Vested Interests

Vested Interests:
Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety

By Marjorie Garber

1992, Harper-Perennial

390 Pages


From the Cover

"Likely to prove the landmark book on gender in our time." - Bay Area Reporter

In this groundbreaking book, Marjorie Garber explores the nature and significance of cross-dressing and our recurring fascination with it. Vested Interests is a tour de force of cultural criticism; its investigations range across history, literature, film, photography, and popular and mass culture, from Shakespeare to Mark Twain, from Oscar Wilde to Peter Pan, from transsexual surgery and transvestite sororities to Madonna and Flip Wilson, Valentino and Elvis. Vested Interests offers a provocative argument about our ongoing obsession with dressing up - and the power of clothes.

"An extraordinarily rich study which will redefine current debates about the construction of sex and gender. It is also very funny, moving, and powerful. Anyone interested in sexual difference - and who is not? - will want to read Vested Interests." - Women's Review of Books

"A fascinating compendium of cross-dressing . . . and a provocative piece of cultural criticism." - New York Times.

"A big book in every sense, ebullient and alive with insight and imagination. Garber has produced a TV guide for our time, exploring the cultural conundrums of cross-dressing with unflagging intelligence and a rich sense of irony." - Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"An absolutely fascinating look at gender-bending in the arts and everyday life . . . . Well-researched and wonderfully illustrated . . . Garber's work is scholarly, witty, perceptive, and provocative - a sheer delight to read, consider and discuss. It's one of the best works of cultural criticism around - absolutely first rate." - Booklist

"Vested Interests is the crossover hit of the season." - Village Voice

"Bound to become the new, comprehensive bible on the subject." - The Nation


Marjorie Garber is Professor of English and Director of the Center for Literary Cultural Studies at Harvard. She is the author of three books on Shakespeare.


Table of Contents

Introduction: Clothes Make the Man

I. Transvestite Logics
1. Dress Codes, or the Theatricality of Difference
2. Cross-Dress for Success
3. The Transvestite's Progress
4. Spare Parts: The Surgical Construction of Gender
5. Fetish Envy
6. Breaking the Code: Transvestism and Gay Identity

II. Transvestite Effects
7. Fear of Flying, or Why Is Peter Pan a Woman?
8. Cherchez la Femme: Cross-Dressing in Detective Fiction
9. Religious Habits
10. Phantoms of the Opera: Actor, Diplomat, Transvestite, Spy
11. Black and White TV: Cross-Dressing the Color Line
12. The Chic of Araby: Transvestism and the Erotics of Cultural Appropriation
13. The Transvestite Continuum: Liberace-Valentino-Elvis

Conclusion a tergo: Red Ridi