The Last Time I Wore a Dress by Daphne Scholinski

Thus she spent her high-school years locked up and marooned among the delusional, the suicidal, and the schizophrenic, being given ``girly lessons'' in makeup, dress, flirting, and other feminine skills. When she became close friends with a new girl on the ward, she was accused of lesbianism. Faced with the challenge of diagnosing her problems, doctors at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago decided the short-haired, ripped-jeans-and-rock-T-shirt-attired Scholinski was not ``feminine'' enough. She was turned over to the care of a mental hospital by parents who could not handle her minor acts of juvenile delinquency. With a depressed mother and a father traumatized by service in Vietnam, Scholinski had an adolescence marked by physical and emotional abuse at home, teasing by schoolmates about her tomboyish appearance, and sexual molestation by strangers and others in positions of authority.

The result is a book is reminiscent of The Catcher in the Rye and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as well as an expose of a shameful medical sham that has destroyed countless childhoods.This patient's-eye view of life in a psychiatric hospital in the 1980s draws on the techniques of Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted but offers an original perspective on the dubious diagnosis Scholinski was given: Gender Identity Disorder. Thousand of teenagers are institutionalized in the United States each year for being too sissyish or too much of a tomboy.Though the facts are truly frightening, Jane Meredith Adams has captured Daphne's fresh, funny, triumphant voice so vividly that The Last Time I Wore a Dress is impossible to put down. It's hard to believe that doctors, circa 1981, described Daphne's treatment goals as becoming more obsessive about boys, learning about makeup, dressing more like a girl, curling and styling hair, and spending quality time learning about 'girl things' with peers. The years that should have been Daphne's typical high school experience instead consisted of periods of seclusion and physical restraint, frequent does of sedatives, and the close company of people who were truly crazy. Summary: 'At the age of fifteen, Daphne Scholinski was put in a mental hospital for what her psychiatrist called 'failure to identity as a sexual female.' The hospital gave her a diagnosis that was brand-new to the medical books: Gender Identity Disorder.

The Last Time I Wore a Dress by Daphne Scholinski