Jérôme Bermyn

La folle histoire des travestis

Male and female, women in pants, extravagant or ambiguous, transvestites in their own ways summon up another genre ... of art history! Why do men disguise themselves as women? What about women as men? Why did transvestites make people laugh first, then make people think? Sheltered under the golds of Versailles, the Comédie Française or the venerable Academy, the transvestite broke into hiding before embracing the light. From Shakespeare to Molière, from Charlie Chaplin to Sarah Bernhardt, via Gainsbourg, Colette, Michel Serrault and the Drag Queens, it is the story of a figure who gradually exceeded his status as an outcast to become a source of 'inspiration'.