Sheilas?
Gillian Freeman
The Other Women Barry Kay (Matthews Miller Dunbar £3.95) if you think that Australian men are nothing, but a load of Bruces drinking Fosters, waiting for their billies to boil, take a look at Barry Kay's extraordinary book of phot°. graphic portraits of Australian transvestites, Folksong may have them camping bY.„3 billabong but this lot are camping it LIP Sydney—it might well be renamed Sidoale —possibly the fastest growing transvestite, community in the world. One of its Os' surprising aspects is that, less than ten Years, ago, an Australian transvestite was literati,' in the closet with his clothes. Now, as Barr,Y Kay's photographs demonstrate, he's visiblY alive and well in the parks and on the street,: and beaches, making his mecca, King' Cross, surely the Babylon of Australasia. Australians, like Americans, have alwaLs made a myth out of manhood, so that thl; gulf between the ideals of society and II', emergent sub-culture is much wider thario)L those countries which have traditiott tolerated fetishism. In his short, but pecceP, tive and pertinent introduction, Barry writes: Australia's myth of heroism throtItgoll physical achievement cultivates a belie' I, male elitism, a notion inevitably orlde,r1 mined by the presence of a transsesa; community which, paradoxicaltY, tifte only finds social acceptance but a'' manages to fulfil a social need.
There has, indeed, been Physical achieve:, ment—quite astonishing at times. .14.1i mones, electrolysis and the much public!-ps and glamourised sex-change operati°e have created a kind of femininity, alth°ot the expected tranquillity of mind does.Pcies always follow man-created-woman. Sotel ed and attempted suicides have not deterrbe others from seeking sex-change, but tt,.01 solution is not so simple. In spite of acceptance and the freedom to be selves, outsize Bubbles in his blonde ,v11011 withered Alice in sagging bikini,Pellsed hugging a toy panda and Diane P,_°,,tb beneath a picture of Bette Davis seem bizarre and sad. Even the few who °no actually acquired a deceptive aPPeara,, look touchingly vulnerable; in moment'd a truth life must seem lonely, frenetic an desperate sham.
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