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An intensely felt and extraordinary family memoir by Noelle Howey, who characterizes her touching and confusing sexual journey into womanhood as influenced by her relationship with her transgendered father and tomboy mother.
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 for-only now outfitted in pedal pushers and pink lipstick.
With edgy humor, courage, and remarkable sensitivity, Noelle Howey challenges all of our beliefs in what constitutes gender and a "normal" family.
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 for-only now outfitted in pedal pushers and pink lipstick.
With edgy humor, courage, and remarkable sensitivity, Noelle Howey challenges all of our beliefs in what constitutes gender and a "normal" family.
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Reviews
"Truth, as it turns out, really is stranger than fiction.Funnier, too. And sadder. Messier, as well--and just generally richer and more interesting. At least, such is the case in Noelle Howey's wise and entertaining memoir Dress Codes. This book may not be what everyone has in mind when they extol 'family values,' but rarely has the true value of family been so movingly and lovingly evoked."
John Colapinto, author of As Nature Made Him:The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
"Tremendously gratifying, Dress Codes is both funny and entertaining, and purveys a vital social message: that there is not much more important than being at home in your body and mind."
Amy Wilensky, author of Passing for Normal:A Memoir of Compulsion
"With disarming honesty and startling lucidity Noelle Howey beautifully weaves together the stories of three people coming into themselves. Like life, Howey's frank, probing book is sexy and difficult, and painful and joyous."
This be Nissen, author of The Good People of New York