Wearing the pants: an 18th-century actress who cross-dressed for fun and fame reminds lesbian writer Renate Stendhal of her own youthful exploits.

Reading the intriguing biography Charlotte (Henry Holt, $27.50) by Kathryn Shevelow, I felt I had found the model for Tipping the Velvet, the Victorian romance of cross-dressing lesbians that went from best-selling book to hit BBC miniseries. The 18th-century actress Charlotte was no fictional creation but the real thing--a notorious London figure who impersonated men long before Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet.

Charlotte Charke (1713-1760) was a comedian whose portrayals of men were brilliant caricatures. Having married at 17 and borne a child the next year, Charlotte turned to acting to support herself and her daughter when her lothario husband abandoned them. Once she had tasted success in breeches she wouldn't take them off; she scandalously went on to live her life dressed as a man. She insisted on being called "Mr. Charles" while working in London theater.

Shevelow's detailed, touching portrait revealed Charlotte to me as a rebel sister. I was reminded of my early feminist years in Paris, when I stepped out of the corset of my "femininity" and began to unearth the hidden, forbidden male within. My "breeches" were a pair of jeans. With short hair, a lean body, long strides, and theater-trained gestures, I adventured through Paris by day and night, unrecognized. The cafe waiter, baker, and butcher in my quartier greeted me with "Bonjour, monsieur!" I flirted with gay men and straight women in the Metro, went to X-rated movies at Pigalle Place to get myself an education, and felt both scared and thrilled when prostitutes called out to me.

The high of androgynous exploration changed my life just as I imagine it changed and shaped Charlotte's. I recognize the serf-creation in this daredevil woman, unstoppable even in the face of severe punishments for her "unnatural" behavior. At 42, Charlotte published what is likely the first memoir ever written by an actress, but her love life remains mysterious. Shevelow reports that historians continue to debate whether Charlotte's intimate attachment to another actress had anything to do with sex. This makes me smile. In my experience, finding a female-male balance in crossing gender boundaries is both a creative and, by its very nature, a sexual empowerment.

Stendhal is a therapist and author of books including True Secrets of Lesbian Desire: Keeping Sex Alive in Long-Term Relationships.