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File:Hayate dressup.jpg

Nagi and Maria discover the joys of playing dressup.


Whenever a guy happens to need girls' clothes for some reason, the girls around him suddenly get a Psychotic Smirk... oh boy. This activity is always portrayed as more fun for the girls than for the boy; girls in fiction just relish the opportunity to play with the victim like a doll and often revel in his discomfort. In most cases, this is all Played for Laughs, sometimes accompanied by a Gilligan Cut.

Sometimes, the guy being dressed up may have feminine attributes and other characters mistake them for being a pretty girl, possibly falling in Love At First Sight. If this happens, the guy will play along because he's too embarrassed to reveal his true identity.

Subtrope of Disguised in Drag. Often combined with Instant Cosplay Surprise. Contrast Wholesome Crossdresser, a guy who's totally into doing this thing and probably doesn't need a girl's input. May overlap with Becoming the Costume.

Examples of Dragged Into Drag include:


Anime & Manga[]

  • To Love Ru has this when Rito gets turned into a girl.
  • In Hayate the Combat Butler (pictured) this is a Running Gag for poor Hayate. Nagi and Maria do this to him just for fun, and he has even been cursed into wearing only girls clothes. Some characters even think he is an actual crossdresser because of this.
    • This ends up crossing with I Think You Broke Him when Nagi suggests he change out of Ayumu's clothes, and he refuses. In actuality, he just doesn't want to reveal to Luca that he's actually a guy.
    • And, as of chapter 319, he's actively seeking to get clothes to crossdress into. Dragged Into Drag no longer.
  • Black Butler: Done in especially disturbing fashion, as the boy in question is ten years old at most, and the scene opens such that it looks like he's being raped. Here, see for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZZtlmAGDZE
  • Code Geass: Milly decides to have fun with a crossdressing day at school.
  • Yuna and Kakizaki in Mahou Sensei Negima did this to Negi as a prop/attraction to their haunted house (which became far less haunted).
  • Katsuki from Clannad. And the guys end up confusing him with a girl.
  • Mahoraba: Shiratori gets this done to him while he's asleep, in the manga just for such a light-weight drinker, in the anime for having an apparently dirty dream about Kozue.
  • Ergo Proxy: Pino puts makeup on Vincent.
  • Twice in Midori no Hibi:
    • First, when there's a pervert on subway trains cutting girls' skirts, Ayase has Seiji dress in drag in order to catch the suspect.
    • A running gag in the relationship between Kota and Miku is that Miku and her gang love to constantly dress Kota in drag, since (according to them) he "looks cute" in it. Toward the end of the manga, Kota later asks Miku and her gang to drag him up again, this time in a gambit to persuade Midori to return to her original body.
  • Minami-ke: Makoto originally, but he eventually turns into a Wholesome Crossdresser when he realizes there are upsides to it, too...
  • Fruits Basket: When all the girls want to make (and succeed) Yuki crossdress.
  • In Sasameki Koto, Akemiya initially crossdresses by choice, but is later forced to dress as a girl to be used as, well, uh, lesbian bait.
  • In Slayers, Once a Season, Lina and Amelia happily dress up the male part of the cast because the party needs a disguise. Ironically, in episode 17 of NEXT (when the party infiltrates a girls-only kingdom), Lina's the only one in her party wearing trousers in lieu of the dresses worn by her comrades.
  • When Sanji in One Piece found himself on the "Isle of Maidens" Peachy Island he was thrilled... up until he discovered that all the "Maidens" were Transvestites who insisted he go native.
    • Also happened a bit to Luffy on Amazon Lily. The amazons made copies of his original clothing for him, but also added a bunch of pink frills to make him look cute. Luffy was not pleased.
      • Arguable, considering it was completely unintentional. The amazon that made the clothes seemed genuinely surprised when Luffy told her he didn't want frills on his clothes, and she removed them without any real argument when asked.
  • Gintoki and Katsura were forced to crossdress and work at a crossdressing bar in an episode of Gintama.
  • This is more or less the point of Family Compo.
  • Kafuka Fuura and Harumi Fujoshi in Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei once forced their teacher and his brother into dresses.
  • Pokémon: In every saga (except for the Orange Islands one), Ash is forced into dressing up as a girl. Needless to say, it's never consensual on his part.
  • Gender Flipped in Ouran High School Host Club when the boys are quite happy to dress up Haruhi (in men's clothing, making it this trope, as well as women's).
  • In Scrapped Princess, Pacifica and Winia are happy to dress up Leopold and Fully in drag to sneak past soldiers.
  • Pretty much the entire premise of Princess Princess. Though instead of being dressed up by girls it's the Absurdly Powerful Student Council and school faculty who are behind it. It Makes Sense in Context. Sort of.
  • Done in the second season of Darker Than Black, where in one episode Plucky Comic Relief Kiko and Gai from the first season bump into Suo, July, and Mao (whose currently residing in the body of a squirrel) and help Suo in her search for her mother in Toyko. During this time, Kiko and her friends dress up July (a reputedly emotionless male "doll" with no will of his own mind you) in frilly dresses and makeup until he apparently grows annoyed and leaves. It's one of the few lighthearted episodes of the series.
  • Sort of suberverted in Shugo Chara, where Kukai and Tadase are forced to wear skirts by Nagihiko because Kukai asked what it feels like to wear a skirt.
  • Early on in Season 2 of Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu, Akihisa, Yuuji, and Kouta are forced to crossdress and enter a yukata contest by their respective love interests as punishment for their attempts to hit on other girls. They then try to weasel their way out of it with their manly pride intact by losing the contest. This backfires. Horribly.
  • All the guys, but specially, poor Tatsuya in Hekikai no AiON. Since he was "sick" actually spending almost 2 month in a Journey to the Center of the Mind he didn't knew that his class was preparing a "Males-in-female-clothes cafe" for their Cultural Festival, and the girls rejoiced themself in his cuteness when they saw him in a Meido costume.
  • Ikemen Joshi to Josou Danshi (aka Handsome Girl and Crossdressing Boy) has a girly-looking boy named Iori Akizakura forced to crossdress by his friends. Then, a guy named Hazuki Rindou hits on him... and "he" turns out to be a Bifauxnen. Hilarity Ensues.


Live Action TV[]

  • It was done in at least one episode of Gilligans Island.
  • Two episodes of Small Wonder had Jamie dressed as Vicki.
  • One episode of Boy Meets World had this as Cory and later Shawn dressed up as girls for a report on the female gender.
  • Big Time Rush also showcased this when one of the guys dressed as a girl to get into an all female school to meet a favorite author of his.
  • In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, Sally decided she needed to experience a childhood, so she started acting like a little girl. This included styling Tommy's hair into pigtails and so forth. He did not enjoy it.
  • In the third-season Modern Family episode "Me? Jealous?", Alex and Haley decide to make up after one of their frequent fights by dressing up Luke as a girl, something they haven't done in a long time.


Video Games[]

  • Final Fantasy VII: At the Wall Market, Aeris seems rather enthusiastic about the idea of doing this to Cloud.
  • Happens to Yuri and Ian in Infinite Space, with the dialogue suggesting they lost some sort of bet to Nia, and this leads to Ian being kidnapped alongside the barmaid of the place where they slept at. There's a Near-Rape Experience where the pirates only responded to Ian's saying that he's a guy with "... even better."
  • In Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 Loran has this reaction when you unlock his Laura Rola party dress, despite not actually being all that bothered in Turn a Gundam itself. In fact he mostly seems to have fun with it in series other with than the constricting corset.
  • Shikanosuke in Kira Kira. Initially it was a way to get him into his friend Sarina's strict household since they wouldn't approve of a boy being left alone with girls. It eventually became part of his band costume to cross-dress.
  • In Persona 4, during the "Culture Club" event, Yosuke signs up the female characters for the Beauty Pagent, which they can't back out of. To get their revenge, the girls sign the boys up for the "Crossdressing Pagent" held directly before. And they take great delight in dolling the boys up in humorously hideous outfits-- except for Ted, who makes such a pretty girl that even a few guys remark that "I'd hit that."
  • In the Fuka Bad End of Disgaea 4: A Promise Unforgotten, Fuka decides that the recently defeated Valvatorez and Fenrich would look good in maid outfits.
Cquote1

 Fuka: You guys aren't that bad looking... I wouldn't mind making you hunks my servants. But... You gotta wear maid costumes from now on.

Fenrich: My lord in a maid costume...!? A-are you into that sort of thing, lass? That's unacceptable!

Cquote2


Webcomics[]

  • Jacob from Monsterful was forced to dress in both a gothic lolita dress and in a sailor uniform by the little evil Ruby.
  • Ozy and Millie: Millie seems to have too much fun doing this to Ozy on occasion.
  • El Goonish Shive has a whole arc on The Birthday Party that involved splitting invited people into pairs to choose clothes for each other and switching everyone's sex (except one character) using an alien "morphing device", so that all the characters were cross-dressed into whatever their partners wanted. It's not as bad as it sounds, but surely as crazy.
  • Double K has Kamina forcing Simon into the role of the Dirty Harriet to bust solicitors. He's done this more times than he really should, according to Lord Genome.


Web Original[]

  • An extremely common trope in transgender fiction, as seen on sites like FictionMania. In TG fiction, the trope is less likely to be Played for Laughs, instead often leading to a revelation of Attractive Bent Gender and representing a first step on a journey of self-discovery (which may be figurative and/or literal.) Alternatively, the trope is sometimes given a more sinister spin, as a prelude to sexual domination and/or the protagonist becoming a Sex Slave.
  • The main theme behind the New Look Series of FanFics.
  • While raping him, Spoony forced The Nostalgia Critic to dress up like a dirty ballerina and took pictures for blackmail purposes.
  • The Sissy Alphabet by DovSherman on Deviant ART.


Western Animation[]


Real Life[]

  • Robert Pattinson used to be put in drag a lot by his older sisters. He grew out of it eventually.
  • There is such a thing as a "forced feminization" fetish.
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