THE TRANSVESTIST SAINT

by DORIS

I am neither a theologian nor even a Catholic, and yet I have the thought that if there is such a thing as a patron saint of transvestists, the honor must go to Joan of Arc--Ste. Jeanne.

For the story and the person of Joan of Arc have held for me, as I suspect it must hold for so many others, a special fascination one that first transfixed me in boyhood and remains a special ob- ject in all the years since. For Joan's insistence upon wearing the garb of the opposite sex was one of the major charges brought against her by her enemies and one of the major grounds for her martyrdom at the stake. And it is of special note that from first to last, the Maid of Orleans insisted that it was at the specific direction of Heaven that she put aside the clothing of her own sex and took the clothing of the other sex.

The vision of Joan--a person of purity and the highest moral conduct--in her male garb is a vision that anyone might envy. For what passed as male garb in that day, four hundred years ago, has in the course of time become what we would now call female garb. How was she dressed? A study of costumes of the past presents a picture for us. She would have worn skin-tight stockings-and- pants combination, almost exactly the equivalent of what are sold as panti-hose today--the same in tightness and design, though of rougher cloth. She would have worn a wide sleeved soft-cloth blouse, possibly gathered at the wrists, also in modern feminine style, over which she would have worn a sleevless doublet, very similar to a short jumper, whose little flaring skirt would either have ended just above the crotch or perhaps just a little bit be- low the crotch. The jumper would have been pleated at skirt and back, and a leather belt would have encircled it at the waist.

Every item of this garb is feminine today. Even her hair, cut from the long tresses of the medieval woman to a neck length bob, would seem 20th Century feminine. And so, by the irony of time or divine jest, the very clothing for which she went to her death for wearing has been surrendered by the guilty males who condemned her to the females of our time.

10.