And Now We Present… Me!

The cover of my 1959 paperback edition of Erving Goffman’s classic Presentation of Self in Everyday Life sports a photo of what I believe to be Christine Jorgensen and two female impersonators. It’s impossible to know, of course, if the two other figures in the picture are merely transvestites or, like Jorgensen, underwent surgery to change their sex. You can be reasonably sure, in either case, that more recent editions of the book will not have any such covers.