Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods---My Mother's, My Father's, and Mine " At age fourteen, Noelle's mom told her the family secret: "Dad likes to wear women's clothes." As Noelle copes with a turbulent adolescence, her father begins to metamorphose into the loving parent she had always longed foronly now outfit
| TITLE | : | Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods---My Mother's, My Father's, and Mine |
| AUTHOR | : | |
| RATING | : | 4.63 (558 Votes) |
| ASIN | : | 0312422202 |
| FORMAT TYPE | : | Paperback |
| NUMBER of PAGES | : | 332 Pages |
| PUBLISH DATE | : | 2003-05-02 |
| GENRE | : |
Throughout her childhood in suburban Ohio, Noelle struggled to gain love and affection from her distant father. In compensating for her father's brusqueness, Noelle idolized her nurturing tomboy mother and her conservative grandma who tried to turn her into "a little lady." At age fourteen, Noelle's mom told her the family secret: "Dad likes to wear women's clothes." As Noelle copes with a turbulent adolescence, her father begins to metamorphose into the loving parent she had always longed foronly now outfitted in pedal pushers and pink lipstick.
Editorial : If the only time you think you've seen a transsexual is on the Jerry Springer show, Noelle Howey's thoughtful, funny memoir of her suburban childhood with a cross-dressing dad may leave you wondering where all the fireworks are. The first half of Dress Codes is like anyone's story of parental neglect. "I had a dad possibly like yours," Howey explains, "sullen, sporadically hostile, frequently vacant." It was her loving mother who eventually confided her father's secret when Howey was 15, by which time it came as a relief that the remoteness, the drinking, the mood swings were not the young Noelle's fault, but the result of her father's constantly stifled "yearning for angora." Although the early chapters are interesting, Dress Codes really takes off at the halfway point, when her father realized he was not a heterosexual male transvestite, but a woman. His sexual transition
She outlines the impact that this had on him and, consequently, on her and her mother, as well as on the family dynamics. Both men could not be more different. As you would expect their styles range from very-close-to-too-much to just-this-side-of-minimal. As a result, "Dress Codes" is in part angry, hopeful, remorseful and incredibly funny. I emailed the publisher and they are aware of the problem. During that time in actual history, Roman Catholic zealots persecuted, tortured and killed many people in an effort to "find the truth" (forcefully convert those who didn't believe) and root out "heresy." It was a shocking time in history, and as such, it is a dark but appropriate setting for this story.
Generations ago, the priests of the Inquisition convinced the Lords of Hell to embrace salvation. Some of the hurt/comfort scenes feel contrived. The story is divided into 2 parts.
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