Channel surfing I ran across a rather interesting show on the BBC America channel.

Is the real you hiding beneath dreary clothes? In A Week of Dressing Dangerously, U.K. fashion journalist, Angela Buttolph, commandeers women’s closets for one week, challenging them to play dress-up in order to develop an aspect they feel is lacking in their personalities.

A housewife may be asked to dress like a punk rocker on one day and a glam movie star the next. Or, Angela might assign a 40-year-old divorcee to dress like an Amazonian cave woman for the day in order to learn how to stop caring so much about what people think.

In the end, the women are surprised to find how they behave when their regular clothes are off and people start taking notice. They also learn to have lots of fun with their new personas, and the confidence they inspire. A Week of Dressing Dangerously is a makeover show from the outside-in.


And they do mean dress-up. In the episode I saw an introverted singleton was told to wear a Spanish flamenco dress one day (to become more “passionate”) and another day to wear a fake fur coat over nothing but lingerie (to be more “sexy”).

What was interesting were the parallels to some of the more fantasy-style dressing/personas that some crossdressers—including myself—sometimes do. For myself, there is a sense how “playing dress-up” can help explore parts of my personality. I was also interesting watching the show’s participant interacting with people in the park in her flamenco dress, which almost felt like I was watching her doing drag as she loosened up and got into it.

More details (click on “programs”) about each episode, with photos and each participants’ thoughts about how they felt wearing the outfits).