Were people in Ancient China really bad at telling apart genders or something

It’s one of the most popular tropes in Asian fiction—girls crossdressing as men, and nobody could tell...

Sure, everyone had long hair back then, but shouldn’t it be pretty obvious when it’s a woman? Even if the clothes and hair are “masculine styles,” her voice, jawline, and figure are dead giveaways. I mean, Asian women tend to be more on the feminine side.

I can’t think of an Asian female [celebrity] right now who could convincingly crossdress as a man. It’s always some super-skinny, pale-faced, pretty girl dressed as a dude, and she isn’t convincing at all! ...We need some more tan-skinned, rough-looking, t.h.i.c.c. wimmin to crossdress

And the opposite is even more amusing— when some (fairly masculine) dude is mistaken for a woman.

I remember one of the most ridiculous moments in C-Drama history—when Feng Shao Feng (playing Lan Ling Wang) was bathing in a pond. I thought Ariel Lin’s character must’ve been terminally stupid or something when she mistook him for a woman.

Like, how the fk did you not see those broad shoulders, tanned skin, and rippling muscles? *ahem* ...To be fair, she only saw him from behind, but he’s obviously still a man.

Even when it comes to feminine-looking men, they’re still very different from women. Like with KPOP! Granted, I can not tell them apart from other idols, but I do know their gender at first glance. Most of the time.

...Unless all the dudes in Ancient China happen to look like LuHan or something, I don’t see how this is confusing.

Spoiler: The unfairness of life

dick or no dick he’s still prettier than 99% of girls and its unfaaaiirrr

 

Present-day is even worse in this respect. In fact, it's so bad you always hv to ask people what they identify as.

 

one word to solve your problem
mulan

 

I used to have long hair (a little past shoulder length). I'm a 6'6" tall bearded dude. People would call me a woman if they saw me from the back sometimes.

Don't think it has anything to do with ancient China.

 

theres no such thing as androgynous in ancient china. only feminine men.

 

idk as a chinese i cant tell most of the time

 

Makeup can do wonder.

 

It's because they identify as that gender. You have no idea on the stuff you thought that are cool/mainstream today, used to be the norm way back in Ancient China. Give it a few more decades and identifying yourself as a grandpa will be the new hype.

 

With pre-Qing Dynasty hairstyle plus a

Spoiler: Chinese Face

or rook same

maybe it will be hard to tell, but with Qing Dynasty hairstyle it's easy to tell apart.

EDIT: "What if" every women crossdressing or not in dramas getting out of balance near the male lead was because of their lotus feet

 

I think it mostly has to do with people generally not having much of a reason to question whether other people are male or female.

Say if you're just walking around and see someone with long hair, you might assume that it's a woman, but if you actually looked at them (and paid some attention) you would quickly notice that it's a man (if it's a man ofc)

 

Well, I can imagine three reasons for this:
1. It's really just a trope, like the blood from unrelated people not mixing. Something that simply happens in stories.
2. Everyone knew the real gender, but pretended not to because it's more polite or they feared repercussions (after all, it's often the rich people who crossdressed).
3. They actually could not tell. Firstly, in some periods the clothing was rather wide, and there are a lot of slim Asian men, too. Secondly - this applies to rich and powerful people again - I remember that in many novels merchants or other commoners did not dare look at important people. Meaning, they could only see their shoes or maybe clothes. Also, most of the time their servants would handle everything for them, so less chances to hear the voice of the crossdresser. I can imagine sometimes people just would not want to know, which leads us back to reason 2.

Just my two cents.

 

Op noted the face factor.
I do mistake dudes with long hair as girls sometimes but even a trans can be identified by face alone.

 

You'd be surprised how many cross dressers there are in Japan. I've seen countless photos of guys crossdressing as girls looking better than your average girl.

Plus, a trope is just a trope. In the end, it's just something to satisfy one's secret fantasies. In this case, we're talking about a reverse harem. I mean wouldn't you want to live an exciting life surrounded by hot guys, knowing you could be exposed any time? Look at Hana Kimi for example, series got so popular they made a japanese series, a taiwanese series and even a korean series based on it.

 

Oh yeah, that just reminded me—I rather dislike the Qing dynasty hairstyle for men. It’s just so odd; having to shaving off the top-front portion

And the clothing—although the fabrics are beautiful, it’s rather box-like. Something more free-flowing like the Tang Dynasty was more beautiful imo.

The Chinese foot binding though is just ick.

 

Hmmm yeah, East Asian men tend to be on the more feminine-looking side and it’s easier for them to crossdress convincingly.

I listen to a lot of Visual-Kei back in the day, and it introduced me to the world of androgyny before it was more common in the West.

The most versatile anime cosplayers tend to be Asian dudes or white girls because they tend to have more androgynous-looking features and could cosplay as either gender.

Spoiler: Love Stage

Love stage is my favorite manga/anime with crossdressing themes. IDK if they’ll ever be able to make it into a live-action adaptation... finding a good actor who can crossdress convincingly might be harder than just finding some regular model... And most live-action Yaoi adaptations tend to end up disappointingly anyway so not sure if I would want it.

 

That's a trope comes popular because of wuxia novels.

 

considering the differences in lifestyle, diet, frequency of periods of starvation, etc between now and ancient china I can see there being more room for cross dressing to go unnoticed centuries ago then now.

There would be limits and not everyone would be able to pull it off, but it would be more doable.

A lot of the gender differences are magnified by our modern lifestyles/gender roles, and modern diets being richer and more stable can lead to the physical differences (muscle mass, breast size, etc) being more developed and noticeable.

Who actually is supposed to be a historical example.

 

Nah, it way predates that. It's a literary conceit that goes all the way back to the Ballad of Hua Mulan and other literary works like the Butterfly Lovers. Wuxia just took the idea and ran away with it.

Generally speaking this is mostly a fictional construction to make certain kinds of stories work but it is more believable in Chinese history than it is in modern society. Back in the day both men and women had long hair so the primary visual distinctions between the genders was hair and clothing style. These were also used to distinguish the different social classes so they were a pretty big deal. So if someone were to change these cues to look like a different class and gender, the chances of tricking someone are that much higher.

Also, women dressing as men was a very common occurrence depending on the time period in question. For example, upper class women during the Tang Dynasty had a lot of social freedoms so they would often have sets of male clothing for all the times they wanted to be physically active (such as playing soccer). Usually they weren't trying to pretend to be men so they would still wear makeup and use female hairstyles. But change that and it'd be a lot easier to misidentify them.

 

Introducing how to crossdress in Japan.

 

I think it only works for teenagers... Some people don't mature as fast as others, so it would be easy to mistake a scrawny boy for a girl... And a girl who crossdresses as a scrawny boy for a boy...