Dress Codes Of Three Girlhoods--My Mother's, My Father's, and Mine [Paperback]

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.

Discussion Questions
1. In many ways, Dick and Noelle experience their adolescence together, simultaneously
making the transformation into womanhood. How does each girl cope with this situation?
How does Dick approach becoming a woman differently than he did becoming a man?
2. Discuss Dinah and Dick's relationship. Why is Dinah so invested in Dick despite the face
that he is emotionally and sexually distant? Why does she pass up her other prospects to
marry him? When Dick transforms into Christine, how does their relationship change?
Does Dinah feel as responsible for Christine as she did for Dick? Why or why not?
3. Dinah knew Dick's secret when she married him, yet it is the secret that keeps them
distant and unhappy. In what ways does the secret damage Dick's relationship with
Noelle? Why is it so easy for Christine to repair her relationship with Noelle and so
difficult with Dinah?
4. What about Grandma H is so attractive to Noelle when she is a child? What changes?
What does Grandma H later represent to Noelle that she is trying to hard to reject?
5. When they are first married, Dick and Dinah attend a few meetings for crossdressers but
neither feels comfortable and they stop going. But later Christine attends meetings that
she finds informative and friendly. Discuss what changes have occurred that allow
Christine to attend transgender meetings lc