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In recent months I have been consuming so much crossdressing girl in disguise media! It’s become my major comfort trope of the moment.

I grew up on a certain kind of girl power story about how women are just as good as men and can do all the same things. I later came to see how this kind of story undervalues feminine things and domestic labor and to value those things more, but this type of story still holds deep appeal to me. There’s something so satisfying about seeing young women succeed against the odds.

However, before I got into Chinese media several years ago I hadn’t read or watched many stories like this in a long time. I was mostly reading adult SFF where I wasn’t aware of many stories like that. Even as I started to get into Chinese stuff it took a while to get back to this beloved trope, as I started with stories that centered men. These shows aren't all crossdressing girls but they make a thematic cluster.

I slowly started watching dramas featuring extraordinary young women succeeding in traditionally masculine fields like in The Moon Brightens for You orA Girl Like Me and remembering how much I enjoyed this kind of thing

But watching The Long Ballad really reawakened my hunger for this kind of story. The main character in that drama, Li Changge, not only crossdresses and is good at fighting, but she’s exactly the kind of super smart chaos muppet that I love. Plus while Changge falls into the “not like other girls” trope, her best friend Li Leyan is more traditionally feminine and they are the most important people in each others lives. (It’s just a really good show! The character arches for everyone are also excellent!)

At the start of this year I was really craving something comforting to watch, so I watched my first ever Korean drama, Rookie Historian Goo Hae Ryung. This is not actually a crossdressing drama. Instead, our main character is one of the first women allowed to become an official historian, the officers of the court charged with writing down everything that happens as it happens for posterity. It's a show that gave me a lot of thoughts and feelings about history and an institution and practice.

While this show doesn’t have crossdressing, I do want to call attention to the way the male lead is extremely princess coded. He’s a prince who has been locked in a tower his whole life, he leaves out rice for the birds, at one point he wears a flower crown, and he’s always the one swooning or having his wrist grabbed. (He’s also a chaos muppet and I love him so much!)

Another thing that I love about Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung is that it deals with people in constrained circumstances taking what agency they can. That makes it sound kinda grim and it's not really. It's also one of the few stories that I know of that depicts monarchy but doesn't endorse it. Overall I really like how this show talks about political change and personal agency.

After that I watched Sungkyunkwan Scandal, another Korean drama about a woman scholar. This one does feature crossdressing. The main character disguises herself as a man to go to an all male school. It's a lot of fun. The political stuff isn't as good as in Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung but there's friendship and shenanigans. I gather it's a bit of a classic of this sub genre. I also especially enjoyed the fic for this one.

Another similar drama that I enjoyed is A Love Story of Oiled Paper Umbrella, about a plucky young woman who wants to be a demon hunter. This one features crossdressing but none of the women who crossdress are in disguise as men– they are just wearing men's clothes. It's actually really fun! The costumes are inspired by the Tang dynasty and we know women in the Tang dynasty crossdressed like this a lot but I don't see it in shows much. I actually really love the whole textile aesthetics of this show! So bright and colorful, with all kinds of mixing and matching!

The show also features an interesting friendship between the female lead and the second female lead. I wish it had gotten more screen time! There's lots of interesting characters and the plot really goes places and I liked it a lot!

I also just finished watching In A Class of Her Own, the Chinese remake of Sungkyunkwan Scandal. It made me think a lot about adaptation choices. I wouldn't have said Sungkyunkwan Scandal was grim or anything but In A Class of Her Own is an even softer version. I didn't love how Sungkyunkwan Scandal handled queerness but it was the only one of these shows that acknowledged that queer people exist. It's kinda strange watching the Chinese version get around some of that. “I'd rather have a life long friend than a wife” just doesn’t have the same impact as “Maybe I'm gay!”

Actually, given how queer the whole theme of crossdressing girls feels to me, all these shows are pretty heterosexual. I would love to see a trans version of this! Changge in The Long Ballad has a lot of gender vibes but mostly these shows don't even get that close. These days SFF has more room for queerness than in my youth but these types of stories are not very popular in the genre at the moment. Meanwhile these stories seem popular in Asian media but so far I haven’t encountered queer versions there either. I know in China queerness is censored, though there are a few f/f novels with crossdressing that I haven’t read yet. Meanwhile I’m just dipping my toes into dramas from outside of China. So I’m still looking for stories that lend more into queer potential of crossdressing girls.
Despite that, this trope still brings me a lot of joy! I love stories about women having agency and living lives outside of narrow gender roles. It's been a lot of fun diving into them. There's so many of these shows and I've barely scratched the surface. I'm looking forward to watching even more of them and maybe reading some novels along these lines as well. Please tell me about your favorites!