Dressing a girl up as a boy is one of the oldest dramatic plot devices. Shakespeare used it in several plays, including "Twelfth Night" and "As You Like It." And he probably borrowed the idea from an earlier writer. Women couldn't act on the Elizabethan stage so Shakespeare could cast boys to play girls pretending to be boys.
Cross-dressing is a plot device kdramas love.
In almost every kdrama case, the girls dress as boys to achieve something they could not do as girls. But the disguise also plays with the idea that you fall in love with a person and not their gender.
In historical dramas, disguising yourself as a boy could mean the chance to become educated or earn a living, something girls could not aspire to. But inevitably, in historical or present-day dramas, when someone falls in love with the pretend boy, they experience some confusion.
In "Sungkyunkwan Scandal," Kim Yoon Hee, played by Park Min Young, dresses up as a boy so she can earn money and attend the Joseon-era Sungkyunkwan University, which excluded girls. If they were discovered, their entire family might be executed. One of her classmates, played by Park Yoo Chun, falls in love with her before discovering she's a girl.
In "Painter of the Wind," Shin Yun Bok wants to attend the Dohwaseo Academy of Painting, partly to learn who murdered her father. While she is disguised, both a man and a woman fall in love with her. This is one of the more thoughtful disguise dramas as it explores how a woman's views change when she pretends to be a man.
Earning a living is also the reason that Go Eun Chan, played by Yoon Eun Hye, pretends to be a boy in "Coffee Prince." Her boss Choi Han Gyul, played by Gong Yoo, falls for her, and in one of the sweetest moments in kdrama romance, decides that he doesn't care that she's a boy.
In "You're Beautiful," Go Min Hyu is pretending to be her twin brother Go Mi Nam to save his place in the idol band A.N.JELL, and each one of her band mates eventually realizes that she is a girl. But Jeremy, played by F.T. Island's Lee Hong Ki has some genuine moments of terror when he thinks he is attracted to a boy.
And then there is the pretending-to-be-a-boy-so-you-can-get-closer-to-the boy plot variation, one that's perhaps the hardest to believe. In "To The Beautiful You," Sulli Choi cuts off her long locks so she could play a girl pretending to be a boy. Her character attends an all-boy high school, because she wants to be close to a track star played by Choi Minho.
The latest example of kdrama cross-dressing has a similar plot. Kara's Park Gyuri pretends to be a boy to work at a flower boy nail salon in "Nail Shop Paris." She's a writer and wants to study one of the men working in the salon.
Fortunately, such plots almost always work out for the heroine, who gets what she wants and, after she takes off her disguise, the man of her dreams.
