go to an all male school. It's a lot of fun. The political stuff isn't as good as in Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung but there's friendship and shenanigans. I gather it's a bit of a classic of this sub genre. I also especially enjoyed the fic for this one.
Another similar drama that I enjoyed is A Love Story of Oiled Paper Umbrella, about a plucky young woman who wants to be a demon hunter. This one features crossdressing but none of the women who crossdress are in disguise as men– they are just wearing men's clothes. It's actually really fun! The costumes are inspired by the Tang dynasty and we know women in the Tang dynasty crossdressed like this a lot but I don't see it in shows much. I actually really love the whole textile aesthetics of this show! So bright and colorful, with all kinds of mixing and matching!
The show also features an interesting friendship between the female lead and the second female lead. I wish it had gotten more screen time! There's lots of interesting characters and the plot really goes places and I liked it a lot!
I also just finished watching In A Class of Her Own, the Chinese remake of Sungkyunkwan Scandal. It made me think a lot about adaptation choices. I wouldn't have said Sungkyunkwan Scandal was grim or anything but In A Class of Her Own is an even softer version. I didn't love how Sungkyunkwan Scandal handled queerness but it was the only one of these shows that acknowledged that queer people exist. It's kinda strange watching the Chinese version get around some of that. “I'd rather have a life long friend than a wife” just doesn’t have the same impact as “Maybe I'm gay!”
Actually, given how queer the whole theme of crossdressing girls feels to me, all these shows are pretty heterosexual. I would love to see a trans version of this! Changge in The Long Ballad has a lot of gender vibes but mostly these shows don't even get that close. These days SFF has more room for queerness than in my youth but these types of stories are not very popular in the genre at the moment. Meanwhile these stories seem popular in Asian media but so far I haven’t encountered queer versions there either. I know in China queerness is censored, though there are a few f/f novels with crossdressing that I haven’t read yet. Meanwhile I’m just dipping my toes into dramas from outside of China. So I’m still looking for stories that lend more into queer potential of crossdressing girls.
Despite that, this trope still brings me a lot of joy! I love stories about women having agency and living lives outside of narrow gender roles. It's been a lot of fun diving into them. There's so many of these shows and I've barely scratched the surface. I'm looking forward to watching even more of them and maybe reading some novels along these lines as well. Please tell me about your favorites!
I grew up on a certain kind of girl power story about how women are just as good as men and can do all the same things. I later came to see how this kind of story undervalues feminine things and domestic labor and to value those things more, but this type of story still holds deep appeal to me. There’s something so satisfying about seeing young women succeed against the odds.
However, before I got into Chinese media several years ago I hadn’t read or watched many stories like this in a long time. I was mostly reading adult SFF where I wasn’t aware of many stories like that. Even as I started to get into Chinese stuff it took a while to get back to this beloved trope, as I started with stories that centered men. These shows aren't all crossdressing girls but they make a thematic cluster.
I slowly started watching dramas featuring extraordinary young women succeeding in traditionally masculine fields like in The Moon Brightens for You orA Girl Like Me and remembering how much I enjoyed this kind of thing
But watching The Long Ballad really reawakened my hunger for this kind of story. The main character in that drama, Li Changge, not only crossdresses and is good at fighting, but she’s exactly the kind of super smart chaos muppet that I love. Plus while Changge falls into the “not like other girls” trope, her best friend Li Leyan is more traditionally feminine and they are the most important people in each others lives. (It’s just a really good show! The character arches for everyone are also excellent!)
At the start of this year I was really craving something comforting to watch, so I watched my first ever Korean drama, Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung. This is not actually a crossdressing drama. Instead, our main character is one of the first women allowed to become an official historian, the officers of the court charged with writing down everything that happens as it happens for posterity. It's a show that gave me a lot of thoughts and feelings about history and an institution and practice.
While this show doesn’t have crossdressing, I do want to call attention to the way the male lead is extremely princess coded. He’s a prince who has been locked in a tower his whole life, he leaves out rice for the birds, at one point he wears a flower crown, and he’s always the one swooning or having his wrist grabbed. (He’s also a chaos muppet and I love him so much!)
Another thing that I love about Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung is that it deals with people in constrained circumstances taking what agency they can. That makes it sound kinda grim and it's not really. It's also one of the few stories that I know of that depicts monarchy but doesn't endorse it. Overall I really like how this show talks about political change and personal agency.
After that I watched Sungkyunkwan Scandal, another Korean drama about a woman scholar. This one does feature crossdressing. The main character disguises herself as a man to go to an all male school. It's a lot of fun. The political stuff isn't as good as in Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung but there's friendship and shenanigans. I gather it's a bit of a classic of this sub genre. I also especially enjoyed the fic for this one.
Another similar drama that I enjoyed is A Love Story of Oiled Paper Umbrella, about a plucky young woman who wants to be a demon hunter. This one features crossdressing but none of the women who crossdress are in disguise as men– they are just wearing men's clothes. It's actually really fun! The costumes are inspired by the Tang dynasty and we know women in the Tang dynasty crossdressed like this a lot but I don't see it in shows much. I actually really love the whole textile aesthetics of this show! So bright and colorful, with all kinds of mixing and matching!
The show also features an interesting friendship between the female lead and the second female lead. I wish it had gotten more screen time! There's lots of interesting characters and the plot really goes places and I liked it a lot!
I also just finished watching In A Class of Her Own, the Chinese remake of Sungkyunkwan Scandal. It made me think a lot about adaptation choices. I wouldn't have said Sungkyunkwan Scandal was grim or anything but In A Class of Her Own is an even softer version. I didn't love how Sungkyunkwan Scandal handled queerness but it was the only one of these shows that acknowledged that queer people exist. It's kinda strange watching the Chinese version get around some of that. “I'd rather have a life long friend than a wife” just doesn’t have the same impact as “Maybe I'm gay!”
Actually, given how queer the whole theme of crossdressing girls feels to me, all these shows are pretty heterosexual. I would love to see a trans version of this! Changge in The Long Ballad has a lot of gender vibes but mostly these shows don't even get that close. These days SFF has more room for queerness than in my youth but these types of stories are not very popular in the genre at the moment. Meanwhile these stories seem popular in Asian media but so far I haven’t encountered queer versions there either. I know in China queerness is censored, though there are a few f/f novels with crossdressing that I haven’t read yet. Meanwhile I’m just dipping my toes into dramas from outside of China. So I’m still looking for stories that lend more into queer potential of crossdressing girls.
Despite that, this trope still brings me a lot of joy! I love stories about women having agency and living lives outside of narrow gender roles. It's been a lot of fun diving into them. There's so many of these shows and I've barely scratched the surface. I'm looking forward to watching even more of them and maybe reading some novels along these lines as well. Please tell me about your favorites!
no subject
However, there is something special about that somewhat ambiguous state of both heterosexuality AND queerness that those stories evoked... Though the main relationship(s) are typically M/F, there's an appeal in a M/F relationship that can start with the basis of male friendship--sharing a friend group, all-boy's school, club, work, whatever allows for a platonic ideal of courting that prioritizes foundational friendship rather than JUST "we're a boy and girl so we gotta get together". Although it's somewhat common for the male love interest to know she's secretly a woman, she nevertheless is allowed into the male spaces, and she gets to be close to her love interest in a way that she wouldn't be allowed to as a woman. And if the male love interest DOESN'T know her gender and interprets himself as gay, then there's also an appeal to the vibe of "He loves her so much that he is willing to go against all of societal conventions" (though there's a certain gender essentialist tint to that "he can only fall in love with a man who's "actually" a woman" that's uncomfortable when examined). Overall, a girl-dressed-as-boy gets an opportunity to be freed of her usual gender expectations, which has a huge appeal for both queer readers and women in general who wish they could be "freed" from sexism.
That ambiguity feels like the precursor to queerness, but tends to default to the "proper" cisheterosexual state by the end. A lot of endings involve the girl "growing out" of her cross-dressing tendencies (Ouran High School Host club manga felt like a particular betrayal when I read it... what do you mean this gal who's expressed so many agender thoughts has now decided to present entirely feminine with long hair and a skirt?), often still positing marriage as the ultimate end goal/state for the woman. Which perhaps is part of how certain creators "got away" with presenting a queer work to publishers: Yes, this woman cross-dresses and challenges gender, but her love interest is still a man, and in the end she will become a "proper" woman, so it's okay for her to do all this gender-challenging stuff during the course of the story!
As heterosexual as these stories can end up, I think there was a reason I gravitated towards them when I was a teenager who hadn't yet confronted her own bisexuality. They present a form of M/F love that doesn't have to fit in the exact M/F gendered box, plus a "safe" kind of F/F love/crushing (where girls can swoon over girls-dressed-as-boys), and so appeal to latent queerness while being "safely" heterosexual. There are stories which I might find disappointing nowadays (as my desire for explicit queerness has risen), but which resonated deeply with me as a child.
Nowdays I don't see so many of these stories, though it may be that I'm not looking for it. Your point about its absence from recent SFF makes me wonder, too... I've seen a lot of queer/feminist creators invent gender-equal/neutral (and sexuality-equal/neutral) societies for their stories. Though I have found that appealing in many ways, a sense of rebellion/challenge is lost. Many of the cross-dressing stories may feature cishetero women, but they are explicitly going AGAINST society in their journey, which is still relatable to a queer struggle. Meanwhile stories ostensibly about queer characters can sometimes lose that sense of marginalization/struggle when the society depicts the queerness as fully normalized. Not saying either approach is better/worse (I have loved stories where queerness is fully normalized and the characters are queer without that being the "focus" or struggle--other things can fill the plot/tension), but sometimes a "straight" story about a character hiding their true gender or true sexuality, with lots of plot points bringing gendered expectations and anxieties into focus, can capture a compelling queer struggle.
For some actual media I personally recommend: Revolutionary Girl Utena (the anime, not the manga) is a fascinating case, MANY things going on beyond the main girl "dressing in a boys uniform" (it's not the boys uniform really, it's something entirely its own but she's clearly a gender non-conforming character), but the story has a lot of themes about gender, narrative, and some explicitly queer characters. Plus, sword-fighting! Very 90's shoujo style but also a deconstuction OF 90's shoujo--check trigger warnings if you're sensitive to some common big TWs.
While I'm here, I just want to shout-out a silly crossdressing manga: Classi9, which involves a bunch of classical composers as pretty boys going to a music school together, with the central character being the Japanese composer Taki Rentarō--a man, historically, but in this manga he's a girl who has cross-dressed to attend this all-boys music school! Although I think it was canceled (it ends abruptly) it's a delightful little gem for people who like or are curious about classical composers.
no subject
no subject
Definitely one the reasons I love this type of story is because it allows for transgression of gender roles. But your point about how that allows these characters to form closer bounds with men is really important too.
And yes I see what you mean about recent SFF having more accepting societies, but I love this trope and wish there was more of it.
About two days after I posted this I sat bolt upright in my chair and yelled "Utena! Why didn't I think about that?" There really is a lot going on there with gender and queerness!