Byline: Michelene Wandor

THE TRADITION OF FEMALE TRANSVESTISM IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE by Rudolf M De kker and Lotte C van de Pol

Macmillan Pounds 27.50 pp128

AMAZONS AND MILITARY MAIDS by Julie Wheelwright

Pandora Pounds 12.95 pp224

As you slither into your designer jeans, dear female reader, are you aware that you are part of a well-trodden tradition of transvestism? Of course not. You're wearing trousers because they're comfortable or sexy or both. You can go out in public in a whole range of mock-male attire without being jeered at, much less a rrested for transgressing your gender role. If, dear male reader, you decide to do your Saturday shopping in a dirndl skirt because it is comfortable or sexy o r both, you are likely to be looked at askance for crossing the boundaries of wh at it is thought proper for men to wear. Clothes still make the man far more lit erally than they make the woman.

Not so in the relatively recent past. These two books chart the vexed question of cross-dressing before women had today's sartorial freedoms. Dekker and van d e Pol zip through a brief study of over 100 women living as men in...