Just curious per the movie “Tootsie” where Hoffman cross dressed as a woman.
I don’t know if she would have been convincing, since the movie was made in the early '80s. Fashions change, and it’s hard to judge if she could pass now, or if she would have passed then. I do know that she was not an attractive woman. I found it highly implausible that two different men were coming on to her and that another woman was jealous.
But the film was at least sensible in making her older than “Michael” was. There’s a long explanation that I can’t remember as to why a man dressing as a woman will always look older than he is, while a woman dressing as a man will look younger. Has to do with facial structure, mostly. So given that, I’d say she was at least plausible as a 50-something woman. Meanwhile, the Wayans brothers as college-aged women wouldn’t fool the late Ray Charles.
“One of the great inequities in life is that men, as they get older, tend to look more and more like Sean Connery. Whereas women, as they get older, tend to look more and more like Sean Connery.” - Bill Maher
I don’t remember the movie too well, but I bet in person it would be hard for Michael/Dorothy to cover up the 5 o’clock shadow. Dustin Hoffman had pretty dark hair, so I bet you’d notice the stubble if you were standing a couple of feet away.
IMO, Dorothy always reminded me of Peggy Hill [I first saw “Tootsie” a year ago]…which really isn’t that feminine. But I bet he could still pass.
I cannot imagine Dustin Hoffman, even at that age, passing as a woman even in the darkest club with the drunkest patrons. Broad shoulders, giant adams apple, manly man hands, and skin almost as thick as the Williams sisters!
Many people saw “The Crying Game” without recognizing the cross-dresser as a man. We have some trannies in my neighborhood. Only a couple of young Latin guys really pass. Sort of like John L. in “To Wong Foo.”
How do you know that there aren’t women in your neighborhood who are really men who are passing even better than those young Latin guys?
To answer the OP–no, I don’t think it would have been convincing, especially to people “she” dealt with daily. Given that Dustin Hoffman is a short man, and given that the fashions of the time allowed for very concealing makeup, glasses, and hair, he may not have been noticed just walking down the street. But I’d think anyone who dealt with her regularly would note something “off” about her, and figure it out very quickly.
I don’t think this detracted from the movie, however. We needed to suspend our disbelief enough to accept that he passed for a woman, and a somewhat desirable woman at that, but it was plausible enough otherwise.
Contrast Tootsie with Mrs. Doubtfire. Now, that’s a case where the initial deception was just too implausible to accept. In the case of Tootsie, most of the people he knew as Dorothy did not know him as Michael. But in Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams’s character was in his own house with his own wife and kids. Wearing a rubber face. To have them not notice that something very weird was going on strained my credulity way too much.
On the desirable point, I think it was supposed to be “Dorothy’s” personality, not looks, that was attractive to other men. (I remember at least one joke in the film about Dorothy not being good-looking.) In the case of the other actor, he was also obviously a skirtchaser and saw Dorothy as a challenge.
Personally, I found Hoffman’s appearance convincing as a rather plain middle-aged woman. I’ve seen uglier, more mannish looking women in my day. I can even believe that he could successfully portray a female character in a soap without the audience catching on. But I’m also inclined to believe that his coworkers would have suspected something after a while. If nothing else, even with perfume they might have noticed a certain masculine body odor around dear ol’ Dot.
*It’s amazing how many cross-dressing comedies botch this point. It’s one thing to convince strangers that you’re a member of the opposite sex. It’s quite another to convince people who know you well that you’re a completely different person who’s also a member of the opposite sex! The former is difficult but do-able, but the latter seems completely implausible for anything but the briefest and most casual of meetings.
I happened to read Anne Fine’s YA novel Alias Madame Doubtfire several years before the film adaptation was released. In the book the kids recognize their dad almost immediately, but play along with the deception in front of their mother. It still strains disbelief that the mother didn’t figure things out more quickly, but her interactions with “Madame Doubtfire” in the book were generally brief and at night under poor lighting.
Director: “I’d like to make her look a little more attractive, how far can you pull back?”
Cameraman: "How do you feel about Cleveland? "
Tootsie is one of our favorite movies, and we have named several pets after Miss Michaels and her colleagues.
Every time she goes into Bill Murray’s bedroom on her first morning as Dorothy and asks for a critique, I shout at the TV, “Your boobs are too high!”
But otherwise, yes, I think she was quite convincing, more so than Julie Andrews as a man, even a gay man.
A couple of friends of mine, young, natal women need to shave or otherwise manage nearly full beards. I know they are natal because I knew them when they were pregnant. KellyM has passed with no makeup and three days beard growth. Of course, all these women have that luxurious thin layer of fat all over that even naturally thin healthy women have, and they have the softer skin that women have. The fat layer matters most in the legs, particularly the backs of the knees. Since Dorothy wore skirts that at least occasionally revealed this area, that might have given her away to the observant. Also, after menopause, many women appear somewhat masculinized compared with how they looked when young. As far as being given away on television, I don’t see how, at least not without HDTV. The detail to notice such subtleties is lacking.
He did a good job, but still it didn’t work for me. I don’t think I would have bought it.
If you would not have bought it, then you would not have “bought” many, many natal women. There is an expression about our house referring to a friend of ours. “If [her name] can pass, then anyone can pass.” She is square of jaw and posterior, not to mention the facial hair and hint of an adams apple, and big feet.
Yeah, I think he could have passed. In fact, he looked remarkably like my elementary school librarian. Although, now that I think about it, maybe she was passing too :dubious:
I’m going from memory here, so I may be totally off-base…
In Tony Randall’s collection of reminiscences “Which Reminds Me”, he recounts the story of being trapped in an elevator on a long ride up a skyscraper with an odd looking woman who claimed to be an avid fan. After praising several of his performances, she went on to make several comments of a personal nature about how attractive he was, and how she’d always been turned on by him. It was only after the elevator reached its destination that the ‘woman’ revealed herself to be Dustin Hoffman, in drag as Tootsie.
Hoffman made a point of going out in make-up on a number of occasions, trying to see if people could tell or not. It was on one of these occasions that he happened to see Randall, and followed him into the elevator.
thwartme
The thing to remember is poeple usually wank their perceptions around to what they expect to see. So if someone was introduced to Dorothy Michaels, middle-aged woman, they’d probably be much more likely to think of her as a woman. Since they didn’t see the whole transformation aspect of it, they’d take her at “face” value. Especially in the '80’s when transgendered people were even less expected and accepted as they are now, which isn’t saying much.
StG
I also vaguely remember hearing about Dustin Hoffman meeting with people he knew well to se if they recognized him in Tootsie drag and that generally none did.
One night in the mid/late 1980s, I was visiting my mother when Tootsie was on network TV.
Mom (who was in her late 60s, but still fairly alert, with good eyesight) didn’t know the premise (she tuned it in halfway through), and remarked on how ugly “that woman” was.
Just for fun, I didn’t let on – I wanted to see her reaction, which was similar to everyone else’s in the movie when Hoffman flips his wig.
“Excuse me, but I’m new in town and I’m awfully lonely . . . I wonder if you wouldn’t mind buying me lunch?” 
Great scene. Comes in third behind “They can’t all be idiots, you argue with EVERYONE!” and “Shame on you, you macho shithead!”
I think Ebert’s review says something like, “He might pass in the Midwest, but not in Manhattan.”
“It wasn’t logical.”
“You were a TOMATO!! A tomato doesn’t have LOGIC!”