Yesterday, while I was wearing a dress and forms large enough to produce some bust, in a department store, one of their senior sales staff referred to me as a "gentleman"... and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
The situation: hosiery department, and some of the 8 packages of knee-highs were not scanning at the sale discount; the clerk phoned senior staff to come and help her. The woman behind me in line appeared to have only one small item, so even though the senior staff came by quite soon, I told them to put the next woman through -- with her having so little, it seemed impolite to make her wait through what might have turned out to be a complicated process of applying manual discounts etc..
(As soon as they began to serve her, she also promptly pulled a return out of her bag, didn't know which of several receipts she had was the appropriate one, wasn't ready with her points card to have the bonus points deducted since she was returning the item, and was otherwise slow.... but she did at least thank me for letting her go ahead.)
There was another woman waiting behind her with an apparently small purchase, but seeing how long the other one had taken, the senior staff member told the clerk "Serve the gentleman next."
"Gentleman"??? I was wearing a very plain (but quality built) multi-purpose chocolate-brown dress; with DD forms (that look several sizes smaller on me.) I had on just enough foundation to cover beard shadow, and no other makeup. My hair now reaches about 4" below the shoulder at the nape, and when fluffed (as it was yesterday) no longer looks like "guy hair" (except for the high forehead ) . My decidedly non-male earrings may have been hidden by my hair though.
And I guess my voice wasn't female...
But what is this world coming to when a "guy" can walk in to the hosiery department in an obvious dress, buy $50 worth of knee-highs, and attract no stares or curiosity other than the normal attention that comes with pointing out that a price has been mis-scanned? And get called a "gentleman" in the process?!
At one level, I am disappointed at the use of the male-gendered noun when I was obviously dressed and acting outside of the normal male role. On another level... especially considering the extent to which my voice would have gotten me "read", the senior staff's use of "gentleman" was apropos -- wearing a dress or not, I was a Gentleman in allowing those behind me in line to go before me rather being self-centered.
So... when you are dressed and out and about, are you still a Gentleman? Holding doors, offering assistance to others, and similar "gentlemanly" virtues?
Disputing the price... in a thread of mine a number of months ago, I was told that women are more likely to watch the prices carefully and insist on all applicable discounts. So I gather that I was acting within normal womanly character in pointing out the pricing problem, and thus that the women behind me would not have seen that action as unusual for a hosiery department. But is allowing someone else to go first "unladylike" ?? Did I "break character" when I did that?