In junior high school boys said that’s how you could always tell if someone is a fag (our words then), defined in our puny minds as a crossdresser. The “instinctive” catch when something slips, depending on if you wear skirts or dresses (a woman, natch) or a true guy, with pants.
Also, since I’m at it, we used to say that how you examine your nails shows if you’re a fag or not.
Quick, check them! Did you curl your four-fingers in (minus thumb) and turn your palm towards you? Or did you extend your fingers, the back of the hand towards you?
I spend the majority of my time in pants, so tend to close the knees to catch dropped objects.
I usually extend fingers with palm down for a quick look at the nails, a more detailed examination involves turning my palm toward my face and curling fingers down. I’m very near-sighted, so even with my glasses on, getting my fingers reasonably near my eyes is the priority.
This is from a scene in Huckleberry Finn (the movie) where he dresses like a girl for some reason. He is in a dress sitting on a porch with an old woman, shelling peas or some similar task. She decides to test if he is boy or girl by throwing something at his lap. He closes his knees to catch it, and she remarks that a girl would spread her knees to catch it in her skirt.
These days most women don’t wear long dresses, so they catch as catch can.
I’m pretty sure he gets caught in the book too. He was running away from home and had this really bright idea to do it disguised in a stolen dress. I seem to remember that he was wearing a girl’s bonnet too and refused to take it off, ostensibly because he was afraid that it would be easier to tell he was a boy if he had it off and people could see his full face/head.
Yeah, I remember reading that Mark Twain book when I was a kid. And almost all my adult life, I’ve worn pants. I think the last dress I wore was for my daughter’s baptism…in 1983.
And I smile to myself when I drop something to my lap, because I ALWAYS put my legs together to try to catch it!
~VOW
I think National Lampoon had the “Are you a homo?” bit back in the 70’s.
Had some classics like Michaelangelo’s statute of David (circle the part(s) that seem out of proportion).
The clincher was whether you wore your watch with the face inside your wrist or outside…
Obviously these sorts of “tests” were meant to mock the anxiety of teen guys who seemed to think everyone around them was getting laid and they weren’t, so there must be something wrong with them.
All other things aside, I learned not to catch things with my thighs when, at about 12, I caught an exacto knife that way. Still have the scar… on one thigh, fortunately, or my gender might be in question now.
I wonder if anyone ever tried the legs open/closed trick with men of the Black Watch, who used to wear kilts all the time. Apparently they don’t wear them all the time anymore.
You’ve gone longer without wearing a dress than I have…
…and I’m a guy.
1998 - Halloween - 8 yr old Bubbagirl was a pretty princess and got lots of candy.
Bubbadog with his full beard and ample chest hair wore a blonde wig, a low cut dress and collected darn near a 12 pack of brewskis.
