‘Pinky Smith Looks Gorgeous!’ Female Impersonators and Male Bonding in Prisoner of War Camps for British Servicemen in Europe

Abstract

Female impersonators were a familiar sight in prisoner of war (POW) camps, appearing in theatre productions, at dances, at tea parties as ‘waitresses’ and in auctions to raise money for welfare funds. This chapter explores British POWs’ reactions to them, as an insight into conceptions of sexuality and gender during the Second World War. Men in drag provided prisoners with a release from their single-sex society and POWs’ admiration for these ‘women’ enabled them to assert their collective male superiority. However, there were limits to this ‘safety valve’ interpretation of drag. Prisoners’ attitudes towards female impersonators also blurred the boundaries of male heterosexual desire, reflecting a fluidity in attitudes towards male sexuality, more generally, in British society during this era.